than are the Public Libraries of this country. A very large number of the Continental libraries receive grants from municipal or imperial sources; but some are only open to the general public on certain days of the week, and at certain hours, and others have restrictions applying to them which keep them all but closed except to the favoured and the initiated. There is less officialism in our British Public Libraries than is the case at many of the Continental institutions. With us catalogues are openly accessible, and are freely provided in the libraries for the use of all comers. The only three conditions enforced upon readers in England, are clean hands, silence, and no dogs. In Germany, Austria, and France, other regulations frequently prevail which prevent the libraries from being the busy hives of readers, which in this country they have now become. To the three rules just named our American friends have added a fourth to the effect that gentlemen shall remove their hats on entering the library, and to a thoughtful man or woman a library is as sacred as a place of worship. Reviewing the principal libraries separately, the largest library in the world is that at Paris, which contains upwards of 2,000,000 printed books and 160,000 manuscripts. Between the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg and the British Museum there is not much difference. In the British Museum there are about 1,500,000 volumes. The Royal Library of Munich has now something over 900,000, but this includes many pamphlets; the Royal Library at Berlin contains 800,000 volumes; the Library at Copenhagen 510,000; the Library at Dresden 500,000; the University Library at Göttingen, Germany, 600,000. The Royal Library at Vienna has 400,000 volumes; and the University Library in the same city 370,000 volumes; at Buda Pesth the University Library has 300,000 books, the corresponding Library at Cracow nearly the same number, and at Prague 205,000. The leading Austrian Libraries receive Government subsidies varying from £100 to £3,000 a year. The Vatican Library at Rome has about 120,000 printed books, and was commenced in 1378. The National Library of Paris is one of the very oldest in Europe, having been founded in 1350; and the University Library at Prague claims to have been founded the same year. Of many of these large libraries a history has yet to be written and published in this country. Some of our earliest records are of libraries. There is clear proof that the great city of Nineveh possessed a Public Library, not, of course, having in it such books as we are in the habit of handling to-day. Here were to be found some 10,000 distinct works on tablets of clay, ranging in size from one inch to twelve inches square. Egyptian libraries also stood high in the world's records, and were in existence 2,000 years before Christ. They were mainly to be found in the temples or in the tombs of the kings. There are no specimens extant of these works. They were destroyed by the Persians in their invasion of Egypt, and scattered no one knew where. Later in the world's history the library at Alexandria stood out in a prominent position, and contained nearly half a million rolls. This far-famed library was the work of several monarchs, and so great was the veneration of the Egyptians for it that they looked on it almost as sacred, going so far as to inscribe over its portals these words: "The hospital for the soul." The ends of the earth were ransacked to enrich its shelves, and, as was the custom of the times, the would-be possessors were not too particular how they came by their literary treasures. It is related that one of the Ptolemies absolutely refused to supply the famine-stricken Athenians with corn until they furnished him with certain original manuscripts which he coveted. Fancy the Queen declining to subscribe to a Mansion House Relief Fund unless the City Fathers yielded up to Her Majesty the private papers of Sir Richard Whittington! In Greece there were different libraries, great men like Pisistratus making their own collections. Rome, which took its model from Greece in all matters of art and social science, had also its great collection of books. In the fourth century after Christ there were no fewer than twenty-eight different libraries in Rome, showing that great progress had been made. In the Christian era also at Constantinople, Constantine established a library, of which there are no known remains. In mediæval days not much was done in the way of forming libraries, except in the monasteries, which had their respective staffs of copyists and illuminators, whose duty it was to copy works lent from other monasteries, which then became part of their own library. Of the large libraries in the United States, the Boston Public Library comes next to the Congressional, with about 540,963 volumes (including the duplicates in its branches). The Harvard University collection follows with about 350,000. The National Library, however, of the United States is destined to surpass all, for it is to contain, when completed, 3,000,000 volumes. Counting all, there are in the United States about 5,500 libraries, of which fully 450 are Public Libraries, as the term is understood in this country. Notwithstanding that in point of number we are behind some European countries and the United States, Great Britain will hold its own in the actual use made of the books, and this after all is the fairest comparison and truest test which can be applied. The enormous distance Russia is behind the times in the matter of providing for the intellectual wants of her people is evident from the fact that the first public reading-room in the Muscovite Empire was opened only a very few years ago in St. Petersburg. The room is connected with a good library, to which books have been contributed by some public-spirited citizens. Admittance is free, and permission is given to borrow books for reading at home. The new institution is named after Pushkin, the novelist. But that the foundation of the Pushkin Public Library has no significance as indicating a change of policy on the part of the Russian authorities towards literature and the press, is evident from the fact that the Government has issued an order forbidding the editors of newspapers in Russian Poland to receive foreign exchanges! As one wanders about among the vast libraries in which some great English families keep under lock and key many rare editions of famous books, worth their weight in gold, the reflection is inevitable that valuable as are these collections, they are not put to the best use within the range of possibility. Bound faultlessly, and shut up in elaborately carved oak bookcases that are seldom opened, inaccessible save to a favoured few, and on occasions of great rarity, they become little more than expensive articles of furniture. Books, like coins, are only performing their right function when they are in circulation. Hoarded up, the coins become only so much metal, and the