Thirty-three Years' Adventures in Bookland: Including Walks in the Humorous Avenues of Library Life |
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ANDREW MICHAEL RAMSAY appeared asked Asshur Asshurbanipal assistant librarian Bible borrow British Museum called cata catalogue certainly CHAPTER church clergyman course desired door Drummond duties FÉNELON fessor filled free libraries frequently friends gentleman give going Greek hand hour idea individual instance intellectual juvenile King knowledge known ladies learning library counter light literary literature Lord Sidmouth magazines manuscript ment morocco nature never newspapers Nineveh nom de plume novel obiter dicta observed obtain occasion Oliver Goldsmith perhaps poem preach printed professor public library quadrangle quently reader reading-room Rectorial Elections remember reply returned Richard Weaver Salvation Army Scotland sermons sfine shelf shelves species stand sticks story street thing Thirty-Nine Articles tion title-page told took treasures University University of Edinburgh various volume wanted week words writing written wrote
Popular passages
Page 114 - And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to brake his skull. 54 Then he called hastily unto the young man his armour-bearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him.
Page 43 - Some few are going up, and carrying us up, heavenward ; calculated, I mean, to be of priceless advantage in teaching — in forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others, a frightful multitude, are going down, down ; doing ever the more and the wider and the wilder mischief.
Page 80 - Their love is deep and unchanging; their patience inexhaustible; their gentleness pL-rennial ; their forbearance unbounded ; and their sympathy without selfishness. Strong as man, and tender as woman, they welcome you in every mood, and never turn from you in distress.
Page 203 - IT transcends the power of human intellect, however deeply it may have drunk of the Pegasean fount, to develop fully the title of the present chapter. Though one should speak with the tongue of men and angels, though he should become a Mercury or Tully, though he should grow sweet with the milky eloquence of Livy, yet he will plead the stammering of Moses, or with Jeremiah will confess that he is but a boy and cannot speak, or will imitate Echo rebounding from the mountains. For we know that the...
Page 15 - His library is as resplendent u>ith golden laces as the toilet of a favourite; and by their exterior appearance itself his books are worthy of the regards of consuls, as Virgil wished his own to be. The library of the Comte de Fortsas was the Trianon of a book-lover, coquettish as the Queen's. A room the ceiling of which, in red morocco of the Levant, reproduces exactly the colour, harmonious lines, and lyrical flight into azure of a wing of a book bound for Grolier.
Page 60 - Inferno, deals out to the lost souls various tortures suited with dramatic fitness to the past crimes of the victims, and had I to execute judgment on the criminal binders of certain precious volumes I have seen, where the untouched maiden sheets entrusted to their care have, by barbarous treatment, lost dignity, beauty and value, I would collect the paper shavings so ruthlessly shorn off, and roast the perpetrator of the outrage over their slow combustion. In olden times, before men had learned...
Page 11 - Heber, it shall not ;' and it did not. On the remonstrance of Lord Sidmouth, of whose manly and straightforward character George IV. was very properly in awe, the last of the Grand Monarques presented the books to the Museum — on the condition that the value of the rubles they were to have fetched should be somehow or other made good to him by Ministers in pounds sterling. This was done out of the surplus of certain funds furnished by France for the compensation of losses by the Revolution.
Page 12 - At the same time the best of them presumably must have some affection for books, for if the mind of a man be not pure, exalted, enthusiastic; if his heart be not filled with the immense love for beauty and humanity that poets have, he may collect books, he shall not form a library...
Page 44 - There are a number, an increasing number, of books that are decidedly to him not useful. But he will learn also that a certain number of books were written by a supreme, noble kind of people — not a very great number — but a great number adhere more or less to that side of things. In short, as I have written it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men's souls — divided into sheep and goats. Some of them are calculated to be of very great advantage in teaching — in forwarding...
Page 63 - There are distinctions. M. Jules Janin mentions a great Parisian bookseller who had an amiable weakness. He was a bibliokleptomaniac. His first motion when he saw a book within reach was to put it in his pocket. Every one knew his habit, and when a volume was lost at a sale the auctioneer duly announced it, and knocked it down to the enthusiast, who regularly paid the price.