When the building of the new Senate House had set free the room called the Regent House, in which the University had been in the habit of meeting from very early times, it was fitted up, between 1731 and 1734, as part of the University Library[512]. Wren's example was followed as far as the nature of the room would permit. Wherever a blank wall could be found, it was lined with shelves, and the cases placed at right angles to the side-walls were continued over the narrow spaces left between their ends and the windows. One of these cases, from the south side of the room, is here shewn (fig. 131). The shelves under the windows were added subsequently. A similar arrangement was adopted for the east room in 1787-90. At Clare College, at about the same date, the new library over the kitchen was fitted up with shelves placed against the walls. These fittings are excellent specimens, ornamented with fluted Ionic pilasters, an elaborate cornice, and pediments above the doors. It is worth noting, as evidence of the slowness with which new fashions are accepted, that the antiquary William Cole, writing in 1742, calls this library "a very large well-proportion'd Room a la moderne, w^th ye Books rang'd all round it & not in Classes as in most of y^e rest of y^e Libraries in other Colleges[513]." [Illustration: Fig. 131. Bookcase in the north room of the University Library, Cambridge, designed by James Essex, 1731-1734.] The fashion of which I have been tracing the progress in England had been accepted during the same period in France, where some beautiful specimens of it may still be seen. I presume that the example was set by the wealthy convents, most of which had been rebuilt, at least in part, in the then fashionable classical style, during the seventeenth century[514]. At Rheims a library fitted up by the Benedictines of Saint Remi in 1784 now does duty as the chapel of the Hotel-Dieu. Fluted Corinthian columns supporting an elaborate cornice divide the walls into compartments, in which the books are ranged on open shelves. The room is 120 ft. long, by 31 ft. broad, with four windows on each side. With this may be compared the public library at Alencon, the fittings of which are said to have been brought from the abbey of the Val Dieu near Mortain at the Revolution. The room is 70 ft. long by 25 ft. wide. Against the walls are 26 compartments or presses, alternately open and closed. Each of these terminates in an ogee arch enriched with scrolls and a central shield. The whole series is surmounted by a cornice divided by console brackets, between which are shields, probably intended originally to carry the names of the subjects of the books. [Illustration: Fig. 132. Interior of the Library of the Jesuits at Rheims, now the _Lingerie de l'Hopital General_.]