books only so much paper and leather. In a Public Library, books begin to really live among the people, and to exert an influence for good upon them. Oh! ye gentlemen of England, who are said to "live at home at ease," is this not worth remembering? There are vacant shelves of Public Libraries throughout the country waiting to be filled. Let these gaping shelves appeal to you! By placing your treasures upon them a new lease of life would be given to books so long prized, and it is impossible to say where, along the line of the generations to come, they would cease to gratify and instruct. To the possessors of wealth an even more urgent appeal is made. For all the large-hearted generosity which has during the last few years flowed out towards these institutions all the friends of this movement are grateful. But the high-water mark of giving to Public Libraries has not yet, it is sincerely to be hoped, been reached. There are thousands of English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish villages, and very many towns which are absolutely devoid of any serious effort to meet the demand for books to read. Will the wealthy not make it possible for one or other of these places to cherish the memory of their aid given them to establish a library for the people? In what manner can the opulent better employ their riches than this? A Public Library with its books lives for ever, and this way of perpetuating a name may be commended to the rich, and so bestowing on generations to come a priceless blessing. There are hundreds of successful manufacturers and merchants who have in their power the means to benefit the district in which their lot is cast. Gifts of books secure a perpetual blessing, and there will be seen in future years, it is hoped, much large-hearted giving for Public Library purposes, either in the way of sites or money, buildings or books. Unlike help bestowed upon charities, gifts to Public Libraries benefit all classes without the least taint of charity or sectarianism attaching to such gifts. Wealth can confer no better far-reaching utility than by being bestowed upon these institutions. Many charitable gifts pauperize, notwithstanding high and pure motives on the part of the donor. Not so, however, when exercised in this way. The tendency of the gift is to elevate, to open out in the minds of an incalculable number of people new avenues of life, new inspirations, and new pleasures. Future generations will bless the memory of the man who gives libraries and books, and for ages after the donor is gone; hence the gift accomplishes solid and lasting good, and cannot fall into abuse as some schools and other institutions have done. The system of popular control keeps them healthy and vigorous. Would that there were more bequests to these institutions! What can confer more universal good than a Public Library or Museum? If a suggestion will be permitted to those who are intending to distinguish themselves in this way, it is to make the gift conditional on the town or district adopting the Public Libraries Acts for its maintenance. Too great stress cannot be laid upon this, because by no other course of action can the library be brought in perpetuity under the administration of the elected authorities of the people. This is infinitely preferable to any safeguards as to trustees and their successors. It is the first outlay which very often frightens the inhabitants, and if this difficulty can be bridged by a noble gift being made to a town if they will maintain it, few places would give a negative reply to such an offer. There is no desire to cast any reflections upon other institutions which are constantly laying their appeals before the benevolent, but it is legitimate to point out that in connection with these institutions the gift in its entirety would go towards the specific object intended by the donor. There is no expensive staff of secretaries, collectors, and others to pay out of it, and the residue, if there happens to be any, to then go for the purpose for which it is intended. Down to the last penny the public would reap the benefit of the gift. This is an important feature, well worth while being kept in mind. The extension of Public Libraries cannot, however, wait until the benevolent make up their minds to act, or until their wills are read, and bequests of this nature made known. Book-hunger is real and earnest, and can be met in no other way than by each district calmly and dispassionately deciding the question for itself. To stimulate these places into action is the earnest purpose of this work. The following stanzas from a poem, written by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone of a new Public Library at Boston, U.S.A., will be welcomed by our own library builders and supporters : "Can freedom breathe if ignorance reign? Shall commerce thrive where anarchs rule? From history's scroll the splendour streams, Let in the light! These windowed walls No pikes shall fence a crumbling throne, CHAPTER II. The Place of Public Libraries in our National Life. TH HERE is no more marked characteristic of our national life than the growing self-dependence of the people, which has been the outcome of municipal corporations. Where these corporations are the strongest and most vigorous, there must we look for the highest sense of the duties of citizenship and the most self-reliant populations. It is again in these municipalities, such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Nottingham, that the most has been done for the education of the people, in the way of Board Schools, Public Libraries, Museums, and Technical Schools. The same municipalities have the best street lighting and street cleansing arrangements, and the police force are under the most perfect control. Surely this fact should dispel the fear that the energies of the poor in the way of self-help may be relaxed, and the rich become apathetic to their higher duties, by the spread of Public Libraries and kindred institutions, supported out of the same funds as are the local police, the street lighting and cleansing. It may be asked, What is a corporation? There are various kinds, but we are here concerned with the corporation as a body politic elected by the people, and responsible to them. The word is used as equivalent to incorporated joint-stock companies, where the whole of the citizens are shareholders and are banded together for a common purpose, that purpose being the common weal of the entire local community. The one vital principle which surrounds corporations is that they are gifted with perpetual life. They may well have been in some laws designated immortal, although in some cases their privileges have run only for a definite number of years, but during the period, when well organized, they cannot die, notwithstanding all the original members are withdrawn, for they are continued by succession. A corporation has, in fact, been compared to a stream which maintains its identity throughout |