On Books and The Housing of Them | Page 7

so small that, as a rule,
they admit a very small portion of dust. If they are at a tolerable
distance from the fireplace, if carpeting be avoided except as to small
movable carpets easily removed for beating, and if sweeping be
discreetly conducted, dust may, at any rate in the country, be made to
approach to a quantite negligeab1e.

It is a great matter, in addition to other advantages, to avoid the endless
trouble and the miscarriages of movable shelves; the looseness, and the
tightness, the weary arms, the aching fingers, and the broken fingernails.
But it will be fairly asked what is to be done, when the shelves are
fixed, with volumes too large to go into them? I admit that the dilemma,
when it occurs, is formidable. I admit also that no book ought to be
squeezed or even coaxed into its place: they should move easily both in
and out. And I repeat here that the plan I have recommended requires a
pretty exact knowledge by measurement of the sizes of books and the
proportions in which the several sizes will demand accommodation.
The shelf-spacing must be reckoned beforehand, with a good deal of
care and no little time. But I can say from experience that by moderate
care and use this knowledge can be attained, and that the resulting
difficulties, when measured against the aggregate of convenience, are
really insignificant. It will be noticed that my remarks are on minute
details, and that they savor more of serious handiwork in the placing of
books than of lordly survey and direction. But what man who really
loves his books delegates to any other human being, as long as there is
breath in his body, the office of inducting them into their homes?
And now as to results. It is something to say that in this way 10,000
volumes can be placed within a room of quite ordinary size, all visible,
all within easy reach, and without destroying the character of the
apartment as a room. But, on the strength of a case with which I am
acquainted, I will even be a little more particular. I take as before a
room of forty feet in length and twenty in breadth, thoroughly lighted
by four windows on each side; as high as you please, but with only
about nine feet of height taken for the bookcases: inasmuch as all heavy
ladders, all adminicula requiring more than one hand to carry with care,
are forsworn. And there is no gallery. In the manner I have described,
there may be placed on the floor of such a room, without converting it
from a room into a warehouse, bookcases capable of receiving, in
round numbers, 20,000 volumes.
The state of the case, however, considered as a whole, and especially
with reference to libraries exceeding say 20,000 or 30,000 volumes,
and gathering rapid accretions, has been found to require in extreme

cases, such as those of the British Museum and the Bodleian (on its
limited site), a change more revolutionary in its departure from, almost
reversal of, the ancient methods, than what has been here described.
The best description I can give of its essential aim, so far as I have seen
the processes (which were tentative and initial), is this. The masses
represented by filled bookcases are set one in front of another; and, in
order that access may be had as it is required, they are set upon trams
inserted in the floor (which must be a strong one), and wheeled off and
on as occasion requires.
The idea of the society of books is in a case of this kind abandoned. But
even on this there is something to say. Neither all men nor all books are
equally sociable. For my part I find but little sociabilty in a huge wall
of Hansards, or (though a great improvement) in the Gentleman's
Magazine, in the Annual Registers, in the Edinburgh and Quarterly
Reviews, or in the vast range of volumes which represent pamphlets
innumerable. Yet each of these and other like items variously present to
us the admissible, or the valuable, or the indispensable. Clearly these
masses, and such as these, ought to be selected first for what I will not
scruple to call interment. It is a burial; one, however, to which the
process of cremation will never of set purpose be applied. The word I
have used is dreadful, but also dreadful is the thing. To have our dear
old friends stowed away in catacombs, or like the wine-bottles in bins:
the simile is surely lawful until the use of that commodity shall have
been prohibited by the growing movement of the time. But however we
may gild the case by a cheering illustration, or by the remembrance that