286 MY BOOKSHELVES 



not recognise Dickens or Thackeray ; and as to living 

 novelists, we seem to share the opinion of 



' . . . The young person of Delhi 

 Who couldn't read Crockett's " Cleg Kelly " ; 



When they said "It's the fashion," 



He exclaimed in a passion 

 " I know ! but so's Marie Corelli."' 



Nevertheless, there is some refreshment in these 

 shelves for those who have learned where to look for 

 it. There are a few bindings which it is good to 

 handle ; the dark-blue calf containing the MS. Journals 

 of Cromwell's Parliament, with its significant erasures 

 and mutilations ; or Derome's crimson morocco, of 

 which a century and a half has not quenched the 

 superb glow; others, not of aesthetic merit, but pos- 

 sessing a pathetic interest, and telling by their bruised 

 and water-stained sides of that autumn morning sixty- 

 six years ago, when the Houses of Parliament were 

 consumed by fire, and, of the books in the library, only 

 a few were thrown out of window on the terrace and 

 saved. The present collection has been got together 

 since then. In 1835 the Standing Committee reported 

 the almost total destruction of the former collection; 

 twenty years later 20,000 volumes had been purchased, 

 and in the following year this number had increased to 

 30,000. No clear principle, save the rigid exclusion of 

 works of fiction, seems to have guided the Committee 

 in their choice of books: one is a little disposed to 

 grudge 236 which they spent on Cuvier's works, out 



