compartment, figure of God the Father in the centre of the Holy Choir, painted in red, and surrounded by a nimbus of blue with golden rays, below figures of the Saviour, angels and demons; in the centre compartment, to left, figure of Plotin seated upon a chair with canopy, expounding to four male figures; to left, St. Augustine addressing a group of male and female figures; below, figure of Christ and demon, etc.-C. At top of page, to right, a group of the Heathen divinities with their names; below, the destruction of Carthage; in the centre, three semi-nude youths flagellating each other with birches, and in the background, male and female figures dancing; below these two compartments, to the right, figure ploughing before the tomb of Numa Pompilius, and to the left, St. Augustine standing between seated figures of Jupiter, Ruminus, and Juno, each of whom are suckling a goat and a pig.

"These three remarkable pages are in the finest condition, the colouring being most brilliant. A complete copy of the work is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, with the miniatures by François Foucquet, and is in two volumes; the present pages are particularly interesting as not being in an actual sense a copy of the paintings by Foucquet, although here and there the subjects are the same. For a full account of this Paris MS. see François Foucquet et les miniatures de la Cité de Dieu de St. Augustin, par Louis Thuasne,' Paris, 1898."

་

I convinced myself that the three leaves described in this notice are the leaves from Volume I. of the Mâcon manuscript, Nos. 73, 231, and 289. They are the frontispieces of Books II., VII., and IX.

The subjects represented in' these frontispieces are, with some variations, identical with those of the corresponding pictures in the manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Bibliothèque de Sainte-Geneviève, and the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum. On this subject reference may be made to the observations which I put forth in the

Cahier of the "Journal des Savants" of the month of July last.

The town of Mâcon vainly endeavoured, at the sale in London, to have knocked down to it the leaves which a guilty hand abstracted from the most precious of its manuscripts. They are to-day the property of Mr. Quaritch. But we hope that sooner or later they will get into the hands of a conscientious amateur who will secure for himself great honour by sending back to the town of Mâcon the three leaves cut out of the manuscript of the "Cité de Dieu." Let us hope also that the ninth stolen leaf will not be long in being found and restored to its place in the volume of which it formed part. The ninth leaf is the frontispiece of Book XXI.; the painter should have represented in it St. Augustine in the middle of the four philosophers, Epicurus, Zeno, Varro, and Antiochus.

L. DELISLE.

ACCESS IN PUBLIC LENDING

OPEN
LIBRARIES.

FROM THE READER'S POINT OF VIEW.

HE other day I was asked, by some one who was under the delusion that I was a musical authority, for the exact words of an old song, very popular in the reigns of the Queen's uncles: and I ran up to the British Museum to make quite sure of my answer. The first duty of literary man is to verify his quotations. To my astonishment the song was not in the collection where I naturally sought it, and I appealed for help to one of the ever-courteous staff. "If you wouldn't mind coming to the shelves," said he, "we can hit upon it in two minutes; but if you plunge into the catalogue

amongst the collections, it's quite a chance if you find it in as many hours." So we went together, and since what he failed to think of I happened to know, and vice versâ, between us the old favourite was speedily unearthed and my fictitious reputation saved.

There's the whole point, for a reader who doesn't quite know where to get what he wants: "Come to the shelves!" The learned man is satisfied to go to the counter and ask for the volume he desires: it is already known to him actually or by repute. And, at the other end of the scale, the poor lad who only wants a pleasant tale to lift him for an evening out of the sordid surroundings of his life is quite content to receive blindfold "somethin' interestin', mister." But the great bulk of readers have to choose, perhaps even to search: and search and choice are only possible at the shelves. Nevertheless, while accustomed myself to browse amongst the shelves of the London Library and the London Institution unchecked, and well acquainted as I am with the splendid collection on the open shelves all round the British Museum Reading-Room, recognizing too, as I always have done, the absolute necessity for this to anyone reading seriously, and not for mere amusement, I confess I was considerably startled when, in 1895, I stumbled across a paragraph in my newspaper, giving in a few lines a resumé of the yearly report of the Public Library at Clerkenwell, where the shelves had been thrown open during the year to the multitude of very poor folk in that region, with no more damage to the books than in those libraries where personal introduction or high fees jealously guarded the portals: nay, with less! The year's loss was but one or two volumes of absolutely trifling value; and these were possibly only mislaid. The tearing out of plates and tables, and the other wickednesses over which librarians groan when you meet them in confidential talk, absolutely seemed not to exist in Clerkenwell. The library committee had allowed the librarian (Mr. James D. Brown) to try this new departure, on his assurance that