two libraries, and you shall decide whether
it is not obvious that the one was suggested by the other.

_Interior of the Library of the Escurial and of the Bibliotheque Mazarine,
Paris._

The new system was not accepted hastily. I believe that Sir Christopher
Wren, when he built Trinity College Library in 1695, was the first English
architect who ventured to build a library with windows which, as he says
himself, "rise high, and give place for the deskes against the walls." I
suspect that he borrowed this latter idea from France, which he visited in
1665, and most likely from the Bibliotheque Mazarine, for he has himself
recorded his admiration for "the masculine furniture of the Palais
Mazarin," though he does not specially mention the library. But he did
not discard the ancient arrangement altogether. On the contrary he
utilised it so far as to subdivide the room, and provide recesses for the
convenience of students. He says:

The disposition of the shelves both along the walls and
breaking out from the walls must needes prove very convenient
and gracefull, and the best way for the students will be to
have a litle square table in each celle with 2 chaires. The
necessity of bringing windowes and dores to answer to the old
building leaves two squarer places at the endes, and 4 lesser
celles not to study in, but to be shut up with some neat
lattice dores for archives.

_One compartment of Trinity College Library._

I need hardly say that neither this library, nor any of those built by
Wren's pupils or imitators, shew traces of chaining. The old fashion,
however, lingered. In 1651 Humphrey Cheetham directed the books he gave to
certain specified parish-churches near Manchester to be chained; in 1694
James Leaver gave books to the grammar-school at Bolton in Lancashire
which were chained in a cupboard very like the _armarium_ of a monastic
cloister;

_Book-cupboard and desk at Bolton, Lancashire. The former is lettered:
"The gift of Mr James Leaver, citison of London 1694."_

and at All Saints Church, Hereford, a collection of books bequeathed in
1715 was chained to ordinary shelves set against the walls, as may still
be seen. This very obvious way of disposing of books evidently shocked
old-fashioned people, for Cole the antiquary, writing in 1703, could still
speak of the arrangement of shelves against the walls as _a la moderne_.

The libraries I have been describing