and the blessed saint at once passed judgment as follows:—­`Insomuch as, seduced by a foolish vanity, and against your vows of poverty, you have amassed this multitude of books and thereby and therefor have neglected the duties and broken the rules of your Order, you are now sentenced to read your books for ever and ever in the fires of Hell.’  Immediately, a roaring noise filled the air, and a flaming chasm opened in which friars, and asses and books were suddenly engulphed.”

CHAPTER IV.

DUST AND NEGLECT.

DUST upon Books to any extent points to neglect, and neglect means more or less slow Decay.

A well-gilt top to a book is a great preventive against damage by dust, while to leave books with rough tops and unprotected is sure to produce stains and dirty margins.

In olden times, when few persons had private collections of books, the collegiate and corporate libraries were of great use to students.  The librarians’ duties were then no sinecure, and there was little opportunity for dust to find a resting-place.  The Nineteenth Century and the Steam Press ushered in a new era.  By degrees the libraries which were unendowed fell behind the age, and were consequently neglected.  No new works found their way in, and the obsolete old books were left uncared for and unvisited.  I have seen many old libraries, the doors of which remained unopened from week’s end to week’s end; where you inhaled the dust of paper-decay with every breath, and could not take up a book without sneezing; where old boxes, full of older literature, served as preserves for the bookworm, without even an autumn “battue” to thin the breed.  Occasionally these libraries were (I speak of thirty years ago) put even to vile uses, such as would have shocked all ideas of propriety could our ancestors have foreseen their fate.

I recall vividly a bright summer morning many years ago, when, in search of Caxtons, I entered the inner quadrangle of a certain wealthy College in one of our learned Universities.  The buildings around were charming in their grey tones and shady nooks.  They had a noble history, too, and their scholarly sons were (and are) not unworthy successors of their ancestral renown.  The sun shone warmly, and most of the casements were open.  From one came curling a whiff of tobacco; from another the hum of conversation; from a third the tones of a piano.  A couple of undergraduates sauntered on the shady side, arm in arm, with broken caps and torn gowns—­proud insignia of their last term.  The grey stone walls were covered with ivy, except where an old dial with its antiquated Latin inscription kept count of the sun’s ascent.  The chapel on one side, only distinguishable from the “rooms” by the shape of its windows, seemed to keep watch over the morality of the foundation, just as the dining-hall opposite, from whence issued a white-aproned cook, did of its worldly prosperity.  As you trod the