the undescribed sixteenth and seventeenth-century law proceedings. The advisability of the following requirements for all appointments in the higher division of the Public Record Office : (a) Proficiency to be shown in certain subjects of the existing Civil Service Examination (Class I), namely, Latin, French, and history. (b) Every candidate appointed to the Public Record Office to undergo a special training for not less than a year in an approved university or place of study, and to pass a qualifying examination in mediæval languages and law, in studies auxiliary to history and in historical method and research, before entering upon his official duties at the Public Record Office. 4. The attention of the Home Secretary and of the Lords Commissioners of The Treasury should be called to the following matters connected with the publications of the Record Office : The authorities of the Public Record Office should be consulted as to the number of copies to be printed, the price at which these should be sold, the quality of the paper and binding, and the style of printing. ["Another result of the fact that so many of these publications are out of print is that institutions to which the Record Office publications are presented receive only broken sets which they have great difficulty in completing. This specially affects institutions recently founded as opposed to those which have received gratis copies of the historical publications of the Government from the beginning. It appears to us also to be desirable that the list of institutions to which gratis copies of these publications are sent should be revised, and that it should be made to include all the newly founded universities, those university colleges in which adequate provision for the teaching of history is made, and the more important public libraries. It further appears to us that the preparation of this list and the exercise of discretion in distribution of particular volumes should rest, not with The Stationery Office, but with the Public Record Office."]-(See p. 163 of the Report.] The arrangements with regard to the printing of the Record Publications are at present wholly unsatisfactory. 5. The attention of the Chief Commissioner of the Office of Works, etc., should be specially called to The nuisance and the damage to records caused by The insufficient light admitted by the windows of the 6. The Government should take the necessary and proper steps For the appointment of a permanent Commission for the future government of the Public Record Office, and for the appointment of a permanent Board of historical scholars for the supervision of Calendars and similar record publications as well as for the continuation of the Rolls Series of Chronicles and Memorials. For the re-transfer of the Public Records formerly preserved in the Principality of Wales to a Record Office for Wales. To encourage the deposit of valuable official documents (now in private custody) in the Public Record Office or in the British Museum for the use of students, with exemption from estate duty so long as they are deposited in one of those institutions. To ensure that no official action be taken in the matter of the Public Records not yet transferred to the Public Record Office, pending the issue of a further Report. PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND THE PUBLIC. By W. E. DOUBLEDAY, CHIEF LIBRARIAN, HAMPSTEAD PUBLIC LIBRARIES. PUBLIC UBLIC opinion respecting public libraries may be divided roughly into three main classes: there are those who appreciate them; those who think but little concerning them; and inveterate opponents. Of the first-mentioned I need say nothing. save that they are a vast and increasing host. Of the second I fancy that many regard municipal libraries much in the way that the Established Church is (or was) popularly supposed to regard Dissent; whilst, in addition. to those who honestly misconceive the situation, the third section comprises others who prefer the bliss of ignorance to the folly of knowledge. This last group is, happily, much the smallest of the three, but at times it makes up for its diminishing numbers by displaying a rancour which is not only grossly unjust but almost incomprehensible. A paragraph in the Annual Report appears to suggest that the past twelve months have offered little to complain of in the way of library criticism; but a year which began with Lord Rosebery's widely (and often wilfully) misunderstood speech, and which has heard the remarkable expressions. of the President of the Local Government Board, cannot but be unhappily distingnished. As Russell Lowell says: It's the toad under the harrow that knows where it pricks, and many of us know only too well how the observations of these two statesmen have been used to the detriment of library work. "It is not the amount of truth that I object to in my wife's remarks," a man once complained, "but the quantity of remarks she puts into the truth." Similarly, no friend of libraries objects to honest criticism: he welcomes it, hoping to profit by it if maybe, but the criticisms we hear ad nauseam are precisely those which have been hurled at the movement from the time of its inception more than sixty years ago. It was said in 1850 that libraries were not wanted, or, if required, they should not be paid for by the rates; that nothing but novels would be read; and that they would degenerate into political clubs and "sedition shops ". Such fears may have been reasonable then, but to argue them as facts to-day shows not only a complete disregard of library development, but is to advance claims some at least of which have never been proved against public libraries at any time. It would be well, I think, if it were recognized that the public library, as we know it to-day, is an institution of quite recent growth. In America the modern movement dates from 1876; in England the date might be assigned to 1887 -the year of Jubilee. Two generations have elapsed since the first Public Library Act was passed, but few of our libraries go back to mid-Victorian days, and, whilst by far the largest number of adoptions have taken place during the last five-and-twenty years, there has been little less than a revolution in library practice. In 1886 some 125 places had voted in favour of libraries; by 1890, 170 had done so, and 615 adoptions have now been recorded in the British Isles. It was not until 1889 that the first children's library was opened, at Nottingham; and that close co-operation with educational agencies which is now so prominent a feature of library work is of yet more recent growth. A Parliamentary return of 1890 showed that British public libraries were then issuing 3,056,658 volumes a year; they now issue well over 70,000,000 per annum. As most of the older libraries have either been enlarged or rebuilt since 1887, it may fairly be claimed that the modern library system is a creation of the last twenty-five years, and that old standards of criticism should no longer obtain. Although convinced that most of library opposition has been based chiefly upon prejudice or misconception, I allow that some criticism may have been justified by misuse of library facilities; but it is inconceivable that conditions can ever have existed to justify the "lock, stock, and barrel condemnation which has frequently been advanced. Take the fiction question as an example; it is still the "leading plank" in the platform of our adversaries. The usual method of sufferers from "fictionitis " (which is unfortunately a highly infectious disease) is to make loose statements, incapable of test, or to select some glaring exception from the rule, and to present it, sufficiently distorted, as a normal example. A typical instance of this form of attack occurred in an old-established London evening paper of 24 May last. "The latest return we have come across," says that paper in an article headed "Libraries on the Rates," "is from Hanwell, and what do we find? Of the 58,000 volumes issued during the past year 41,000 were works of fiction, and 11,700 juvenile literature." Entirely ignoring reference figures, and erroneously assuming juvenile literature to be exclusively fiction, he states that only 5300 issues were works of an educational character. Having implied a fictional and fictitious circulation of over 90 per cent, and belittled the value of the reminder, he proceeds to observe that "in the case of Hanwell it is clear that the intellectual ratepayers, who are in a minority, are taxed for the benefit of the frivolous reader, and," he duly adds, "Hanwell may be regarded as a typical case". It certainly may be so regarded by us, and its presentment undoubtedly smacks of Hanwell. So many able defences of fiction have been made that it is quite unnecessary for me to occupy your time by going over that ground again. I propose to take a newer line and show how, in the evolution of library work, the issue of solid literature increases whilst the circulation of works of fiction steadily declines. An examination of the last published volume of "London Statistics," and of other returns, shows that the stock of prose fiction-exclusive of juvenile books (which for some lamentable reason or other are rarely classified), varies from about one-fifth to one-third of the total library stock. Now how are these volumes used? The first report to reach me after the publication of the Hanwell article was from Battersea, and "what do I find?" I find that the fiction issue works out at 44 per cent. The next report came from Chelsea, where the circulation of fiction (exclusive of children's books) amounted to 32:25 per cent. Hampstead reported a circulation of 42'59, Westminster, 35'70, and the Finsbury |