Excerpt from Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings and Furniture

The development of libraries during the latter part of the nineteenth century may be compared with that of cathedrals and abbeys in Norman times, or that of colleges and grammar-schools under the Tudors. In all these cases the age, instinctively discerning its needs, partly by public effort, partly by private munificence, covered the land with edifices for their satisfaction. In so doing it necessarily gave rise to a number of architectural problems. That the libraries of the present day, however smaller in scale, may not be architecturally less honourable to their epoch than the corresponding constructions of the past, must be the earnest aspiration of all who regard them as among the characteristic monuments of the nineteenth century, and a most important manifestation of its intellectual activity. This ideal is the more difficult of attainment, inasmuch as obstacles now exist which were comparatively unfelt in the Middle Ages. The medi?val pious founder was frequently his own architect; at all events, paying the piper, he called the tune. In any case, there was a thorough community of feeling between him and the builders he employed.

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