, but it also seems inevitable. I wish that
some use could be devised for them, for these old books make at all
events a very dignified and pleasant background, and the fragrance of
well-warmed old leather is a delicate thing. But they are not even good
places for working in, now that one has one's own books and one's own
reading-chair. Moreover, if they were kept up to date, which would in
itself be an expensive thing, there would come in the eternal
difficulty of where to put the old books, which no one would have the
heart to destroy.

Perhaps the best thing for a library like this would be not to attempt
to buy books, but to subscribe like a club to a circulating library,
and to let a certain number of new volumes flow through the place and
lie upon the tables for a time. But, on the other hand, here in the
University there seems to be little time for general reading; and
indeed it is a great problem, as life goes on, as duties grow more
defined, and as one becomes more and more conscious of the shortness of
life, what the duty of a cultivated and open-minded man is with regard
to general reading. I am inclined to think that as one grows older one
may read less; it is impossible to keep up with the vast output of
literature, and it is hard enough to find time to follow even the one
or two branches in which one is specially interested. Almost the only
books which, I think, it is a duty to read, are the lives of great
contemporaries; one gets thus to have an idea of what is going on in
the world, and to realize it from different points of view. New
fiction, new poetry, new travels are very hard to peruse diligently.
The effort, I confess, of beginning a new novel, of making acquaintance
with an unfamiliar scene, of getting the individualities of a fresh
group of people into one's head, is becoming every year harder for me;
but there are still one or two authors of fiction for whom I have a
predilection, and whose works I look out for. New poetry demands an
even greater effort; and as to travels, they are written so much in the
journalistic style, and, consist so much of the meals our traveller
obtains at wayside stations, of conversations with obviously reticent
and even unintelligent persons; they have so many photogravures of
places that are exactly like other places, and of complacent people in
grotesque costumes, like supers in a play, that one feels the whole
thing to be hopelessly superficial and unreal. Imagine