The Infants Library, with bookshelf motif

The sliding lid to this miniature library depicts a bookshelf on top with three children reading outside on the bottom, essentially combining the two most common visual scenes depicted on miniature library cabinets. One of the three children is a girl seated with a book, another a boy reading a large globe, and the third a boy who stands between them, looking at one and pointing to the other. The standing boy performs an interlocutor gesture that reminds viewers of the connection between two textual mediums, and between reading textual representation (book), visual and tactile representation (globe), and the wider world. Behind them sprawls their country estate. The arrangement of children is similar to the one on John Marshall's Alphabetical Cabinet (ca. 1815).