What in many ways is an ideal library is a library housed in a building specially constructed as an annexe to a residence. I feel sure that, within the next ten years, there will be many moderately wealthy men who will be anxious to form libraries and special collections of books, housing them in this way. The idea is only new as applied to large country mansions. Hitherto students of moderate means have managed to construct buildings specially adapted for study and free from interruption. The only instance of a library annexe attached to a country mansion with which I am acquainted is the recent and very notable instance at Hawarden, of which more later. The late Vicar of Middleton Cheney, in Oxfordshire, and, I think, Dr. Jessopp, of Scarning, have both found that their work has been assisted by library annexes. Horace Walpole said of Topham Beauclerk that he had built a library in Great Russell Street, that reached 'half-way to Highgate.' Lord Bacon spent ten thousand pounds in building himself a retreat in his grounds at Gorhambury.

Mr. Gladstone's scheme at Hawarden is likely to be followed by many others. Of course the Hawarden library has been endowed, and made practically open and free. It is the idea of a private library as a temple of peace for the owner and his visitors which we would like to see extended. One fancies that books might be on a better footing in country houses if they had the honour of a separate building. Then they would, at any rate, be on as good a footing as the stables or as the greenhouse, which at present they are not. Books are not so much wall covering, or so much furniture. They are much more; they should be treated more like living creatures, and if only their owners would get upon speaking terms with them, how readily would they get a response. Roughly, then, one would like to see attached to every large country establishment a book building, a centre of intelligence and light, where we might be sure of finding a good atlas, a good biographical dictionary, and good verbal dictionary. I do not understand why so little importance has hitherto been attached to this. Such a building should have a large central room and several separate small rooms for private study. The illustrations in a charming little book called Mr. Gladstone in the Evening of his Days convey what is meant very well. From this little volume I give extracts which seem very clear to any one interested in this matter:—

'Everywhere about in the large room are books—books—books. The Iron Library (the building is of iron) is arranged in the same ingenious way as Mr. Gladstone's private library at Hawarden Castle. There are windows on either side of the long room, and between these windows high bookcases, running towards the centre of the room, are put up. There are books on either side of these cases, and the part facing the centre of the room is again arranged to hold books. It is truly marvellous how many books can thus be stored without a single one being out of sight.'

'There is the same simplicity, the same quiet comfort, the same air of repose, and the same absence of library conventionality about.....'

'Through a door .... you reach the second room in the library, to which Mr. Gladstone has given the name of the "Humanity room." It is arranged on exactly the same plan as the first, and contains secular works chiefly. You note Madame de SÉvignÉ's Letters on one shelf, in neat and dainty little volumes; and yellow-backed Zola lower down.'[51]

Any one who proposed having a library as a separate building should certainly study Mr. Gladstone's experiments at St. Deiniol's Library, or procure Mr. Gladstone in the Evening of his Days, wherein are given illustrations of the interior plan and general economy of the structure. Certainly Mr. Gladstone's ideas as to the arrangement of books as put forth in the Nineteenth Century for March, 1890, are much more applicable to an annexe library than to the housing of books in an ordinary private dwelling. Thus the arrangement of the bays made by the projections could not be carried out without extensive structural alterations in one house out of twenty in the country, and not one house out of a thousand in London. His ideas, however, are wholly practicable and admirably thorough when applied to the annexe library. It is interesting to see Mr. Gladstone's calculations as to shelf accommodation. They were disputed at the time by some cavilling critics, but have since been shown to be accurate. Mr. Gladstone is speaking[52] of the bookcases round the walls and the projecting arms, and he says:—'I will now exhibit to my readers the practical effect of such arrangement in bringing great numbers of books within easy reach. Let each projection be three feet long, twelve inches deep (ample for two faces of octavos), and nine feet high, so that the upper shelf can be reached by the aid of a wooden stool of two steps, not more than twenty inches high, and portable without the least effort of a single hand. I will suppose the wall-space available to be eight feet, and the projections, three in number, with end pieces, need only put out three feet five, while narrow strips of bookcase will run up the wall between the projections. Under these conditions, the bookcases thus described will carry about 2000 volumes.

'And a library forty feet long and twenty feet broad, amply lighted, having some portion of the centre fitted with very low bookcases, suited to serve for some of the uses of tables, will receive on the floor from 18,000 to 20,000 volumes of all sizes without losing the appearance of a room .... while leaving portions of space available near the windows for purposes of study. If a gallery be added, there will be accommodation for a further number of 5000, and the room need be no more than sixteen feet high.'

This estimate of shelf accommodation may be compared with one which was made by Mr. Justin Winsor, the well-known librarian of the Harvard library. He says:—'The book room of the Roxbury branch of the public library of Boston is fifty-three feet long by twenty-seven feet wide, and having three storeys of eight feet each in height will hold 100,000 volumes..... I doubt if any other construction can produce this result.'

The building at Hawarden cost, I believe, 1000l., but whether this is with fittings or not I do not know. It is certain that for men whose books are more numerous than costly the annexe plan is admirable, and the difficulty of excluding damp where four walls are exposed to the elements could surely be overcome. I do not think that Mr. Gladstone makes any mention of iron bookcases, but these are often adopted, and have been made in a very convenient form, particularly that called the Radcliffe iron bookcase, arranged by Sir Henry Acland and Mr. W. Froude. Of this I append a description written by Sir Henry Acland himself.

'The advantages of the bookcase consist in its great stability, in its movability and neatness. It carries 500 average octavo volumes, 250 on either side; it is seven feet high, and stands on any floor space on forty-eight inches by eighteen inches. The cases may stand in any number end to end, or down the centre of a passage, or be placed so as to form squares of any dimensions multiple of the length of the cases, and therefore may enclose studies lined with books, books being also on the outside of the square. When the cases stand end to end they need not be put close to each other, but may have a space in which are shelves of any desired length. Therefore ten iron cases placed in a line, so as to include a space of forty inches between each two cases, will carry the contents of nineteen cases, or 5000 plus 4500 volumes, at the cost of ten cases, plus the wooden shelves of nine. The iron framework costs about 5l. 5s., and the wooden shelves about 25s. The iron portion will carry only octavos, but the spaces as described above will carry folios, because, to insure stability in the iron frames, diagonal ties run down the centre and divide the shelves into two portions, viz., the two frontages described above. But the stability being ensured in each iron case independently, the intermediate shelves in the spaces may be of the full width of the frames, namely, twenty inches.'[53]