level pavement, you passed comfortable—­nay, dainty—­apartments, where lace curtains at the windows, antimacassars on the chairs, the silver biscuit-box and the thin-stemmed wine-glass moderated academic toils.  Gilt-backed books on gilded shelf or table caught the eye, and as you turned your glance from the luxurious interiors to the well-shorn lawn in the Quad., with its classic fountain also gilded by sunbeams, the mental vision saw plainly written over the whole “The Union of Luxury and Learning.”

Surely here, thought I, if anywhere, the old world literature will be valued and nursed with gracious care; so with a pleasing sense of the general congruity of all around me, I enquired for the rooms of the librarian.  Nobody seemed to be quite sure of his name, or upon whom the bibliographical mantle had descended.  His post, it seemed, was honorary and a sinecure, being imposed, as a rule, upon the youngest “Fellow.”  No one cared for the appointment, and as a matter of course the keys of office had but distant acquaintance with the lock.  At last I was rewarded with success, and politely, but mutely, conducted by the librarian into his kingdom of dust and silence.  The dark portraits of past benefactors looked after us from their dusty old frames in dim astonishment as we passed, evidently wondering whether we meant “work”; book-decay—­that peculiar flavour which haunts certain libraries—­was heavy in the air, the floor was dusty, making the sunbeams as we passed bright with atoms; the shelves were dusty, the “stands” in the middle were thick with dust, the old leather table in the bow window, and the chairs on either side, were very dusty.  Replying to a question, my conductor thought there was a manuscript catalogue of the Library somewhere, but thought, also, that it was not easy to find any books by it, and he knew not at the minute where to put his hand upon it.  The Library, he said, was of little use now, as the Fellows had their own books and very seldom required 17th and 18th century editions, and no new books had been added to the collection for a long time.

We passed down a few steps into an inner library where piles of early folios were wasting away on the ground.  Beneath an old ebony table were two long carved oak chests.  I lifted the lid of one, and at the top was a once-white surplice covered with dust, and beneath was a mass of tracts—­ Commonwealth quartos, unbound—­a prey to worms and decay.  All was neglect.  The outer door of this room, which was open, was nearly on a level with the Quadrangle; some coats, and trousers, and boots were upon the ebony table, and a “gyp” was brushing away at them just within the door—­in wet weather he performed these functions entirely within the library—­as innocent of the incongruity of his position as my guide himself.  Oh!  Richard of Bury, I sighed, for a sharp stone from your sling to pierce with indignant sarcasm the mental armour of these College dullards.