ometimes this book-cupboard supported a revolving desk, which could be
raised or depressed by the help of a central screw--like those I shewed
you just now; sometimes the desk alone appears, with books laid on it.
The forms given to these pieces of furniture by the ingenuity of those who
made them are infinite; and they often include beautiful designs for
armchairs, fitted with desks for writing. I will shew you just one--not
because it is specially beautiful, but because it gives a quaint picture
of a scholar's room at the beginning of the fifteenth century[5].

Here Time--as represented by yonder clock--holds up his finger and bids me
stop. I would fain have shewn you more pictures--but I hope that you have
seen a sufficient number to give you some idea of the surroundings in
which our forefathers read and wrote. I am sure that only in this way can
we realise that they were real living people--not mere names. Their modes
of thought were far different from ours; they may have wasted their time
in verbal subtleties, and uncritical tales; but the more we study what
they did, the more we shall realise how laborious, how artistic, how
conscientious they were; and amid all the developments of the nineteenth
century, we shall gratefully confess that the Middle Ages rocked the
cradle of our knowledge, and that we "See but their hope become reality."

ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. Interior of a library, from Boethius.

2. General view of part of the library attached to the Church of S.
Wallberg at Zutphen.

3. Desk in the library at Zutphen.

4. Bookcase in Hereford Cathedral.

5. Bookcases in the library of the University of Leiden.

6. Bookcases at west end of south side of library, Cesena.

7. Part of a single bookcase in the library, Cesena.

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C.J. CLAY, M.A. & SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

1. THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND OF THE COLLEGES OF
CAMBRIDGE AND ETON, by the late ROBERT WILLIS, M.A., F.R.S., Jacksonian
Professor in the University of Cambridge. Edited with large Additions and
brought up to the present time, by JOHN WILLIS CLARK, M.A. 4 vols. Super
royal 8vo. With 342 illustrations and 29 plans.

Cambridge University Press.

2. CAMBRIDGE. BRIEF HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES. Crown 8vo.

Seeley and Co.

3. THE BOOK OF OBSERVANCES OF AN ENGLISH HOUSE OF AUSTIN CANONS, written
about A.D. 1296. Edited, with an English translation, i