ay system is not only handsome but utilizes the space to great
advantage. The library of the city of London at the Guildhall is a
peculiarly effective example of the bay arrangement.

The whole question of the construction and arrangement of bookcases
was learnedly discussed in the light of experience by W.E. Gladstone
in the Nineteenth Century for March 1890. (J. P.-B.)

BOOK-COLLECTING, the bringing together of books which in their contents,
their form or the history of the individual copy possess some element of
permanent interest, and either actually or prospectively are rare, in
the sense of being difficult to procure. This qualification of rarity,
which figures much too largely in the popular view of book-collecting,
is entirely subordinate to that of interest, for the rarity of a book
devoid of interest is a matter of no concern. On the other hand so long
as a book (or anything else) is and appears likely to continue to be
easily procurable at any moment, no one has any reason for collecting
it. The anticipation that it will always be easily procurable is often
unfounded; but so long as the anticipation exists it restrains
collecting, with the result that Horn-books are much rarer than First
Folio Shakespeares. It has even been laid down that the ultimate rarity
of books varies in the inverse ratio of the number of copies originally
printed, and though the generalization is a little sweeping, it is not
far from the truth. To triumph over small difficulties being the chief
element in games of skill, the different varieties of book-collecting,
which offer almost as many varieties of grades of difficulty, make
excellent hobbies. But in its essence the pastime of a book-collector is
identical with the official work of the curator of a museum, and thus
also with one branch of the duties of the librarian of any library of
respectable age. In its inception every library is a literary workshop,
with more or less of a garden or recreation ground attached according as
its managers are influenced by the humanities or by a narrow conception
of utility. As the library grows, the books and editions which have been
the tools of one generation pass out of use; and it becomes largely a
depository or storehouse of a stock much of which is dead. But from out
of this seemingly dead stock preserved at haphazard, critics and
antiquaries gradually pick out books which they find to be still alive.
Of some of these the in