greenhouse, which at present they are not. Books are not so much wall
covering, or so much furniture. They are much more; they should be
treated more like living creatures, and if only their owners would get
upon speaking terms with them, how readily would they get a response.
Roughly, then, one would like to see attached to every large country
establishment a book building, a centre of intelligence and light, where
we might be sure of finding a good atlas, a good biographical
dictionary, and good verbal dictionary. I do not understand why so
little importance has hitherto been attached to this. Such a building
should have a large central room and several separate small rooms for
private study. The illustrations in a charming little book called _Mr.
Gladstone in the Evening of his Days_ convey what is meant very well.
From this little volume I give extracts which seem very clear to any
one interested in this matter:--

'Everywhere about in the large room are books--books--books. The Iron
Library (the building is of iron) is arranged in the same ingenious way
as Mr. Gladstone's private library at Hawarden Castle. There are windows
on either side of the long room, and between these windows high
bookcases, running towards the centre of the room, are put up. There are
books on either side of these cases, and the part facing the centre of
the room is again arranged to hold books. It is truly marvellous how
many books can thus be stored without a single one being out of sight.'

'There is the same simplicity, the same quiet comfort, the same air of
repose, and the same absence of library conventionality about. . . . .'

'Through a door . . . . you reach the second room in the library, to
which Mr. Gladstone has given the name of the "Humanity room." It is
arranged on exactly the same plan as the first, and contains secular
works chiefly. You note Madame de Sevigne's _Letters_ on one shelf, in
neat and dainty little volumes; and yellow-backed Zola lower down.'[51]

Any one who proposed having a library as a separate building should
certainly study Mr. Gladstone's experiments at St. Deiniol's Library, or
procure _Mr. Gladstone in the Evening of his Days_, wherein are given
illustrations of the interior plan and general economy of the
structure. Certainly Mr. Gladstone's ideas as to the arrangement of
books as put forth in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March, 1890, are much
more applicable to an annexe library than to the hou