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A.D. 1508. At Canterbury: the library over the Prior’s Chapel was 60 feet long by 20 feet broad, and had 16 bookcases, each 4 shelves high.

A.D. 1517. At Clairvaux: in the cloister are 14 studies, where the monks write and study, and over it the new library, 180 feet long by 17 wide (probably this narrowness followed the shape of the cloister) with 48 benches, “excellently lighted on both sides by large windows.”

It will be noted that these bookshelves were about four feet “on centers,” and that great emphasis was laid on ample daylight.

From the thirteenth century comes this warning for us—“the press in which books are kept ought to be lined inside with wood that the damp of the walls may not moisten or stain them,” which is singularly like a caution in a recent American manual against leaving unpainted brick walls at the back of wall cases.

It seems singular that wall shelving, which was certainly used in Assyrian libraries and in the classical period, disappears in the monkish era and yields to “presses” or closed bookcases; to appear as a new device in the library of the Escorial in Spain in the year 1583. Sir Christopher Wren thought so much of this feature that he followed it in Trinity College (Cambridge) library in 1695, saying, “The disposition of the shelves both along the walls and breaking out from the walls must prove very convenient and gracefull: A little square table in each cell with two seats.”