The electric light has been in use for some months in the Reading Room of the British Museum, and is a great boon to the readers.  The light is not quite equally diffused, and you must choose particular positions if you want to work happily.  There is a great objection, too, in the humming fizz which accompanies the action of the electricity.  There is a still greater objection when small pieces of hot chalk fall on your bald head, an annoyance which has been lately (1880) entirely removed by placing a receptacle beneath each burner.  You require also to become accustomed to the whiteness of the light before you can altogether forget it.  But with all its faults it confers a great boon upon students, enabling them not only to work three hours longer in the winter-time, but restoring to them the use of foggy and dark days, in which formerly no book-work at all could be pursued.[1]

[1] 1887.  The system in use is still “Siemens,” but, owing to long experience and improvements, is not now open to the above objections.

Heat alone, without any noxious fumes, is, if continuous, very injurious to books, and, without gas, bindings may be utterly destroyed by desiccation, the leather losing all its natural oils by long exposure to much heat.  It is, therefore, a great pity to place books high up in a room where heat of any kind is as it must rise to the top, and if sufficient to be of comfort to the readers below, is certain to be hot enough above to injure the bindings.

The surest way to preserve your books in health is to treat them as you would your own children, who are sure to sicken if confined in an atmosphere which is impure, too hot, too cold, too damp, or too dry.  It is just the same with the progeny of literature.

If any credence may be given to Monkish legends, books have sometimes been preserved in this world, only to meet a desiccating fate in the world to come.  The story is probably an invention of the enemy to throw discredit on the learning and ability of the preaching Friars, an Order which was at constant war with the illiterate secular Clergy.  It runs thus:—­“In the year 1439, two Minorite friars who had all their lives collected books, died.  In accordance with popular belief, they were at once conducted before the heavenly tribunal to hear their doom, taking with them two asses laden with books.  At Heaven’s gate the porter demanded, `Whence came ye?’ The Minorites replied `From a monastery of St. Francis.’ `Oh!’ said the porter, `then St. Francis shall be your judge.’  So that saint was summoned, and at sight of the friars and their burden demanded who they were, and why they had brought so many books with them. `We are Minorites,’ they humbly replied, `and we have brought these few books with us as a solatium in the new Jerusalem.’ `And you, when on earth, practised the good they teach?’ sternly demanded the saint, who read their characters at a glance.  Their faltering reply was sufficient,