MR. GLADSTONE’S LIBRARY.
THE LIBRARY.
Mr. Gladstone’s library is not what can be called a select or really first-rate collection. It comprises an undue proportion of theological literature, of which he is a large and not over-discriminating buyer. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any larger private bookbuyer in England. All the book-sellers send him their catalogues, especially those of rare and curious books. I have seen many of these lists, with a brief order in Mr. Gladstone’s own handwriting on the flyleaf, with his tick against twenty or thirty volumes which he desires to buy. These usually range round classical works, archæology, special periods of English history, and, above all, works reconciling the Biblical record with science. Of late, as is fairly well known, Mr. Gladstone has built himself an octagonal iron house in Hawarden village, a mile and a half from the castle, for the storage of his specially valuable books and a collection of private papers which traverse a good many of the state secrets of the greater part of the century. The importance of these is great, and the chances are that before Mr. Gladstone dies they will all be grouped and indexed in his upright, a little crabbed, but perfectly plain, handwriting. By the way, a great many statements have been made about Mr. Gladstone’s library, and I may as well give the facts which have never before been made public. His original library consisted of about twenty-four thousand volumes. In the seventies, however, he parted with his entire collection of political works, amounting to some eight thousand volumes, to the late Lord Wolverton. The remaining fifteen thousand or so are now distributed between the little iron house to which I have referred, and the Hawarden library. Curiously enough, Mr. Gladstone is not a worshiper of books for the sake of their outward adornments. He loves them for what is inside rather than outside. He even occasionally sells extremely rare and costly editions for which he has no special use. In all money matters, indeed, he is a thrifty, orderly Scotchman. He has 48 never been rich, though his affairs have greatly improved since the time when in his first premiership he had to sell his valuable collection of china.