[Illustration: 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, archaeology, 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
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.