were more or less public, and I
should like, before I conclude, to shew you how books were bestowed in the
studies of individual scholars--whether royal, monastic, or secular.

I conceive that for many centuries after the beginning of the Christian
era the methods of the ancient world were followed; and that private
libraries were arranged upon the Roman model in presses, with busts,
mottoes, and the like. Such was the library of Isidore, Bishop of Seville
(601-636). He was a voluminous writer, and seems to have had a voluminous
library, divided, if I interpret the arrangements correctly, among
fourteen presses, each ornamented by one or more portrait-busts or
medallions with suitable verses beneath them. The series concludes with a
notice _Ad interventorem_, a person whom we may call _A talkative
intruder_:

Non patitur quenquam coram se scriba loquentem:
Non est hic quod agas, garrule, perge foras.

How useful such an admonition would be in modern libraries, if only it
could be enforced!

So late as the end of the twelfth century I find a Bishop who bequeathed
his library to a church describing it as "the contents of my press
(_plenarium armarium meum_)."

Gradually, however, other methods came into fashion, due probably to the
introduction of the handsome bindings of which I have already spoken. Some
particulars have fortunately been preserved of the cost of fitting up a
certain tower in the Louvre between 1364 and 1368, to contain the books
belonging to Charles the Fifth of France, from which much useful
information may be extracted. The fittings of the older library in the
palace on the Isle de la Cite were to be taken down and altered, and set
up in the new room. Two carpenters are paid for "having taken to pieces
all the cases (_bancs_) and two wheels (_roes_), that is revolving desks,
which were in the king's library in the palace, and transported them to
the Louvre...; and for having put all together again, and hung up the
cases (_lettrins_) in the two upper stages of the tower that looks toward
the Falconry, to put the king's books in; and for having panelled ... the
first of those two stories all round inside." Next a wire-worker
(_cagetier_) is paid "for having made trellises of wire in front of two
casements and two windows ... to keep out birds and other beasts
(_oyseaux et autres bestes_) by reason of, and protection for, the books
that shall be placed there."

The words _bancs_ and _lettrin