placing of books than of lordly survey and direction.
But what man who really loves his books delegates to any other human
being, as long as there is breath in his body, the office of inducting
them into their homes?

And now as to results. It is something to say that in this way 10,000
volumes can be placed within a room of quite ordinary size, all visible,
all within easy reach, and without destroying the character of the
apartment as a room. But, on the strength of a case with which I am
acquainted, I will even be a little more particular. I take as before a
room of forty feet in length and twenty in breadth, thoroughly lighted
by four windows on each side; as high as you please, but with only
about nine feet of height taken for the bookcases: inasmuch as all heavy
ladders, all adminicula requiring more than one hand to carry with care,
are forsworn. And there is no gallery. In the manner I have described,
there may be placed on the floor of such a room, without converting it
from a room into a warehouse, bookcases capable of receiving, in round
numbers, 20,000 volumes.

The state of the case, however, considered as a whole, and especially
with reference to libraries exceeding say 20,000 or 30,000 volumes, and
gathering rapid accretions, has been found to require in extreme cases,
such as those of the British Museum and the Bodleian (on its limited
site), a change more revolutionary in its departure from, almost
reversal of, the ancient methods, than what has been here described.

The best description I can give of its essential aim, so far as I have
seen the processes (which were tentative and initial), is this. The
masses represented by filled bookcases are set one in front of another;
and, in order that access may be had as it is required, they are set
upon trams inserted in the floor (which must be a strong one), and
wheeled off and on as occasion requires.

The idea of the society of books is in a case of this kind abandoned.
But even on this there is something to say. Neither all men nor all
books are equally sociable. For my part I find but little sociabilty
in a huge wall of Hansards, or (though a great improvement) in the
Gentleman's Magazine, in the Annual Registers, in the Edinburgh and
Quarterly Reviews, or in the vast range of volumes which represent
pamphlets innumerable. Yet each of these and other like items variously
present to us the admissible, or the valuable, or the indispensable.
Clearly th