CHAPTER V.
BROTHER COPAS ON RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE.
"Ah, good evening, Mr.Simeon!" In the British Isles--search them all over--you will discover no more agreeable institution of its kind than the Venables Free Library, Merchester; which, by the way, you are on no account to confuse with the Free Public Library attached to the Shire Hall.

In the latter you may study the newspapers with all the latest financial, police and betting news, or borrow all the newest novels--even this novel which I am writing, should the Library Sub-Committee of the Town Council (an austerely moral body) allow it to pass.

In the Venables Library the books are mostly mellowed by age, even when naughtiest (it contains a whole roomful of Restoration Plays, an unmatched collection), and no newspapers are admitted, unless you count the monthly and quarterly reviews, of which _The Hibbert Journal_ is the newest-fangled.

By consequence the Venables Library, though open to all men without payment, has few frequenters; "which," says Brother Copas, "is just as it should be." But not even public neglect will account for the peculiar charm of the Venables Library.

That comes of the building it inhabits: anciently a town house of the Marquesses of Merchester, abandoned at the close of the great Civil War, and by them never again inhabited, but maintained with all its old furniture, and from time to time patched up against age and weather--happily not restored.
When, early in the last century, the seventh Marquess of Merchester very handsomely made it over to a body of trustees, to house a collection of books bequeathed to the public by old Dean Venables, Merchester's most scholarly historian, it was with a stipulation that the amenities of the house should be as little as possible disturbed.
The beds, to be sure, were removed from the upper rooms, and the old carpets from the staircase; and the walls, upstairs and down, lined with bookcases.