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the deficiencies of the Museum Library in 1842, which was drawn up by Mr. Panizzi, with the aid of Mr. Winter Jones and Mr. Watts, with the entries in the catalogues of the present day. The comparison would show an amount of system in the purchases which is worthy of record. We have space for only two or three examples. The collection was reported to be very full in the department of classical literature, accordingly we find that the entries under Aristotle have increased by only about one-sixth. But in 1842 the British Museum possesses but 142 Bibles, 60 New Testaments, 92 Psalms, and 95 other 'portions of the Bible,' being, in all, 389 Bibles and parts of the Bible. On turning to the New Catalogue, showing the present state of the collection, we find that, reckoning five entries to each leaf of the catalogue, there are 1685 entire copies of the Bible in different editions and languages, 370 Old Testaments, 1255 New Testaments, and other parts in proportion; the whole number of entries, including cross-references, being little under ten thousand. In 1842 the Museum catalogues present only 135 entries' under the name of Luther. Now the Supplementary Catalogue,' which receives nothing but accessions of a date considerably subsequent to 1842, alone contains nearly nine hundred entries under Luther.' In 1842 there is no edition of Hans Sachs.' The Supplementary 'Catalogue' now contains 123 entries under his name; and, whereas this was given as an example of the utter poverty of the library, at that date, in the older German poets,' we believe that we are right in saying that the Museum has at present a very much finer collection of old German poetry than is to be found in any collection in Germany. Concerning American literature, it was reported that this department was hitherto ' very incomplete. A commencement has been recently made towards removing this defect, but the progress is as yet unim'portant.' We have already told our readers that the Museum now contains twice as many American books as any library in the United States. It was also stated, Of Hungarian books, there were not, perhaps, half a dozen in the library ' until very recently;' and, until 1837 Russian literature was a total blank in the British Museum;' in these tongues it now possesses the best collections existing beyond the bounds of their respective countries-a boast which may be extended to the collections in every modern European language. In the case of Polish literature, the present position of the Museum Library is still more remarkable. Whereas a few years ago there was scarcely a Polish book on the shelves, it now contains such a collection as not only does not, but, owing to the censorship of

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the press, could not exist in Warsaw, Posen, or Lemberg; or, indeed, with security in any other capital in Europe. Who can tell how long the Polish library, which was founded and is supported by Poles, in Paris, may continue unmolested? But at the Museum exiled books find a refuge, with which no Alien Act is likely ever to interfere. If we go back as far as 1817, we find many amusing contrasts, of which we will name but two. In the printed catalogue of that date we find under 'Schiller' nothing but The Ghost Seer,' and the name of Goethe does not appear at all. Some months ago we counted under the head of Schiller 226 entries, 66 of which date before 1813, and under that of Goethe 264, 67 of which date before 1813. Nor have the claims of individual authors in the English and in the universal language been neglected. For example, from the Report to which we have alluded, it appears that in 1842 we had only 12 out of 45 known editions of Grotius de 'Jure Belli ac Pacis.' The Supplementary Catalogue,' of very recent accessions alone, contains 22 editions of that work. A А copy of Cocker's Arithmetic' (of the fiftieth edition) has also removed the name of that celebrated book from the list of 'libri desiderati.' But notwithstanding this last and some other equally notable accessions, among others, a copy of 'Wordsworth's Poems,' - the library still affords scope for development in our vernacular literature. Until the present Principal Librarian called attention to the necessity of amending the copyright law, the British public, as he observed, was 'deprived of British books by the very Acts of Parliament 'which were meant to enrich the national library with them.' There was no practical power of enforcing their observance; the books were not sent; and there was an obvious formal objection to grants of money for buying books to which the Museum had a legal right. Hence, in Mr. Croker's evidence, in 1849, he expressed himself 'surprised at the deficiency of 'common books. There is great wealth in the higher order of books, and considerable and wonderful deficiencies in very 'small works.' We do not know that a library of nearly six hundred thousand volumes could have higher praise; and the hasty glance we have taken at its condition must have convinced our readers that, if not the largest (as it probably soon will be), it is unquestionably the least incomplete collection of books in the world.

In 1836, when Dr. Olinthus Gregory complained that a library worthy of the nation ought to contain 600,000 volumes, who could have believed that the collection would have risen, from a little more than a third of that number, to nearly

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the desiderated magnitude, in little more than twenty years! The present rate of increase is equivalent to the whole of the King's Library' once in every three years; and the annual Parliamentary grant for books and binding alone is, for last year, 19,500l., being just one hundred pounds more than the total expenses of the British Museum in 1833.

If the national library can so well afford to be compared, as to its contents, with the largest continental collections, the arrangements by which its contents become available to the public are such as to distance all rivals, and to cause it to be held up as an example for imitation, in almost every detail, by the Government of a nation which has long prided itself upon the unapproached magnificence of its literary establishments. The following words are from the Report of the Commission on the Bibliothèque Impériale, published in the Moniteur' last July:

'Monsieur Labrouste a étudié à Londres la construction si remarquable de la salle de lecture du British Museum et celles des nouveaux bâtiments qui en sont les dépendances. Nous sommes assurés que toutes les dispositions importantes et applicables à la Bibliothèque Impériale seront heureusement reproduites ou perfectionnées par ses soins. Mais ce n'est pas seulement par son ingénieux système de construction que la Bibliothèque Anglaise mérite un examen approfondi. Les moyens pratiques et perfectionnés en usage pour tous les genres de service nous paraissent non moins dignes de la plus sérieuse attention, et nous croyons que la plupart pourraient être utilement importés en France.'

