in this new issue. Whose history of the reigns of Henry
VIII. and of Queen Elizabeth is the true one? Is it Hume's, Turner's,
Lingard's, or Froude's? "Do not read to me history," said a sick
monarch, "that I know is a lie. Read to me something that is true." Is
biography true? Which of the score of lives of Mary Queen of Scots is
the true biography? Is theology true? Whose is the true body of
divinity? Is science true? Why was it necessary to rewrite all the
science in the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for the
ninth edition? Homer's Iliad, Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's
Hamlet and Othello, do not require to be rewritten every ten or twenty
years. The Vicar of Wakefield, Ivanhoe, and Robinson Crusoe have held
and will hold their own from generation to generation without revision,
because they are _ideally true_ pictures of human life and human nature.
Shall we say that in literature and science there is nothing true but
fiction and the pure mathematics?

In the public libraries which are growing up in our land, fully four
fifths of the money appropriated for books is spent in works adapted to
the wants of scholars. In the larger libraries the proportion is even
greater. It is hardly becoming for scholars, who enjoy the lion's share,
to object to the small proportional expenditure for books adapted to the
wants of the masses who bear the burden of taxation.

Mr. Edward Edwards, of the Manchester Library, speaking, in 1859, of
novels and romances--which he circulated more freely than is done in any
American library--remarked as follows: "It may be truthfully said that
at no previous period in the history of English literature has prose
fiction been made, in so great a degree as of late years, the vehicle of
the best thoughts of some of the best thinkers. Nor, taking it as a
whole, was it ever before characterized by so much general purity of
tone or loftiness of purpose."

HOW TO USE A LIBRARY

The substance of two addresses made at Pittsfield, Mass.,
and printed in _The Library Journal_ for February, 1884. Mr.
Hubbard's advice with regard to children's reading was
followed long ago by specialization in work with children.
That with regard to adult fiction remains unheeded. Some
day, possibly we shall have "adults' librarians" and
training for "work with adults."

James Mascarene Hubbard was born in Boston in 1836. He was
made assistant librarian of th