re, since the output is so enormous,
and the changes in taste and depreciation in value so rapid and so
capricious. The Free and other Circulating or Reference Libraries
throughout the country must prove of immense service in superseding
the necessity of purchasing volumes of temporary interest or of
expensive character; and the average collector will, and does, find
that a certain number of dictionaries of various kinds, and of works
which happen to be favourites, suffice to exhaust his space and
resources. The Free Library is an undoubted boon in two ways: in
enabling us to read or consult books which we do not care to buy; and
again, in affording us an opportunity at leisure of judging whether
such and such a volume merits more than a passing notice and perusal.
The sole method of arriving at this information is to take the
publication home. Even where shelf-room and funds are forthcoming,
there is slight danger of any large percentage of recent literature
being added to the stores of a judicious householder. To read, perhaps
only to skim, and return, will be the general rule.

It is inexpedient to lend oneself too exclusively to a period or a
school; for even where one has to study for a purpose a particular
class of authors, or a particular subject or group of subjects, the
local institution is at hand to help one; and the cheap reproductions
of the writings of the earlier centuries, erring, as they do, on the
side of indulgence, place it in the power of individuals of modest
means to have at their elbows a representative assemblage, not
necessarily a cumbrous one, of the literature from Chaucer to the
present day, so that they may form a comparative estimate of the
intellectual activity and wealth of successive ages, while, at the
same time, the Greek and Latin authors are procurable in a collective
shape, if they desire to compare notes and satisfy themselves on the
obligations of the moderns to the ancients.

It amounts to this, that the Free Library is an agency which should
save us to a very material extent from actually acquiring books which
are not worth holding; it is not only a medium for reference, but for
testing and winnowing. But for the select private bookcase it is not,
or ought not to be, a substitute.

The Free Library is in its infancy and on its trial. In course of time
the spread of education and the force of experience will confer on it
better governing bodies, and better governing bodies wi