The Report goes on to specify the details recommended for imitation, but unaccountably overlooks what is certainly one of the most valuable and novel points in the whole economy of the library, namely, the mode of putting up newly-acquired books, in a scientific classification, without involving the occasional necessity of a total re-arrangement, with alteration of press-marks, &c.-a process which in a first-rate collection would be the work of many men for many years, and which has therefore been avoided, in all great and growing libraries, either by the total sacrifice of that most important principle of classified arrangement, as in the Bodleian, where the books are put up in the order in which they accrue, or by a very partial and imperfect mode of classification, such as that recommended in the French Report, by which the books in the library, up to a certain date, are classed as a separate 'fonds,' those coming in afterwards constituting another, which, in its turn, will have to be closed when it becomes unmanageably

large. Now, in the Museum Mr. Watts, to whom it appears, from the evidence of the last Parliamentary Commission, that the arrangement of the books is confided, has invented a very ingenious plan, which goes by the name of the 'expansive 'system,'-and of which the germ already existed in the method of arranging maps and periodical publications. By this device he has solved the problem: How, in a large and rapidlyincreasing library, to place every book, on its first arrival, in a position where it may receive a permanent press-mark, and yet, notwithstanding the unequal and unforeseen increase of classes, always be found in the company of its congeners?' The solution is startlingly simple. Instead of numbering the presses in strict, consecutive order, 1, 2, 3, &c., they are numbered in some such order as 1, 33, 57, 121, &c., which, while it enables the attendants to find the place of the press as easily as if the numbering were in the ordinary way, allows of shiftings of entire presses, without alteration of their numbers or of the position of the books on their shelves, and of the intercalation, to an indefinite extent, of presses with new numbers, whenever the increased quantity of volumes on particular classes requires it. For the perfect working of this plan, it is necessary that all the presses in the library should be of the same height, breadth, and depth,- a condition only partially fulfilled by the Museum Library, the older portions of which were fitted up before the adoption of this system: when the plan is once in complete operation, it is not disturbed even by the removal of the library, or of parts of it, to new buildings, whenever the bulk of the collection may have outgrown its domicile. The perfect classification of arrangement, which is possible on this plan only, is the best of all practical substitutes for that proved impossibility, a good and useful classed catalogue of a great library.

Into the details of the admirable economy of the new Reading Room it is impossible that we should enter; but if our readers will only reflect how liable to a very troublesome amount of disorder is a collection of a few hundred books, used only by two or three persons, and will then picture to themselves a library of nearly 600,000 volumes, read daily by some four or five hundred people, some of whom have two hundred volumes out at a time, so managed that no volume is ever out of its place the morning after it has been used; that no reader has to wait more than a few minutes for the books he wants, though such books may not have been removed from their remote shelves for half a century before; and that loss scarcely ever

occurs; they will certainly agree with us in regarding the Reading Room of the British Museum as one of the most marvellous triumphs ever attained by system and order. Even when the old Reading Room was in operation, Mr. Jewett, the librarian of the American Smithsonian Institution, after spending two years in the investigation of European libraries for the purpose of enabling us in America to establish our libraries on the best possible foundation,' came to the conclusion, that 'any person who wishes to become thoroughly acquainted with the whole subject of Bibliothekswissenschaft, with the science of libraries, need go no further than the British Museum. It is by far the best regulated library in the world.' Mr. Panizzi, in the days of the old Reading Room, made a personal examination of the economy of ninety-five foreign libraries, and reported, before Mr. Ewart's Committee, as a general result, I have no hesitation in saying that I never learnt a single thing that I 'could apply to the library of the British Museum.' Among other peculiarities of this library are these: 1st, the number of books allowed to each reader is unlimited-a privilege of which some readers avail themselves to the full; thus we have heard of a reader who sent in for all the annuals and gift books published during the preceding year; another application was, the undersigned will feel particularly obliged by any gentleman favouring him with as many works as he conveniently can, on the following subjects; government, political liberty.' The requisitionist was in each case accommodated' to the utmost of the carrying powers of the staff of attendants and the limits of the Reading Room tables. In foreign libraries one volume at a time is the ordinary rule. In the Vatican Library, where permission to read is not easily attainable, it was made the subject of a formal charge against an eminent French academician that he had presumed to ask for, and compare, two editions of a Latin classic. 2nd. The books are brought to the readers within a few minutes of their asking for them; whereas in those foreign libraries in which it is not the rule, as it was in Berlin, and is now in Vienna and Munich, that the reader must send in his demand the day before he wants his book, he has often to wait hours, and still more often to go away because the book cannot be found. 3rd. In the Museum alone, the public has the free use of all the catalogues, which, in other libraries, are kept solely for the service of the librarians. In the Vatican,

During about twenty years of Mr. Panizzi's administration, it is recorded that only two thefts had occurred, and those of books of quite trifling value.