occasions a library is not only ornamental but useful. But do not
let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed, the more I
survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently
ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might
spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are
both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an
interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary
Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, "How pretty
your books look," and I am inclined to think that that is good
enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should
lose if I started to arrange them methodically.

But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their
heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet
nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are
still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put
them the right way round.





The Chase



The fact, as revealed in a recent lawsuit, that there is a
gentleman in this country who spends œ10,000 a year upon his
butterfly collection would have disturbed me more in the early
nineties than it does to-day. I can bear it calmly now, but