ases altogether; but I shall hope, by a selection of typical
illustrations, to make you realise what some of the libraries, monastic,
public, or private, that fall within my period were like.

I must begin with a few words about Roman libraries, because their methods
influenced the Middle Ages, and are, in fact, the precursors of those in
fashion in our own times. The Romans preserved their books in two ways:
either in a small room or closet, for reading elsewhere; or in a large
apartment, fitted up with greater or less splendour, according to the
taste or the means of the possessor, in which the books were doubtless
studied as in a modern library. An instructive example of the former class
was one of the first discoveries at Herculaneum in 1754. It was a very
small room, so small in fact that a man who stood with his arms extended
in the centre of it could almost touch the walls on either side, yet 1700
rolls were found in it. These were kept in wooden presses (_armaria_)
which stood against the walls like a modern bookcase. Besides these a
rectangular case occupied the central space, with only a narrow passage to
the right and left between it and the wall-cases. These cases were about
a man's height, and had been numbered. It may be concluded from this that
a catalogue of the books had once existed. In larger libraries the books
were kept in similar presses, but they were ornamented with the busts or
pictures of illustrious men, under each of which was a suitable
inscription, usually in verse.

No ancient figure of one of these book-presses has been preserved, so far
as I have been able to ascertain; but, as furniture is apt to retain its
original forms with but little variation for a very long period, a
representation of a press containing the four Gospels, which occurs among
the mosaics in the Mausoleum of the Empress Galla Placidia at Ravenna,
though it could not have been executed before the middle of the fifth
century, may be taken as a fairly accurate picture of the book-presses of
an earlier age. It is unnecessary to describe it, for it is exactly like a
still later example which I am about to shew you. This picture occurs at
the beginning of the MS. of the Vulgate called the _Codex Amiatinus_,
which is now proved to have been written in England, at Wearmouth or
Jarrow, but probably by an Italian scribe, shortly before 716. The seated
figure represents Ezra writing the Law.

_Bookcase in the Codex Amiatinus: