PRESTON.

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Happy Preston! With its handsome new building, now nearing completion, the future library and museum work of the town are well assured. Two brothers of the legal profession had amassed a fortune of some £285,000. This they invested in the names of four trustees with discretionary power. These trustees induced the last of the two surviving brothers, Mr. Edmund Robert Harris, to consider the advisability of using a good portion of the amount for the purposes of a Public Library, Museum, and Art Gallery. This, in brief, is the early history of the munificent bequest of £105,000 for erecting and furnishing this building. The two brothers had shown no marked interest in the welfare of the town, and the public spirit of the trustees in directing the attention of the surviving testator to this channel should not be overlooked. The site, valued at £30,000, was granted by the Corporation. Since the commencement of the building, another wealthy Prestonian, Richard Newsham, bequeathed to the town his fine collection of oil-paintings, water-colour drawings, and curios, valued at upwards of £30,000. The collection will form part of a picture gallery at the museum. The next large bequest is one of £100,000 for the Harris Orphanage, which is to provide for the maintenance and education of upwards of eighty children of both sexes. This building is also nearly finished. The trustees originally granted £40,000 as an endowment for the Harris Institute, a school of literature, art, science, and technical education, and have more lately made a further grant of £30,000 for the building and furnishing of a technical school, to be called the Victoria Jubilee Technical School. The Corporation have obtained powers to grant a site worth £10,000, and a sum of money not to exceed £10,000 for the same purpose.

Some seven or eight years have been absorbed in the erection of the building, but for a structure of its magnitude that is not too long, although there have been many impatient cries as to when it is to be opened. But there must be wisdom in having the work carefully and well done, with ample time for the building to thoroughly dry. This is essential, considering the nature of the contents which are by and by to be housed in it. The building strikes out a new line of architecture for library and museum purposes so far as this country is concerned, as will be seen on reference to the engraving. The designs were prepared by a townsman, Alderman James Hibbert, who was commissioned by the Harris trustees to visit several buildings of a similar character in this country and on the Continent, the result of his visit and report being that he was appointed the architect to prepare the designs. The building is of the Greek Ionic order, and has four distinct frontages, being completely isolated from the buildings around it. The principal elevation is on the west side, overlooking the market-place, and almost at right angles with the north frontage of the Town Hall. The height of the frontage to the parapet and the apex of the portico is 80 feet, and the extreme

height to the top of the central lantern, 112 feet. The portico consists of six massive fluted columns, with bold capitals. It is

HARRIS PUBLIC LIBRARY, MUSEUM, AND ART GALLERY, PRESTON.

surmounted by an overhanging cornice, and the tympanum is filled in with a group of figures representing Minerva surrounded

by literature, science, and the arts. The frontage is 130 feet. The bases of the columns of the portico and its floor level are about 10 feet above the street level, and the entrance to the building is under the portico by flights of steps on the north and south sides. Immediately under the tympanum of the portico is the carved inscription in large characters,-"To Literature, Science, and Art." The eastern elevation of the building faces a fine thoroughfare about 60 feet in width, leading out of the principal street in the town. It is uniform in length with the Market Place frontage. The north and south frontages are each 170 feet in length, and will face two new streets, each 50 feet in width, which are being constructed simultaneously with the Public Library buildings.

The collection of models connected with the industrial arts will be placed on the ground-floor portion of the central hall, with the object of bringing them under the daily observation of visitors passing to and from the lending department and the adjacent reading-room and newsroom. The newsroom on the south side, and the reading-room on the north side, are each 29 feet by 55 feet; one of the lending libraries is 50 feet square, and the other 55 feet by 29 feet. The central hall is 54 feet square, and is continued, by the staircase, on all the floors, being lighted by the lantern immediately over a central well. The principal floor contains the reference libraries on each side of the central hall. They are each 30 feet in width, and 120 feet in length. The central hall portion of the principal floor will be set apart as a museum of casts and reproductions from the antique. The whole of the upper floor will be devoted to museum and fine art purposes. The museum galleries are arranged round three sides of the central hall and staircase, one side being devoted to the fine arts, the corresponding side to natural history and physics, and the remaining side between these to the department of general archæology, ceramics, and the finer kinds of industrial art, and illustrations of ethnology.

The building appears well adapted for the purposes for which it is intended, and this opinion may be adhered to notwithstanding the fact that some American visitors have been disposed to criticise, somewhat severely, both the proportions of the building and the general arrangements of the various departments. Until the internal fittings are in place, it is premature to speak so positively on this point, as one or two American librarians have done. A description of the decorative sculptures alone would occupy many pages, and this would be out of place here. The present home of the library is in a large room of the Town Halla building designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. During 1888, the library and newsroom was closed for seventy-two days, owing to the prevalence of small-pox in the town. The ingenuity of the librarian displayed itself at this time in the construction of a book disinfector, mentioned in another chapter. The reopening of the library had a great deal to do in restoring the confidence of the town that the epidemic had spent its strength. Among the

16,000 borrowers, there are a whole army of telegraph boys and policemen; the library, however, seems not only popular with these, but with all classes.

