ooks are more numerous than costly the annexe plan is admirable, and
the difficulty of excluding damp where four walls are exposed to the
elements could surely be overcome. I do not think that Mr. Gladstone
makes any mention of iron bookcases, but these are often adopted, and
have been made in a very convenient form, particularly that called the
Radcliffe iron bookcase, arranged by Sir Henry Acland and Mr. W. Froude.
Of this I append a description written by Sir Henry Acland himself.

'The advantages of the bookcase consist in its great stability, in its
movability and neatness. It carries 500 average octavo volumes, 250 on
either side; it is seven feet high, and stands on any floor space on
forty-eight inches by eighteen inches. The cases may stand in any number
end to end, or down the centre of a passage, or be placed so as to form
squares of any dimensions multiple of the length of the cases, and
therefore may enclose studies lined with books, books being also on the
outside of the square. When the cases stand end to end they need not be
put close to each other, but may have a space in which are shelves of
any desired length. Therefore ten iron cases placed in a line, so as to
include a space of forty inches between each two cases, will carry the
contents of nineteen cases, or 5000 plus 4500 volumes, at the cost of
ten cases, plus the wooden shelves of nine. The iron framework costs
about 5_l._ 5_s._, and the wooden shelves about 25_s._ The iron portion
will carry only octavos, but the spaces as described above will carry
folios, because, to insure stability in the iron frames, diagonal ties
run down the centre and divide the shelves into two portions, viz., the
two frontages described above. But the stability being ensured in each
iron case independently, the intermediate shelves in the spaces may be
of the full width of the frames, namely, twenty inches.'[53]

FOOTNOTES:

[51] These notices of the Hawarden Library may be compared with the
accounts given in Dennistoun's _Dukes of Urbino_ of a great Florentine
library:--

'Adjoining (the main library) was a study, fitted up with inlaid and
gilded panelling, beneath which . . . . were depicted Minerva with her
aegis, Apollo with his lyre, and the nine muses, with their appropriate
symbols. A similar small study was fitted up immediately over this one,
set round with armchairs encircling a table, all mosaicked with _tarsia_,
. . . while in each compartment of the pa