has taught men to feel that there is no use buying a book and reading it quietly at home when by the exercise of a little patience, unless they have been lucky in their order of application, they can get a loan of it from the public library. This is the age when people are being taught to believe that they should get everything for nothing, and the "free" library is certainly influencing the life of the community and the nation in this somewhat doubtful direction. . . . Libraries are excellent things in their way, but they are being developed upon wrong lines. They are not a help, but a menace to literature, because if men and women who expend their intellectual talents in producing works which are meant to instruct and educate, or even only to entertain, are to have the only market that is open to them seriously restricted by the free lending system of public libraries, then literature as a profession will be shunned because it does not pay. Now to endeavour to marshall the facts into some sort of order. How does the public library assist the bookseller, and how far has it helped him in times past. The spread of elementary education during comparatively recent years, backed up as it has been by the secondary system, and more particularly, I think, by the numerous evening classes, has undoubtedly acted as a great factor in creating for the bookseller an entirely new and considerable book-buying public, but as a contributory means I would place the public library very little, if any, lower on the scale. Beginning with the growth of the children's libraries in the schools, a scheme owing its genesis to the library, and not to the educational movement, and continuing with the constantly growing popularity and utility of the readingrooms and lending departments of the public libraries, the great mass of the public have undoubtedly been taught in the first place how to read, not of course, the simple A B C of the subject, but in the larger sense they have been led to discriminate, in other words, they have been taught what to read. If they have only learnt, that it is possible for them to read and enjoy the works of say Braddon, Corelli, Garvice, or a host of other popular purveyors of light or thrilling literature I might name, they have at any rate found that a book consists of something more than merely size and binding, which was the popular idea when the public library movement started; to the uninitiated one book looked very much like another, it was very largely a question of the colour of the binding, or the number of pictures contained in the volume, but the libraries have undoubtedly altered this to a great extent; they have made reading a necessity; instead of books being the solace of the cultured and wealthy few, they have now become an essential part of the lives of the many. A huge and growing book-buying public has sprung up in recent years; everybody reads nowadays, and it is not such drivel as most people would have us believe. If you say that the libraries have only popularized the lighter forms of reading, how do you account for the enormous success of, say the Everyman's Library, a library built up, as you will all acknowledge, of the world's great books in every department of literature; a library of which considerably over a million copies have already been sold, but in which the fictional element by no means predominates. Fifty or even twenty-five years ago I sincerely doubt whether a tithe of that number could have been disposed of, even with difficulty, and yet our journalist tells us that before the days of public libraries books had an unrestricted market, and that any work by a prominent writer could always rely upon a ready sale. One might as well argue that the introduction of telephones would have had a detrimental effect on telegrams and letters, whereas the official returns show a great increase yearly. Further, our writer goes on to state that the day of the private library is past, that the development of the lending department and reading-rooms of the library has taught men to feel that there is no use in buying a book and reading it quietly at home, when by the exercise of a little patience it is possible to obtain the loan from the public library. Such a statement is most obviously incorrect and could only have been written by the possessor of a more than usually biased mind. The day of the private library is with us to-day if ever it was; few households having any pretence to intelligence at all, let alone culture, are without their collection of books; be it large or small it matters not, the value of a library is not reckoned by its numbers fortunately; and to say that because people borrow books they do not buy them is absurd. As a matter of fact the borrowing is frequently an incentive to the purchase. A man borrows a book from the library and is so captivated with it that he determines to purchase a copy for himself, or an anniversary crops up and he decides to make a present of it. The habit of giving books as Christmas and birthday offerings is very largely on the increase, and how many of those presented the libraries have been instrumental in bringing to the mind of the purchaser it would be difficult to estimate. Regarding the author, our friend of the "Perthshire Constitutional" tells us firstly that public libraries are a handicap and stumbling-block to the literary man or woman of genius; he goes on to say that if men and women who expend their intellectual talents in producing works are to have the market that is open to them seriously restricted by the free lending systems of public libraries, then literature as a profession will be shunned, because it does not pay, but, in another part of his highly pathetic and instructive article he informs us that the members of the reading public wait until the library acquires two or three copies of a book, which they proceed to enjoy without having done anything to meet the cost of production. Now, to deal with the earlier portion of this extract, if the public libraries acquire two or three copies of a book of fair average interest, and we can, I think, take it for granted that there are at least some 500 live libraries throughout the kingdom, then surely upwards of twelve hundred copies sold should go a very long way towards compensating the author for any mythical number he may, or may not have disposed of without the custom of the free libraries. To take next the statement that the miserable borrower has the temerity and heartlessness to enjoy the books loaned to him without having done anything to meet the cost of production, how can we reconcile this statement with the one at the very beginning of the article to the effect that the only time when we knew that we had a free library was when the ratepapers came in. Surely if we pay our rates regularly, we are, perhaps indirectly, but still very surely paying our quota towards the cost of the production of the books, and to grumble that we possess public libraries whether we want them or not, is about in the same street as grumbling at the upkeep of a strong navy, and there are many members of the community who would sooner pay for the upkeep of the library than for the latter privilege but fortunately in both cases it is the majority with whom the final decision rests. PROFESSIONAL PERIODICAL LITERATURE. Italian. La Bibliofilia. Vol. XIII (December, 1911). 38. D'ANCONA (Paolo).-Some more illuminated MSS. of the Florentine School in the possession of L. Olschki. AVENA (Antonio).—The books of the Veronese notary Bartolomeo Squarceti (continued). BOINET (A.).-Courier of France. ZAMBRA (L.).-Courier of Hungary. 39. OLSCHKI (L.).-Books unknown to bibliographers (continued). Public sales and notices. 38. Describes three illuminated Florentine MSS. of the end of the fifteenth century, possibly belonging to the workshop of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The bibliographical description is illustrated by two plates containing eight reproductions of the miniatures. 39. Continued from Vol. XI and containing descriptions of (1) the book of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross; (2) Bonincontrius, "Prophecies for 1488," printed at Rome by Stephanus Plannck in 1488; (3) Jacobus Spirensis, "Judicium anni 1485," printed at Rome by Guldinbeck, about 1484; (4) Paulus de Polonia, "Stellarum . . pro anno 1485 effectus". Rome, Stephanus Plannck, 1485; (5) Richis, L. de, "Pronosticon in anno 1500"; (6) "Tractatus in fraternitatibus in generali ". La Coltura Popolare (16 January, 1912). FABIETTI (E.).-Mario Rapisardi. Opere di Mario Rapisardi. 40. BEHRENS (E.).-The public library movement in England (continued). Report of the first Ligurian convention of public libraries and kin dred institutions. Contributions for an annotated catalogue. Notices and correspondence, etc. 40. Miss Behrens continues and finishes her article begun in a previous number on the public libraries of England. In the January number she deals with branch libraries, and in February she is more concerned with the reference library. She seems to entertain a curious idea of the function of the British Museum Library. La Coltura Popolare (1 February, 1912). 41. FABIETTI (E.).-Schools for assistants for public libraries. Contributions for an annotated catalogue, etc. 41. Sig. Fabietti, in an open letter to the Minister of Public Instruction, urges the necessity that is now pressing upon their growing libraries for the provision of trained assistants. The Italian Federation alone has now provided 100,000 volumes for founding libraries, and Sig. Fabietti fears that all their efforts may be brought to ruin for lack of |