them in their studies through life, and the use of books be to them a perpetual delight and refreshment."

"I do not mean," he adds, "that the university student should learn the contents of the most useful books; but I do mean that he should know of their existence, what they treat of, and what they will do for him. He should know what are the most important general reference books which will answer not only his own questions, but the multitude of inquiries put to him by less favoured associates who regard him as an educated He should know the standard writers on a large variety of subjects. He should be familiar with the best method by which the original investigation of any topic may be carried on. When he has found it he appreciates, perhaps for the first time, what books are for, and how to use them. He finds himself a professional literary or scientific worker, and that books are the tools of his profession. . . No person

man.

has any claim to be a scholar until he can conduct such an original investigation with ease and pleasure. This facile proficiency does not come by intuition, nor from the clouds. Where else is it to be taught, if not in the college or university ?" John Morley in an address at the dedication of a public library a few years ago declared that the object of libraries and books was to bring sunshine into our hearts and to drive moonshine out of our heads; such a training in the use of libraries as_that_proposed by Mr. Winsor and Dr. Poole would do very much towards clearing both moonshine and cobwebs out of the heads of those who might take it.

The university library of to-day is a thing of quite recent development; in fact, it is but little more than out of its teens; and yet it is really the ripest fruit of the library movement in America, since it represents and requires the best results in all branches of library economy developed up to the present time. The selection of books to be purchased for a university library is or should be made. largely by the faculty, each member of which is interested deeply in some one branch of study. A library thus built up will not only be one of general reference, but will also be an aggregation of special libraries. Such a library is not only the

storehouse whence the professor may draw increase of knowledge and inspiration for his work, but by the skillful arrangement of seminar rooms with reference to the books in the several departments of knowledge it becomes the workshop or laboratory of both professors and students, and the very centre of university instruction. And just such libraries our best universities now have. The Low Library at Columbia has a capacity for a. million and a half of volumes. It has now 352,000 volumes; a central reading room with an open shelf reference collection of 10,000 volumes; a law library of 36,000 volumes in one wing; the Avery Architectural Library of 18,000 volumes in another; 18 seminar rooms, Mr. Winsor's "libraries with class rooms annexed," 10 with rooms for many more under the same roof, and over twenty department libraries ranging from a few hundred to several thousand volumes each, selected with special reference to their constant use by students in their daily work. Books are loaned to professors and students and the library is open freely to all, properly introduced, for reference and study. Cornell has a general library, a forestry collection, the White historical library, and seven seminars, all under one roof, with law and veterinary libraries in their respective buildings, with a total of over 261,000 volumes, including many very valuable special collections. Primarily a reference library, officers and graduate students may take out books, and undergraduates also over holidays on which the library is closed. There is a free reference library in the reading room, and cards of admission to the shelves in the stacks are issued. Lecture courses on the use of the library and in bibliography are given. The Harvard University Library still holds first place with over 400,000 volumes; has ten departmental libraries, and 29 special reference libraries for the various branches of study pursued under direction of the faculty of arts and sciences; loans books to officers and students, and is freely opened to the use of scholars. "Tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true" that the ruthless hand of death should have stayed the signature that would have given the Harvard Library its much needed new home. Princeton, with its two connected library buildings, has capacity for a million and a quarter

reached his result by the opposite road. He had carefully planned a piece of pure romance, one as independent of time and space as Prince Otto or The Prisoner of Zenda. As he himself confesses in an ingenuous preface, the book was well on the road to completion when it occurred to him that a historical atmosphere would not be amiss, and so casting his eye over mediæval history, he found that the life and times of Frederick Barbarossa coincided as closely as any with his theme and forthwith a few ingenious changes of proper names made Barbarossa the hero of his story.

But quite independently of personal preference, there is probably one definition on which every one will agree: that a historical novel is one that contains an element of historic truth, either the spectacular events of the romance of history or the less tangible social atmosphere of the time, and that this historic element is so woven into the warp and woof of the story, so much an integral part of the plot that no amount of ingenious editing could hold the book together without it. And yet a moment's thought will show that with this definition we are no better off than we were before; because every story that is being written to-day, based upon an intelligent observation of life, either is or will become a historical novel, according to this definition. Mr. Howells's latest book, for instance, Letters Home, is more truly a historical picture than nine-tenths of the novels of past epochs that are being produced with infinite antiquarian research.

