In addition to these, there are 57 libraries receiving grants under a Government regulation. These have been established at various intervals from 1838 to 1889. The largest has 5,650 volumes, and the smallest 156 books. Nearly all have subscribers, ranging from 230 to 11. The number of visitors per day is in no case large. The Government grant varies from £100 to £25 per year according to the size of the library, and in the aggregate amounts for these 57 libraries to £1,730 a year. The revenue is thus obtainable not from the rates, but from this grant and the local subscriptions. Our Australian and South African colonies are thus ahead of us in bestowing small Government grants upon country libraries. One capital feature in nearly all these libraries is the amount spent in books, and this in many cases exceeds the grant, in some cases being even double the sum of that which is given by the Government. A total of 57 small town and country libraries is really very creditable.

The Public Libraries at Natal and Cape Town represent the best part of the work now being carried on in South Africa. The South African Library at Cape Town is a fine building, situated in the avenue where are the Houses of Parliament, Government House, and the Botanical Gardens. The building comprises museum and library, and both departments are congested, so far as space goes, to an extent which hampers the work of either in a way which calls for immediate change. The museum should have at least treble the space devoted to it which it at present occupies, and a new building for the purpose of a museum is urgently needed, so that the large room now used can be devoted to the library. The matter has been much discussed, and something will ultimately come out of it. For the year ending March 31, 1891, the number of volumes issued was 21,232. Of these 9,117 were fiction, and the rest works of history, voyages, travels, &c. The amount received in subscriptions was £415, and from the Government £500. This represents the chief income. Only magazines and periodicals are taken for the reading-room, and books are only lent out for home reading to those who subscribe a pound a year and upwards. The works are available for reading in the library, and readers can help themselves to the shelves, a plan which, it may be mentioned, does not work satisfactorily, as the users constantly place the books on the wrong shelves. The number of volumes lent out just quoted does not include the issue for reference. The library closes at five each week-day, but many of the committee are anxious to see established an evening opening and a selection of English newspapers, such as a few leading London and English provincial dailies and weeklies. This popular element in its work will be, if it is established, there is reason to think, the one feature which will bring the library in touch with the progressive spirit of library work everywhere, and especially again if it becomes possible to lend for home reading. Mr. Lewis, the librarian, who received his training at the Bodleian, is greatly in touch with these features of Public Library work; but things move slowly in South Africa, except where it is a case of money

making pure and simple. The Dutch and the coloured sections have to be taken into account, and there is no denying the fact that the Dutch phlegm has affected the Anglo-Saxon community. The Municipal Council will most likely contribute some £350 a year in case of the evening opening of the library, and altogether the prospect is better than it has been for some time. The additions to the library each year are numerous, and during the last twelve months reached 1,248 volumes.

The Sir George Grey Library is unique. In a large room of the South African Library these works are located. In fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century literature this former Governor-General has given to the use of the South African people for ever a collection which is of almost priceless value. Sir George Grey has thus by his gifts materially benefited two Public Libraries.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Public Libraries in the United States and Canada.

A

MERICA has taken the lead in developing the usefulness of Public Libraries. In the United States these institutions form so much a part of the national life that their absence, particularly in the older districts, usually stamps a district as being in the rear in public spirit and enterprise. Where the striking of oil or silver creates a town in a single round of the moon, money-making takes the lead, and libraries have to wait until the lining of pockets has been accomplished, and a demand from the citizens presents itself for something more intellectual than local newspapers in which the staple news is personal gossip. In the actual use made of the books in Public Libraries, England compares very favourably with America. But in library economy and administration we can learn many lessons from our progressive cousins on the other side of the Atlantic. In this as well as in other departments of life, the old country and her strong offspring may plod along side by side in friendly emulation, each learning from the other, and determined that, come what may in the question of the partitioning of Europe and other parts of the world, both will steadily pursue those arts of peace and civilization which have made these countries what they now are. We may in one department take a lesson from our Transatlantic relatives, the adoption of which would be a distinct gain to the nation. The Bureau of Education fulfils a service of great utility in the United States. In designing and maturing their constitution, George Washington and his co-workers gave to education a very prominent place. The dictum of the first President, that the virtue and intelligence of the people are the two indispensable securities of republican institutions, has found its echo all

through the Union in the form of free education, common schools, and Public Libraries.

In the Department of the Interior there is a section called the Bureau of Education, the purpose and duties of which are to collect statistics and facts showing the condition and progress of education in the several states and territories. A further object is to disseminate such information respecting the organization and management of schools and school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country. In the work of this office the Public Library system occupies a prominent place. The management of this Bureau of Education, subject to the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, is entrusted to a Commissioner of Education, who is appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. This Commissioner presents annually to Congress a report embodying the results of his investigations and labours, together with a statement of such facts and recommendations as will in his judgment subserve the purpose for which the office is established. The publications of this office are numerous and excellent. Through the kindness of the Secretary of the Department, copies of the books and pamphlets relating to Public Libraries and education generally are now at hand. The latest bear the titles as here given-" History of Higher Education in South Carolina," 247 pages; "Higher Education in Wisconsin," 68 pages; "History of Education in Florida," 54 pages; "Education in Georgia," 154 pages; " Industrial Education in the South," 86 pages; "Study of History in American Colleges and Universities," 300 pages ; "Education in the Industrial and Fine Arts in the United States," 842 pages. The annual report of the Commissioners of Education usually makes a volume of 800 pages. The special report of the Public Libraries in the United States, giving their history, condition, and management, was published in two volumes in 1876-7, and the two together fill 1188 pages. Following these in 1886 was a supplementary publication consisting of a hundred pages giving statistics of Public Libraries in America. Among the last received are an interesting publication headed "Rules for a Dictionary Catalogue," "The History of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education," and others. The uniform size of these publications is demy octavo. From these particulars it will be gathered what is being done in the way of publications by this department. These are only a fraction of what could be named.

