ny consideration as to its suitability for storing books, and
there they must abide, making such shift as their possessor shall
determine. This must always be the case where their owner is in lodgings
or in any temporary abode, where it is not considered worth while going
to the expense of putting up permanent shelves for his books. But, after
careless handling, there is nothing that ruins books more quickly than an
indifference to their well-being; and unless our volumes are constantly
placed in their proper position, that is upon their _feet_, they will age
speedily and visibly both inside and out.

'The surest way to preserve your books in health is to treat them as you
would your own children,' wrote that great bibliophile, William Blades;
and the care which should ever be bestowed upon ancient volumes cannot be
too strongly emphasised. And it is not only 'ancient' volumes that
require attention. Cloth bindings are hardly so durable as leather, and
without proper care a library of modern books can be reduced to wreckage
in a year. It is just as easy to provide proper accommodation for one's
books, wherever one may be living, as it is to provide comforts for
oneself. Treat your books well and they will last you all your life,
giving pleasure every time that you may take them in your hands. Remember
also that although one may judge the propensities of a collector from the
titles of his volumes and his character from their contents, yet there is
nothing which indicates his habits so surely as the external appearance
of his books. Whenever our book-hunter enters the library of a
fellow-bookman he can gauge at once the depths of his feelings towards
books, let alone the extent of his bibliographical knowledge.

Surely no man is such a giant among his fellows that he may allow the
life-works of the greatest geniuses of this world to be spurned
underfoot? 'Take thou a book into thine hands,' wrote Thomas a Kempis,
'as Simeon the Just took the Child Jesus into his arms to carry him and
kiss him.'

What true book-lover could find it in his heart wantonly to injure a good
book? '. . . as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book,' wrote Milton
in that oft-quoted passage in his Areopagitica; 'who kills a Man kills a
reasonable creature, God's Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke
kills Reason itselfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many
a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious