Munificent Book-buying.

Nordau has estimated that, in England alone, there are from eight hundred to a thousand millionaires, and in Europe altogether, there are at least a hundred thousand persons with fortunes of a million and even more. One could hope that it might be considered a kindness now and then to remind some of these millionaires of certain openings for their money which do not, so far, seem to have occurred to them. Mr. Bernard Shaw not long since pointed out in the Contemporary Review an opening whereby an Economic Library might be established, and do great lasting honour to a possible founder. Rich men can always be found to vie with one another in lavish expenditure over a ball or a wedding. Thousands of pounds go for a racehorse and for stable management generally, and the amount we spend upon sports annually is 38,000,000l., or about a pound per head of the population. One hardly likes to say that any sum spent upon sport and outdoor life is too much, but

yet this sum is out of proportion.

One is

jealous of horses and sport, not so much perhaps for the amount spent upon them as much as because one sees that the man who hunts and has racehorses, cares and knows about these things to the extermination of all other interests. Life becomes ill balanced, whereas it is necessary to touch life at many points. The strenuous scholar pure and simple,' is becoming more rare, though the type of which the late Mark Pattison was one will never quite die out. But it is not the strenuous scholar that one is so anxious to perpetuate, as it is the strenuous and scholarly man of affairs and men of trained ability who have mental muscle for parliamentary work and social problems. Such a class ought to have many recruits from among the wealthier families.

It would assist very much towards this end if men of aptitude were properly trained to act as custodians of books in private houses. The art of knowing how to use books is one which must be learnt, and when properly learnt there is very little indeed that may not be readily found to hand in a library of but small dimensions.

There are, I believe, in England twentytwo packs of staghounds, and 182 packs of foxhounds. As every one of the masters of these packs must be a rich man, I should like to know that he at any rate had a sound copy of the History of the county where he hunts; that he had in his smoking room a good Encyclopædia, with fifty other good reference books, and a hundred good novels.

The rich men of old combined patronage of learning with the pomp and splendour of their lives. Lucullus distinguished himself by his vast collection of books, and the liberal access he allowed to lovers of books. 'It was a library,' says Plutarch, 'whose walls, galleries and cabinets were open to all visitors; and the ingenious youths, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses, to hold literary conversations, in which Lucullus himself loved to join.' The Emperor Augustus

was himself an author and a book lover, and called one of his libraries by the name of his sister, Octavia, and the other the temple of Apollo. Tiberius had a library, and Trajan also, and these spent constantly upon their books and the housing of them.

I have taken from Renaissance history pictures of several men who might be taken as types which should exist in every highly civilised country. They have been vividly and admirably pictured by biographers, and one can only hope that the rich men of to-day may in five hundred years' time have as lasting reputations as that of Cosimo, the princely patron of learning, and Niccolo, the man of scholarship and refinement of life.

PASSAGES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE

FOREGOING.

The Medici and their Friends.

'The chief benefit conferred by Cosimo de' Medici on learning was the accumulation and the housing of large libraries. During his exile he built the library of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, and after his return to Florence he formed three separate collections of MSS. While the hall of the Library of S. Marco was in process of construction, Niccolo de' Niccoli died, in 1437, bequeathing his 800 MSS., valued at 6000 golden florins, to sixteen trustees. Among these were Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, Ambrogio Traversari, Lionardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, Giannozzo Manetti, and Franco Sachetti. At the same time the estate of Niccolo was compromised by heavy debts. These debts Cosimo cancelled, obtaining in exchange the right to dispose of the library. In 1441 the hall of the convent was finished. Four hundred of Niccolo's MSS. were placed there, with this inscription upon each: Ex hereditate doctissimi viri Nicola de Nicolis de Florentid. Tommasso Parentucelli made a catalogue at Cosimo's