Page:Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods.djvu/13

 that have turned their pages, are there taken note of. Modern literature is fully represented, but the men of past days are not thrust out of sight; their footsteps seem to linger in the rooms where once they walked—their shades seem to protect the books they once handled. What Browning felt about frescoes may be applied—mutatis mutandis—to books in such an asylum as I am trying to portray:

It may be safely asserted that at no time has a love of reading, a desire to be fairly wellinformed on all sorts of subjects, been so widely diffused as at the present day. As a necessary consequence of this the 'workshop' view of a library has been very generally accepted. I