Of the contents of the volumes, and of their great interest and value to all who concern themselves about matters of education, it would be difficult to speak too highly. It was as far back as 1867 that the United States Government resolved to establish a Department of Education. Every year accordingly since 1870 there has, in addition to other literature, been issued a volume averaging about 1,000 pages, in which have been recorded at

length the several attempts made to grapple with the multifarious and difficult problems for the consideration of which the Bureau was specially created. As they appeared, these volumes have been welcomed with gratitude by specialists in educational matters all the world over; and this, not only because they marked the successive stages reached by the States in their own solution of a great social question, to the importance of which they have long been keenly alive, but also because they found in them a vast fund of information, drawn from the best available sources, which shed an interesting and valuable light upon the educational conditions and expedients of most civilized countries worthy of note. It would be impossible here to give an adequate idea of the number and variety of the questions raised, and more or less successfully answered, in these volumes; but merely to mention a few taken at random will suffice to show the comprehensive and suggestive character of the topics discussed. Such questions concern the relations of education to pauperism, crime, and insanity; the principles and methods of the Kindergarten; the industrial training of boys and girls; the higher education of women, and their admission to universities; the service and qualifications of school boards; the shortcomings and capabilities of Sunday and mission schools; the training of the blind, the deaf, and the dumb; the different forms of manual and art training; and the establishment of schools of agriculture.

As already indicated, however, the publications of the United States Bureau of Education have not been limited to annual reports. In addition to these, it has issued at irregular intervals a large number of bulletins, circulars, and special reports, in each of which some specific subject is discussed at length and with commendable thoroughness, generally by some recognized authority working with the best means of information at his command. The value of such special treatises in defining the problems, establishing ascertained knowledge, and stimulating further investigations, is evident on the face of them. Here again it will be sufficient to name a few of the topics handled, to show the interesting and varied nature of the "light and leading" to be got from the volumes under notice. Such are-school architecture; the training of teachers in Germany; the history of medical education in the United States; training schools for nurses; industrial art in schools; natural science in secondary schools; English rural schools; the legal rights of children; the construction of Public Library buildings; college libraries as aids to instruction.

The American Library Association is older by a few years than the Library Association on this side of the Atlantic. In side offshoots of association work we are also somewhat behind. The library schools are beginning to hold a distinct place in the training of library assistants. The Columbia Library School at Albany, a pretty town in New York State, is the chief of these schools. A visit to the school is an impressive experience. It would be difficult to find any place where a soberer view is taken

of library methods and responsibilities. The managers of it claim that they have been fortunate in their material from its beginning. The excellent assistants sent out prove that it has been of great advantage to have a course of technical instruction. The fact cannot be too acutely grasped in this country, that the best librarians are those who have passed through an apprenticeship of training at one of the Public Libraries in the country. Committees and commissioners cannot over-estimate the importance of this matter. The Library Bureau for Public and Private Libraries is of recent formation. This is situated at 146, Franklinstreet, Boston. Its departments are those for employment, consultation, publications, and supplies, and this will serve to illustrate the character and scope of its work. The Bureau aims to make itself indispensable to the libraries, and it has evidently before it a useful future.

Nothing struck the late Matthew Arnold so much, in one of his lecturing visits to the States, as the sight of a ragged and almost shoeless little boy sitting in the reading-room of one of the Public Libraries, studying his book or newspaper with all the sang froid of a member of a West-end club. The sight was decidedly one which a democratic nation might be proud of, and one, moreover, which Englishmen should be anxious to see in their own country. The marvellous growth of the movement in America is extraordinary. Seventy years ago such things as Public Libraries were almost unknown in America, for prior to 1820 there were but ten of them in existence. To-day they are as common as public schools. There is no town or village of any consequence that cannot boast of its Public Library, and some comparatively new communities have two or three.

In the most recent report published, 1,686 Public Libraries are named, containing 13,834,810 volumes. Of this number 424 are free lending libraries, supported wholly or partly by public moneys, and containing 3,721,191 volumes. Public Libraries have reached a development in the State of Massachusetts which it would probably be impossible to match anywhere else in the world. In 1839 there were only about ten or fifteen Public Libraries in the State, and only about one-seventh of the total population had a right of access to the limited supply of books. But, thanks to the generosity of individuals and the public spirit of the people, 248 of the existing 351 towns and cities contain Public Libraries. These numerous institutions contain about 2,500,000 volumes, and are available for the use of 2,104,224 of the 2,238,943 inhabitants of the State. Nevertheless, the nonexistence of libraries in rather more than 100 of the smaller towns is viewed with so much concern by the Legislature that a Special Commission was appointed last autumn to encourage these towns to follow the example of the majority. The commissioners issued an appeal to the citizens, one passage of which is worth quoting for the benefit of London parishes and English towns. "A Public Library," says the document, "is a good business investment for any town. Experience shows that the