s well[4].

Excavations in other parts of Assyria have added valuable information to
Layard's first discovery. Dr Wallis Budge, of the British Museum, whom I
have to thank for much kind assistance, tells me that "Kouyunjik is hardly
a good example of a Mesopotamian library, for it is certain that the
tablets were thrown about out of their proper places when the city was
captured by the Medes about B.C. 609. The tablets were kept on shelves....
When I was digging at Derr some years ago we found the what I call 'Record
Chamber,' and we saw the tablets lying _in situ_ on slate shelves. There
were, however, not many literary tablets there, for the chamber was meant
to hold the commercial documents relating to the local temple...." Dr
Budge concludes his letter with this very important sentence: "We have no
definite proof of what I am going to say now, but I believe that the
bilingual[5] lists, which Assur-bani-pal had drawn up for his library at
Nineveh, were intended 'for the use of students.'"

To this suggestion I would add the following. Does not the position of
these two rooms, easily accessible from the entrance to the palace, shew
that their contents might be consulted by persons who were denied
admission to the more private apartments? And further, does not the
presence of the god Dagon at the entrance indicate that the library was
under the protection of the deity as well as of the sovereign?

As a pendant to these Assyrian discoveries I may mention the vague rumour
echoed by Athenaeus of extensive libraries collected in the sixth century
before our era by Polycrates[6], tyrant of Samos, and Peisistratus,
tyrant of Athens, the latter collection, according to Aulus Gellius[7],
having been accessible to all who cared to use it. It must be admitted
that these stories are of doubtful authenticity; and further, that we have
no details of the way in which books were cared for in Greece during the
golden age of her literature. This dearth of information is the more
tantalizing as it is obvious that private libraries must have existed in a
city so cultivated as Athens; and we do, in fact, find a few notices which
tell us that such was the case. Xenophon[8], for instance, speaks of the
number of volumes in the possession of Euthydemus, a follower of Socrates;
and Athenaeus records, in the passage to which I have already alluded, the
names of several book-collectors, among whom are Euripides and Aristotle.

An allusion to