sublunary hopes.  There is every reason to believe that in the realms of the blessed the library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small though well selected.  Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett observes, a debonair spirit—­there was nothing fiery or controversial about him.  His attitude towards the human race and its treatment of rare books was rather mournful than angry.  For example, under the head of ‘Fire,’ he has occasion to refer to that great destruction of books of magic which took place at Ephesus, to which St. Luke has called attention in his Acts of the Apostles.  Mr. Blades describes this holocaust as righteous, and only permits himself to say in a kind of undertone that he feels a certain mental disquietude and uneasiness at the thought of the loss of more than L18,000 worth of books, which could not but have thrown much light (had they been preserved) on many curious questions of folk-lore.  Personally, I am dead against the burning of books.  A far worse, because a corrupt, proceeding, was the scandalously horrid fate that befell the monastic libraries at our disgustingly conducted, even if generally beneficent, Reformation.  The greedy nobles and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they found cumbering the walls, and either devoted them to vile domestic uses or sold them in shiploads across the seas.  It may well be that the monks—­fine, lusty fellows!—­cared more for the contents of their fish-ponds than of their libraries; but, at all events, they left the books alone to take their chance—­they did not rub their boots with them or sell them at the price of old paper.  A man need have a very debonair spirit who does not lose his temper over our blessed Reformation.  Mr. Blades, on the whole, managed to keep his.

Passing from fire, Mr. Blades has a good deal to say about water, and the harm it has been allowed to do in our collegiate and cathedral libraries.  With really creditable composure he writes:  ’Few old libraries in England are now so thoroughly neglected as they were thirty years ago.  The state of many of our collegiate and cathedral libraries was at that time simply appalling.  I could mention many instances—­one especially—­where, a window having been left broken for a long time, the ivy had pushed through and crept over a row of books, each of which was worth hundreds of pounds.  In rainy weather the water was conducted as by a pipe along the tops of the books, and soaked through the whole.’  Ours is indeed a learned Church.  Fancy the mingled amazement and dismay of the Dean and Chapter when they were informed that all this mouldering literary trash had ‘boodle’ in it.  ’In another and a smaller collection the rain came through on to a bookcase through a sky-light, saturating continually the top shelf, containing Caxtons and other English books, one of which, although rotten, was sold soon after by permission of the Charity Commissioners