Towards democracy

In the British Museum Library 459

In tHE British Museum LIBRARY

OW lovely ! This vast vast dome—and the suspended sounds

within it!

Sounds and echoes of the great city vibrating tirelessly might and day ;

Voices and footfalls, of the little creatures that walk about fits floor, halflost in the huge concave ;

Suspended whispers, from its walls, of far forgotten acenturies.

. How lovely!

All the myriad books—well-nigh two millions of volumes —the interminable iron galleries,, the forty miles or so of closely-packed shelves ;

The immense catalogue—itself a small library—of over fa thousand volumes ;

The thousanas of editions of the Bible and parts of the GBible, with texts, commentaries, translations in every known ytongue—these alone occupying sixteen volumes of catalogue ; T The thousands of Shakespeare books, or of Aristotle, the dhundreds of Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Dante, Montaigne, MGoethe, Voltaire, Byron;

The mountain-peaks of literature, and the myriads of jllesser hills and shoulders and points—the mole-hills and eprass-blades even ;

The interminable discussions of the Schoolmen and \Grammarians, the equally interminable discussions of modern