It has been lately said, and very well said, indeed, by Professor Brander Matthews that the best of all historical novels is that which deals with contemporary history. Unfortunately, it is the rarest type. It seems almost axiomatic that any writer can treat best the life that he himself has lived and known, and the further he separates himself from the scene of his story, either by time or space, the less sure must his touch become. Most modern novelists have learned this lesson as far as the locality of their stories goes. The novel of India or of Iceland or the Uganda Protectorate is left to those who have been there, and can write from actual knowledge. Yet it is only a year ago that a young American author of considerable talent confessed to being en

gaged upon a story of Arizona, the whole plot of which was a study of the effect of climate upon temperament, and when asked how long a residence in Arizona had been required as a preparation for the work, confessed to never having been in that State, but offered as qualifications a six months' knowledge of Southern California and the acquaintance of a man who passed through Arizona on his way back to New York. A curious fact in connection with this book is that it has since enjoyed a considerable degree of popular success.

Now the average novelist who writes a story of the Crusades or of ancient Egypt is more seriously handicapped, more hopelessly in the dark about a thousand little essential details of everyday life than was the author of the Arizona story. Their one advantage is that no one can come back from the past to point out their errors. They are at the mercy of only a few cleverer or more painstaking antiquarians than themselves. Yet, at best, the novel that deals with bygone centuries is an artificial creation that can never become even approximately the sort of book which a writer of that bygone time could have produced, for it is written in the light of subsequent knowledge that he lacked and it ignores countless facts which in his day seriously influenced the progress of events. It would be a good rule for young novelists to follow, to avoid the historical novel unless they aim first of all at a story of great dramatic action, and can find some big crucial moment of the past that will give them the spectacular effect that they need for their final crisis. To attempt to throw a purely psychological story a century or two into the past is to accept a serious handicap without the gain of any appreciable advantage. It is hard enough to be accurate regarding names and dates of medieval France or ancient Athens, but to attempt to depict the action of the human heart in those remote days is like groping in a fog.

A story by a new writer, Mr. Samuel Gardenhire, is a good case in point. It is a tale of the Rome of Nero and is entitled Lux Crucis. It is one of those books which are fated to challenge comparison with earlier and stronger stories and to suffer correspondingly. Taken quite by itself, Mr. Gardenhire's book

shows no small amount of scholarly knowledge of Roman history and Roman social life. He has a wholesome reverence for Biblical traditions and his story will undoubtedly be read with genuine interest by many intelligent and worthy people. It would not be fair to accuse Mr. Gardenhire of a lack of originality. Stories of ancient Rome have come to be written in accordance with a sort of unwritten formula. They must all have a beautiful Christian maiden, persecuted by some one of Nero's parasites and eventually exposed in the arena; a barbarian giant who may or may not be a Christian convert, and who performs prodigies in single-handed combat with wild beasts; Nero's vanity, his craven superstition, his vindictive cruelty, must have whole chapters set apart to their portrayal; and the final scenes must be the wholesale slaughter of the Amphitheatre, the living torches of Christian martyrs, with their flames and smoke curling heavenward. Sienkiewicz, in Quo Vadis, was not the first to do all this in fiction. Mr. Gardenhire, in Lux Crucis, will surely not be the last; and readers who cannot find a second Quo Vadis will probably be very well content with the conscientious and well meant effort of this new American author. But where Mr. Gardenhire fails is in the social atmosphere of his book, the attitude of the men towards the women, and of both sexes towards life in general and religion in particular. It is not necessary to go the length that Mr. Henry Finck goes, when he questions the existence of romantic love prior to the middle ages, in order to realise that there is a gulf between the conditions of modern domestic life and the attitude of the typical Roman towards the women of his household. Mr. Gardenhire's book is essentially clean-minded and wholesome-a quality which certainly ought not to lay him open to censure. Yet, on the other hand, it must be remembered that the age of Nero was a notoriously profligate age, in which no hard and fast line could be drawn between monde and demi-monde, no simple classification of matrona on the one hand and meretrix on the other; even the legal status of marriage was subject to varying degrees of dignity and honour, while slave and freed woman added further complications to the social scale. It is not needful to

picture the license of the times with the frankness of a Juvenal in order to make us feel it, and too much euphemism is almost as bad as too little. As we read Mr. Gardenhire's book and see the part he makes his women play in the story, the potent influence they exert in all the ordinary interests of daily life, we cannot help feeling that they are really nineteenth century women masquerading for the time being in effective and becoming antique drapery.

