deed of a pious benefactor to the collection and housing
of books and the promotion of learning? The Bodleian at this moment
harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes,
some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become
a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a
poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for
the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in
the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'?

Grave questions these! 'The following episode occurred during one of
Calverley's (then Blayds) appearances at "Collections," the Master
(Dr. Jenkyns) officiating. _Question_: "And with what feelings, Mr.
Blayds, ought we to regard the decalogue?" Calverley who had no very
clear idea of what was meant by the decalogue, but who had a due sense
of the importance both of the occasion and of the question, made the
following reply: "Master, with feelings of devotion, mingled with
awe!" "Quite right, young man; a very proper answer," exclaimed the
Master.'[A]

[Footnote A: _Literary Remains of C.S. Calverley_, p. 31.]

'Devotion mingled with awe' might be a very proper answer for me to
make to my own questions, but possessing that acquaintance with the
history of the most picturesque of all libraries which anybody can
have who loves books enough to devote a dozen quiet hours of
rumination to the pages of Mr. Macray's _Annals of the Bodleian
Library_, second edition, Oxford, 'at the Clarendon Press, 1890,' I
cannot honestly profess to entertain in my breast, with regard to it,
the precise emotions which C.S.C. declared took possession of him when
he regarded the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection,
which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to
rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there
is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of
mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black
dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and
enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers
of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who
have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame
of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in _The
Sketch-Book_, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of
Literature'; and N