being meant, though not named] in what we might call his lair, if the
word did not sound disrespectful. It was in a venerable,
half-castellated, ivy-grown manor-house, among avenues of ancient trees,
where the light had first to struggle through the foliage before it fell
on the narrow windows, in walls that were many feet in thickness. And
seldom, surely, has so rich a collection been stowed away in so strange
a suite of rooms. Rooms, indeed, are hardly the word. The central point,
where the proprietor wrote and studied, was a vaulted chamber, and all
around was a labyrinth of passages to which you mounted or descended by
a step or two; of odd nooks and sombre little corridors, and tiny
apartments squeezed aside into corners, and lighted either from the
corridor or by a lancet-window or a loophole. The floors were of
polished oak or deal; the ceilings of stone or whitewashed; and as to
the walls, you could see nothing of them for the panelling of shelves
and the backs of the volumes. It was books--books--books--everywhere;
the brilliant modern binding of recent works relieving the dull and far
more appropriate tints of work-worn leather and time-stained vellum. To
the visitor it seemed confusion worse confounded; though wherever his
glance happened to fall, he had assurance of the treasures heaped at
random around him. But his host carried the clue to the labyrinth in his
brain, and could lay his hand on the spur of the moment on the book he
happened to want. And with the wonders he had to offer for your
admiration, you forgot the flight of time, till you woke up from your
abstraction in the enchanted library, to inquire about the manuscript
that was in course of publication."

In spring Dr Burton generally spent some time in London, partly on
official business, partly in literary research at the British Museum.

He was elected a member of the Athenaeum Club without application or
ballot, an honour which he valued highly. He delighted in the dignified
and literary tone of the Club, and frequented it much when in London.

About 1867 the office of Historiographer-Royal becoming vacant, it was
bestowed on Dr Burton, with a salary of L190 per annum, thus bringing
his annual income to nearly L900, instead of L700. The compliment was
enhanced by the fact of a Conservative Ministry being then in office.
Dr Burton was a decided, though not aggressive, Liberal in politics.

Though personally more and more unsociable as years