is to be noted that his position is also contested, so far as
Great Britain is concerned, by an article in the March number of The
Library (of London), which shows, not only that our English cousins are
fully able to take care of themselves, but also that on many of the
questions of fact, about which his arguments turn, he is painfully wide
of the mark. Few students of social conditions have left so noteworthy
an impress on contemporary thought as the late William Stanley Jevons.
Of the free public library he held a view radically opposed to that of
Mr. O'Brien, believing it to be "an engine for operating upon" the
community, in ways at once protective and ennobling. As to the
universality of its beneficent service, he was equally convinced,
declaring not only that "free libraries are engines for creating the
habit and power of enjoying high-class literature, and thus carrying
forward the work of civilization which is commenced in the primary
school," but also that they are "classed with town halls, police courts,
prisons, and poor-houses, as necessary adjuncts of our stage of
civilization." The experience of one community or one nation is
repeatedly serviceable to another; but, after all, it is the local
conditions which must finally determine in any case. Even if a different
conclusion were to be reached in this matter in Great Britain, it would
still remain true that for us in America it is one of the highest duties
of self-preservation to keep alive the uplifting influences represented
in the public support of these institutions. The future of this country,
even more than its past, will be irrevocably committed to the democratic
principle in government. As is the people--in the widest sense of the
word--so will be the national life and character. In the future, even
more than in the past, crudity, narrowness, well-meaning ignorance, and
low standards of taste and ethics will, unless met with corrective
tendencies, color our national life. The public school and the public
library--"instruments equal in power to the Dionysiac theatre, and
vastly greater in their range of power," to quote the language of one of
the most thoughtful of our men of letters--will stand more and more, in
our American communities, as such corrective tendencies.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND THE PUBLIC

One of the first clear statements of the Public Library as a
business enterprise, involving certain amounts invested by a
city with