in plenty. In short, a room
so far removed from earthly cares and noise, that the dim occasional
sounds of the outside world serve but to accentuate our absolute
possession of ease. Here we may labour undisturbed though surrounded by a
thousand friends. Or, if the mood take us, we may abandon ourselves to
idle meditation

'Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,'

and, lying back at our ease, may gaze contentedly upon the faithful
companions of our crowded solitude, gathering inspiration from their
silent sympathy.

Each to his taste. Whether we be student, book-hunter, librarian, or
precentor,[14] no earthly abode can be compared with that garden of our
choice wherein we labour so contentedly. It may be a small room in our
own house, it may be an ancient university or college library, but it is
all one: it is a library, that haven of refuge from our worldly cares,
where troubles are forgotten and sorrows lightened by the gently
persuasive experience of the wise men that have gone before us.

But, mark you, it must be literally removed from cares and noise, for it
is impossible to study at all deeply while exposed to interruption. How
terribly most of us have suffered from this form of mental torture, for
it is little else! What trains of lucid thought, what word-pictures have
been destroyed by thoughtless breakings of the chain of sequence! 'I have
never known persons who exposed themselves for years to constant
interruption who did not muddle away their intellects by it at last,'
wrote Miss Florence Nightingale. Hamerton, quoting her, is equally
emphatic upon this point.

'If,' he writes, 'you are reading in the daytime in a house where there
are women and children, or where people can fasten upon you for pottering
details of business, you may be sure that you will _not_ be able to get
to the end of the passage without in some way or other being rudely
awakened from your dream, and suddenly brought back into the common
world. The loss intellectually is greater than any one who had not
suffered from it could imagine. People think that an interruption is
merely the unhooking of an electric chain, and that the current will
flow, when the chain is hooked on again, just as it did before. To the
intellectual and imaginative student an interruption is not that; it is
the destruction of a picture.'

Who has not suffered from the idle chatter, or even worse--the lowered
voice,