they are not even good places for working in, now that one has
one's own books and one's own reading-chair. Moreover, if they were
kept up to date, which would in itself be an expensive thing, there
would come in the eternal difficulty of where to put the old books,
which no one would have the heart to destroy.

Perhaps the best thing for a library like this would be not to
attempt to buy books, but to subscribe like a club to a circulating
library, and to let a certain number of new volumes flow through
the place and lie upon the tables for a time. But, on the other
hand, here in the University there seems to be little time for
general reading; and indeed it is a great problem, as life goes on,
as duties grow more defined, and as one becomes more and more
conscious of the shortness of life, what the duty of a cultivated
and open-minded man is with regard to general reading. I am
inclined to think that as one grows older one may read less; it is
impossible to keep up with the vast output of literature, and it is
hard enough to find time to follow even the one or two branches in
which one is specially interested. Almost the only books which, I
think, it is a duty to read, are the lives of great contemporaries;
one gets thus to have an idea of what is going on in the world, and
to realize it from different points of view. New fiction, new
poetry, new travels are very hard to peruse diligently. The effort,
I confess, of beginning a new novel, of making acquaintance with an
unfamiliar scene, of getting the individualities of a fresh group
of people into one's head, is becoming every year harder for me;
but there are still one or two authors of fiction for whom I have a
predilection, and whose works I look out for. New poetry demands an
even greater effort; and as to travels, they are written so much in
the journalistic style, and, consist so much of the meals our