Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/245

 The Librarian's Dream. 233 system to compare the geographical and historical. The geo- graphical is mastered first. It combines museum and library. First, there are five immense halls for the five continents, and alcoves for every country. Pictures of landscape and models of buildings surmount the alcoves, while cases of botanical and other specimens radiate towards them from the great open space in the centre of the hall. The perplexities arising in the geographical department from the migration of nations and the scattered centres of learning (for in this department every science is classified under the country that best represents it) are solved in the historical. There all appears in series. The course of every race can be followed through the halls of the centuries, and in that of the latest age are gathered the standard works of science of the day, especially the Great Cyclopaedia. At the close of a century the Cyclopaedia is revised. Old editions are relegated to the crypts under each hall, together with all ephemeral books ; the century-hall is finally arranged, and thereafter remains unchanged. The geographical depart- ment, on the contrary, is being continually altered, enlarged and re-organised. This is why the perplexities of the geographical find solution in the historical. The student escapes from a chang- ing turmoil to a serene fixity, which explains so much that is chaotic in the geographical. In the historical he finds the pivots and landmarks of deed and thought. The century-halls, being more, are smaller than the continental halls ; but they cover an equal area, for they contain the same books over again. They also are museums, full of antiquities. The Greek statue, the Roman pilum, the Christian manuscript, the Gothic arch are seen in majestic perspective by the student who walks as in a dream from age to age. The antiquarian objects are the background upon which in his mind's eye are cast the images created by the books. The changing scenes of history are viewed in their appropriate environment ; abstract things become palpable ; and we see in concrete forms the ordered course of empires, philosophies and faiths. Between the century-halls are vesti- bules, containing books which bestride two centuries, like Shakespeare at the juncture of the sixteenth and seventeenth, and Goethe at the juncture of the eighteenth and nineteenth. I walked in my dream through the century-halls again and again, for I soon had wearied of the geographical, and abandoned them to globe-trotters, schoolboys, and Philistines. There was one thing, however, which compelled an occasional visit to the