the most obvious, that the
building should be sound and dry, the apartment airy, and with abundant
light. And I dispose with a passing anathema of all such as would
endeavour to solve their problem, or at any rate compromise their
difficulties, by setting one row of books in front of another. I
also freely admit that what we have before us is not a choice between
difficulty and no difficulty, but a choice among difficulties.

The objects further to be contemplated in the bestowal of our books,
so far as I recollect, are three: economy, good arrangement, and
accessibility with the smallest possible expenditure of time.

In a private library, where the service of books is commonly to be
performed by the person desiring to use them, they ought to be assorted
and distributed according to subject. The case may be altogether
different where they have to be sent for and brought by an attendant.
It is an immense advantage to bring the eye in aid of the mind; to see
within a limited compass all the works that are accessible, in a given
library, on a given subject; and to have the power of dealing with them
collectively at a given spot, instead of hunting them up through an
entire accumulation. It must be admitted, however, that distribution by
subjects ought in some degree to be controlled by sizes. If everything
on a given subject, from folio down to 32mo, is to be brought locally
together, there will be an immense waste of space in the attempt to
lodge objects of such different sizes in one and the same bookcase. And
this waste of space will cripple us in the most serious manner, as will
be seen with regard to the conditions of economy and of accessibility.
The three conditions are in truth all connected together, but especially
the two last named.

Even in a paper such as this the question of classification cannot
altogether be overlooked; but it is one more easy to open than to
close--one upon which I am not bold enough to hope for uniformity of
opinion and of practice. I set aside on the one hand the case of great
public libraries, which I leave to the experts of those establishments.
And, at the other end of the scale, in small private libraries the
matter becomes easy or even insignificant. In libraries of the medium
scale, not too vast for some amount of personal survey, some would
multiply subdivision, and some restrain it. An acute friend asks me
under what and how many general headings subjects should be classified