The shade deepens as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed
house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and
dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse
and undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the
woodlands it vibrates and lives; on the hills there is a resonance of
light.... It is renewed and fresh every moment, and never twice do you
see the same ray. Stayed and checked by the dome and book-built walls,
the beams lose their elasticity, and the ripple ceases in the motionless
pool. The eyes, responding, forget to turn quickly, and only partially
see. Deeper thought and inspiration quit the heart, for they can only
exist where the light vibrates and communicates its tone to the soul. If
any imagine they shall find thought in many books, certainly they will
be disappointed. Thought dwells by the stream and sea, by the hill and
in the woodland, in the sunlight and free wind, where the wild dove
haunts. Walls and roof shut it off as they shut off the undulation of
light. The very lightning cannot penetrate here. A murkiness marks the
coming of the cloud, and the dome becomes vague, but the fierce flash is
shorn to a pale reflection, and the thunder is no more than the rolling
of a heavier truck loaded with tomes. But in closing out the sky, with
it is cut off all that the sky can tell you with its light, or in its
passion of storm.
Sitting at these long desks and trying to read, I soon find that I have
made a mistake; it is not here I shall find that which I seek. Yet the
magic of books draws me here time after time, to be as often
disappointed. Something in a book tempts the mind as pictures tempt the
eye; the eye grows weary of pictures, but looks again. The mind wearies
of books, yet cannot forget that once when they were first opened in
youth they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books exhausted, there
is nothing left but words and covers. It seems as if all the books in
the world--really books--can be bought for £10. Man's whole thought is
purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a watch, of a good
dog. For the rest it is repetition and paraphrase.--R. JEFFERIES. _The
Life of the Fields: The Pigeons at the British Museum._