There is no suggestion of masquerade about Florence Converse's quaint and curious story of medieval England, Long Will. In spite of the fact that it is more than half a poem, a sort of prose epic full of a dignified and lofty symbolism, it is none the less saturated with genuine human nature; the atmosphere of the days when Chaucer's motley company gathered at the Tabard Inn, and the more serious minded Will Langland voiced the needs and hopes and sufferings of the people in the poem known so well to-day by name, and so little known in any other way, Piers the Plowman. Any reader who wishes to refresh his memory, will learn, if he takes the trouble to turn to his encyclopedia, that Long Will was the nickname bestowed upon the poet from his tallness of stature, and that "though there is mention made of the Malvern Hills more than once near the beginning of the poem, it is abundantly clear that he lived many years in Cornhill, London, with his wife, Kittie, and his daughter, Calete." And this fragment of biography, together with the material of Piers the Plowman itself, was all that Miss Converse really needed for the basis of her story. As we read of the dreamy, unworldly lad, leaving the monks of the Malvern Hills, among whom he had been reared, to go down into the valley and bring a message of hope and brotherly love to his fellowmen; as we follow him through the ensuing years, and see him struggling to maintain wife and child in decent poverty, while all the time his whole heart is absorbed in elaborating, revising, perfecting the poem which contains his message; and then as we read how that poem is passed on and on by word of mouth, among the people, gaining converts as it goes, how it finally comes to the ears of the boy king, Richard II.

-the "Richard the Redeless" of the poem-and kindles him with enthusiasm to rebel against the tyranny of princes and ministers, and priests, by whom he is surrounded; and finally how Calete, the poet's daughter, goes through the land on a sort of pastoral Odyssey, as full of idyllic charm as any part of Hewlett's Forest Lovers, disseminating far and wide the tidings that the time is ripe for a revolt, and that the young king is in sympathy with his people; as we read all this, we really care very little just how much is based upon old chronicles and traditions. Some strong and dramatic scenes are taken bodily from historythe revolt against the iniquitous poll-tax, the riots in London streets, the death of Wat Tyler, and King Richard's gallant bearing at that time. But this part of the book, while it gives the justification which the historical novel should have, is not the part that makes the lasting impression. Rather it is the purely imaginative part that is longest remembered -the scene where Calete reads Piers the Plowman to the youthful but enthusiastic King, and the many other scenes of her wanderings, under the guardianship of the King's closest friend, who for her sake is content to masquerade as a peddler and to disguise his voice with a halting stammer. Finally, it is not a book that will appeal to a wide class of readers; but those to whom symmetry of form and charm of style count for more than the mere story, will find in it an enduring pleasure not afforded by stories of robuster and more rapid action.

But, whether you like the type represented by Miss Converse's story or not, you could not imagine it as fitting into any other time or place than the England. of Chaucer and Long Will, and Richard the Redeles. Two stories that serve admirably as examples of the opposite type, the novel in which history is not a vital issue, but merely a picturesque accessory are Blount of Breckenhow, by Beulah Marie Dix, and Mr. Quiller-Couch's Hetty Wesley. Blount of Breckenhow has been pronounced by some enthusiastic and over-sanguine critics, as the best historical novel of the past five years. A strong story, an ingenious story, and one well calculated to sustain the reader's interest, it may well be conceded to be. But what there is about the historical

part of it which deserves praise is not so easy to understand. The action is supposed to take place in seventeenthcentury England, when the country was still rent with civil strife, and family and religious feuds dating back to the wars of the roses, had not yet died out. The story is told in the form of letters, miscellaneous family letters, written by many hands, but chiefly by one Bevill Rowlestone to his father and brothers, and by Bevill's promised wife, Arundel Carewe, to the members of her family. There is no use in denying the extreme ingenuity of these letters, both in form and substance. At first sight they seem to deal with matters which are of no concern or business of the general reader, miscellaneous and unrelated family matters, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place. But gradually, by putting together a name here, a detail there, we find that a story of big proportions is taking on a definite shape, a story of which the writers of the letters do not fully guess the import. Moreover, in form and phrasing these letters are excellent imitations; you can almost see the faded ink and yellowed pages; you can almost smell the dust of musty garrets upon them. They are more real than a carefully painted knot-hole on a plain deal board, or Egyptian scarabees manufactured in Birmingham. But the fact remains that the story they have to tell might have been just as well told in nineteenth-century English, and enacted in any corner of the globe where hostile armies meet, and the military discipline is lax. All that is vital in the story is independent of externals; it deals with a woman's unconscious love for a man who is not her husband, a man who is a mere private trooper, rude and untutored, but who has in him the material of which heroes are made. And gradually this man's unspoken reverence for the woman, Arundel, his unfailing care and forethought for her, force her not only to recognise that his manhood is something higher and finer than that of Bevill, her husband, but that he represents the ideal which she has mistakenly fancied was represented by the man she married. The dramatic moment in the story comes on the night when Arundel's child is born, the night when the enemy make their long-delayed attack upon the gar