do an inventory of the place that goes beyond the current one, which doesn’t include individual books.  On the other hand, it would take away the surprise of randomly pulling a book off the shelf, assuming it was a collection of Scott’s poetical works,* and finding not only that it wasn’t, but that it ranked in the top five of the ‘oldest book in the house’ competition, or at least the ‘oldest Known book in the house’ competition.** It wasn’t, however, very interesting otherwise; so it went back on the shelf.  This house seriously warps one’s approach to history and historical objects. 

I work at a museum, where white gloves are required for touching anything, actually touching is pretty much verboten unless you are a head curator.  Now, they have good reason there: the objects and art fall into the ‘priceless’ category.  But, the house they are in is younger than this one by a decade and there are major similarities in the lesser furnishings and the library.  So it is always jarring to be in their library and be contemplating from a respectful distance the same book that you had casually been reading on the porch the other day.

*It was a logical assumption, we have umpteen copies of good old Walter.

**1793, there is a Bible that beats everything by quite the margin; a few books clustered in 1790-1800, a gradually increasing number starting around 1830, and then a massive spike between 1890-1930.