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On Books And The Housing Of Them
by
[Footnote 4: Cic. Pro Archia poeta, vii.]
[Footnote 5: Essays Critical and Historical, ii. 228.]
[Footnote 6: The Prayer Book recently issued by Mr. Frowde at the Clarendon Press weighs, bound in morocco, less than an once and a quarter. I see it stated that unbound it weighs three-quarters of an ounce. Pickering’s Cattullus, Tibullus, and Propertius in leather binding, weighs an ounce and a quarter. His Dante weighs less than a number of the Times.]
[Footnote 7: See Libraries and the Founders of Libraries, by B. Edwards, 1864, p. 5. Hallam, Lit. Europe.]
[Footnote 8: Hor. Ep. II. i. 270; Persius, i. 48; Martial, iv. lxxxvii. 8.]
[Footnote 9: Edwards.]
[Footnote 10: Rouard, Notice sur la Bibliotheque d’Aix, p. 40. Quoted in Edwards, p. 34.]
[Footnote 11: The Director of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, which I suppose still to be the first library in the world, in doing for me most graciously the honors of that noble establishment, informed me that they full-bound annually a few scores of volumes, while they half-bound about twelve hundred. For all the rest they had to be contented with a lower provision. And France raises the largest revenue in the world.]
[Footnote 12: Note in illustration. Let us suppose a room 28 feet by 10, and a little over 9 feet high. Divide this longitudinally for a passage 4 feet wide. Let the passage project 12 to 18 inches at each end beyond the line of the wall. Let the passage ends be entirely given to either window or glass door. Twenty-four pairs of trams run across the room. On them are placed 56 bookcases, divided by the passage, reaching to the ceiling, each 3 feet broad, 12 inches deep, and separated from its neighbors by an interval of 2 inches, and set on small wheels, pulleys, or rollers, to work along the trams. Strong handles on the inner side of each bookcase to draw it out into the passage. Each of these bookcases would hold 500 octavos; and a room of 28 feet by 10 would receive 25,000 volumes. A room of 40 feet by 20 (no great size) would receive 60,000, It would, of course, be not properly a room, but a warehouse.]