A grant of £500 has been made by the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education in aid of the purchase of art reproductions in plaster and bronze for the new museum.

ROCHDALE.

The library has been in operation over nineteen years, and is appreciated to a high degree. There are few, if any, complaints about the incidence of the penny rate, and there are likely to be none while the library is used so extensively as it is now. The crush on Saturday nights is great, notwithstanding the Pioneers' Co-operative Stores Library in the town. The rate yields £967, but of this some £237 is absorbed in interest on mortgage, loans, sinking fund, proportion, income tax, &c. This is a heavy burden, and naturally curtails the expenditure for new books. The new building for which this expenditure was made was completed in 1884. The boys' library is a very successful department at Rochdale. The cross references and subdivisions in the catalogue are very numerous. In June, 1891, the information comes to hand that a local public man contemplates building a much-needed wing to the library. The number of borrowers is very large, and the position of Rochdale in the movement is distinctly satisfactory.

ROTHERHAM.

The Acts were adopted in 1876, and on the 8th of October, 1880, a start was made with a stock of about 3,500 vols. Additions were made from year to year, until in May, 1884, all the shelfroom had been appropriated. The culminating point of the library's usefulness in its old quarters was reached during the next autumn and winter, after which period, to the end of 1887, a continuous decrease in the issues took place, until they had dwindled to an average of only 94 per day. Meanwhile the difficulties besetting the committee in their efforts to obtain more suitable premises had disappeared, and, in conjunction with the baths committee, a large building had been erected, the upper storey of which was assigned to the library. The reference-room is convenient to the book-room, while the interior of the general reading-room-a splendid apartment-is within the view of the librarian. The floor is composed of wood blocks. A feature of the various rooms is the excellent taste displayed in the selection of the stoves and mantelpieces, which are really artistic, and testify to the good work Rotherham can turn out when the occasion requires. The general heating arrangements are on the hot water system. An encouraging fact is that the cost of the whole of the furnishing, and the purchase of the 2,500 books has been defrayed without making a special call upon the rates. There is now storage capacity of 50,000 books. Work began in the new build

ing in March, 1888. In the early part of 1891 the first of a series of meetings was held in one of the rooms of the library to talk generally with the readers about the books of the library. Some of the local members of the Home Reading Union attended, and in this way a connection is being established between the members of the union and the library.

SALFORD.

There is a close link between the Museum which existed at Salford prior to the Act of 1850 and the passing of the Ewart Act. Peel Park, so called in honour of Sir Robert Peel, is one of the sights of Manchester, and formerly, before public parks and museums were so plentiful as they now are, excursionists for miles round Manchester and Salford did not consider that they had seen the main sight of all unless they had visited Peel Park and the Museum. The handsome pile of buildings forming the Public Museum and Library are most beautifully situated on a large piece of ground standing much higher than the rest of the park. The situation is thus very picturesque. It is, in fact, doubtful whether a Public Library and Museum in any part of the country has more pleasant surroundings than the group of buildings forming the parent institution in Salford. The park was presented to the people of Manchester and Salford in 1846. About three-fourths of it are used as a playground and cricketground, and there are large separate gymnasia for men, boys, women and girls. The museum and library were originated in 1849 by the late E. R. Langworthy, who was then mayor, and the late Joseph Brotherton, M.P. The first part of the library, the reference department, was opened with 7,000 vols., on January 9th, 1850, and one room of the museum in the following June. Then there followed, in 1852, a new wing, containing a reading-room, 80 by 30 feet, and a picture gallery. In 1854 a lending library was opened. Three years afterwards a south wing was added, and in 1864 a new portico was built, and at a later date, the Langworthy Wing was added. Notwithstanding these various extensions, the whole forms a very attractive group of buildings. A new branch was opened at Broughton, a suburb of Salford, in July 1891.

In 1849, Major John Plant was appointed librarian and curator, and holds the same appointment at the present date. Among the statues in the park there is a beautiful one of the late Joseph Brotherton, M.P., to whom the Public Library movement owes nearly as much as to any other man. He died in 1857, and so passed away before the wide and beneficial results of his work began to be seen. The statue is of bronze, and is 9 feet high. As it is appropriately placed near the entrance to the park, it forms a conspicuous object to the visitors. On one side of the pedestal are some words spoken by Mr. Brotherton in a speech in the House of Commons, "My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants." A former Bishop of