ces of china, vases of flowers, or busts, and not looking
like bats stuck on to a barn door.

'I must not omit to say that in the lower portion of the bookcase
should be arranged drawers--not carried down to the floor, for these are
inconvenient--for use for prints and valuable photographs and sketches.

'The library should be essentially home-like, with the wall-space fitted
up as conveniently as possible; on the top of the bookcases or nests of
shelves, spring roller-blinds might be easily arranged in the cornices
to draw down at night or other times, and fasten with clips to protect
and preserve the books, &c., within them.

'I might offer many other suggestions for the decoration and furniture
of the rooms I have specially referred to. I trust those I have made
will be of some practical use, and that, above all, you will believe
that my aim throughout has been to avoid all dogmatic and set rules of
fashion or design, and to insist only that truth and beauty of form and
colour, combined with fitness and common sense, are the main elements of
all true artistic treatment in decoration and furniture of modern
houses.'[58]

FOOTNOTES:

[57] Willis and Clark, _History of Cambridge University_, vol. iii., p.
416.

[58] Edis, _Decoration and Furniture of Town Houses_, pp. 188-191.

_Munificent Book-buying._

Nordau has estimated that, in England alone, there are from eight
hundred to a thousand millionaires, and in Europe altogether, there are
at least a hundred thousand persons with fortunes of a million and even
more. One could hope that it might be considered a kindness now and then
to remind some of these millionaires of certain openings for their money
which do not, so far, seem to have occurred to them. Mr. Bernard Shaw
not long since pointed out in the _Contemporary Review_ an opening
whereby an Economic Library might be established, and do great lasting
honour to a possible founder. Rich men can always be found to vie with
one another in lavish expenditure over a ball or a wedding. Thousands of
pounds go for a racehorse and for stable management generally, and the
amount we spend upon sports annually is 38,000,000_l._, or about a pound
per head of the population. One hardly likes to say that any sum spent
upon sport and outdoor life is too much, but yet this sum is out of
proportion. One is jealous of horses and sport, not so much perhaps for
the amount spent upon them as much as because one sees th