MR. SCHWARTZ, in the explanation of his classification and notation,* implies rather than states two principles to which I cannot assent. One of them that there must never be two classes on one shelf, seems to me without any foundation; the question is a purely practical one, and there is no practical inconvenience in that arrangement. Another that there must be the same number of books in each class, is equally invalid. Indeed, it is impossible to carry it out. His own class Fiction is certainly larger than his class Engineering, and so is each of the 10 parts into which he divides Fiction. In his class Wines and liquors I have perhaps 3 books; in his class Carpentry, Building and Architecture I have nearer 3000. Useful Arts is one class, Industrial receipts is another. The first would have a hundred times as many books as the second. The classes American biography, British biography, French biography, have no more space assigned each than the class Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese biography; they would outstrip it in the number of volumes ten to one; they would outstrip Slavonic biography a hundred to one. It would be easy to multiply instances. And even if one could divide the books now in a library equally, the next 10 years may entirely overthrow the proportion. You might as well divide property equally. In fact, the best and most practically convenient basis of division is not equal number of books, but evident distinctness of subject. If a subject is definite and not confoundable with any other subject, no matter if there is now only one book on it in the library, no matter if there will never be more than one, we want to be able to go to that book at once and not to be obliged to pick it out from a number of books on other subjects. Thus, every man whose life has been written is a separate subject, no matter whether there is one life of him, or fifty. We want the one as well as the fifty separated from the lives of everybody else. Of course this principle, like every other, when put into practice has its limitations. It is founded on utility, and it may happen that in some cases a greater utility will come from its breach than from its observance; but it is nevertheless true

*(L. JNL., 10: 371-5.)

that in the main, minute classification is the most convenient.*

46

I must also protest against Mr. Schwartz's assertion that, No plan has yet been devised that will provide for the strict alphabetical arrangement of individual books in one series, and those that even approximate to it are obliged to use a cumbrous and complex system of notation." The notation in use at the Boston Athenæum provides for the exact alphabetical arrangement of the single novels of the most voluminous authors, as George Eliot, George Sand, Alexander Dumas, and Walter Scott; I do not consider it complex, and I do not find it cumbrous. C: A. CUTTER.

I should like to call attention to the fact that my report on classification, presented at the Library Conference last fall, having been written before Mr. Schwartz's final explanations of his scheme were published, was incorrect in speaking of his system as one which permitted of only a very imperfect alphabetical arrangement within the sections. His last paper, published in the LIBRARY JOURNAL for November, shows that he provides for a tolerably complete alphabetization of authors and titles on the principle of translating, by means of a table, given letter combinations by given figures.

The point is also made clearer that this is practically a fixed location system, and that it was on this account that Mr. Schwartz wished to make his classes of as nearly equal extent as might be, so that throughout the library each class might occupy the same number of shelves. If it were possible to plan ahead successfully for a library, or even for one's own library, it would be highly desirable; but no one can foresee in what ways a library is to increase; it has a perverse way of growing in unexpected directions, new subjects take on an unlooked-for importance, and the different departments bear very different relations to one another as time goes

brary which has grown up under different conditions. If, for instance, I were to try to arrange the Harvard College Library on Mr. Schwartz's plan I should certainly find as great differences between divisions meant to be equal as in any other classifications; and, judging from

my own experience here, I should be surprised to learn that in any library a classification laid out at the beginning with divisions of equal extent maintained anything like an approximate equality after incorporating the additions of fifteen or twenty years. W: C. LANE.

1. THE instances given of American libraries that are using the Q. O. D. system do not disprove what I said. I merely remarked that I did not know of any others but those I cited, and I limited my remarks to printed catalogues. Besides, the value of a system is not to be judged by the quantity of users, but rather by their weight. The really representative libraries that are using the Q. O. D. system are, I think, in the minority. To the non-users must be added (1) the English and foreign libraries, and (2) the publishers. If we take into the account the whole number of users of size symbols, the charge remains true that only a small minority are in favor of the Q. O. D. system because there is nothing better offered. I trust that the libraries that are cited as using the system in their printed lists, and who have neglected to send me copies, will remedy this defect in future, so that I may be able to make correct statements if I have occasion to refer to them again.

2. My reference to the metric system, as comparatively unknown, meant unknown in England and the United States, as might have been inferred by the words preceding it in the same paragraph. I shall be satisfied if English-speaking countries agree to adopt my plan. If it is a success, and the effete despotisms choose to fall in line, there is nothing to hinder it. It can be adapted to the metric system; but as the inch measure proceeds by eights and the metric by tens the translation of the scheme into the latter system will result in irregular fractions. I meant no disrespect to the metric system, which is, no doubt, an excellent one, otherwise 30 nations would not have agreed to adopt it. I shall try to learn it when it is universal in this country. Meanwhile I prefer to recommend a size notation that does not require of Americans and Englishmen a special education, to understand what it means. I know what 8 inches means, but

35 centimetres conveys to me no idea what

ever.

3. It is an error to say that my system uses a symbol for the fold to express the size. That the symbol is so used, even in the Q. O. D. system, is the very reason why I propose a new system, in which the terms 16°, 12°, 8°, etc., are invested with a new meaning that removes this contradiction. These terms with me mean not sixteenmo, duodecimo, and octavo, but 8th, 12th, and 16th.

4. Mr. Bowker's idea of sticking to a good thing is based on right principles, but there is a fallacy underlying his argument-viz., that "Whatever is is right." If we are not to invent something better simply because a certain system is in a fair way of becoming universal, then the Q. O. D. system is itself a violation of the rule. It proposes to use a new set of symbols in place of those everybody was agreed in "sticking to before its invention. It is, of course, an open question whether my system is an improvement, but that is a subject for argument, and cannot be determined by an ex-cathedra condemnation based on the supposition that the Q. O. D. system--itself an innovation-is the best that can be devised. For some of the supposed "complication" that Mr. Bowker thinks he finds in my system he must blame his proofreaders. The conventional sizes 4°, 8°, etc., were marked in my copy to be printed in heavy type in the table, and were so corrected in the proof. The failure of the printer to follow my directions makes that part of the article that refers to the heavy type unintelligible. The whole point of my system is simply this: For ordinary purposes use the conventional symbols, and for cases where extreme accuracy is desirable consider these symbols as parts of a progressive series of 64 numbers, each of which designates a particular height in inches from the elephant folio down to the two-inch high 64°.

A FEW years ago my friend, Mr. Alexander Ireland, published a very interesting volume which he called The booklover's enchiridion,' the handbook, that is to say, of those who love books. It was made up of extracts from the writings of a great variety of distinguished men, ancient and modern, in praise of books. It was a chorus of many voices in many tongues, a hymnn of gratitude and praise, full of such piety and fervor as can be paralleled only in songs dedicated to the supreme power, the supreme wisdom and the supreme love. Nay, there is a glow of enthusiasm and sincerity in it which is often painfully wanting in those other too commonly mechanical compositions. We feel at once that here it is out of the fulness of the heart, yes, and of the head, too, that the mouth speaketh. Here was none of that compulsory commonplace which is wont to characterize those testimonials of celebrated authors,' by means of which publishers sometimes strive to linger out the passages of a hopeless book toward its requiescat in oblivion. These utterances which Mr. Ireland has gathered lovingly together are stamped with that spontaneousness which is the mint mark of all sterling speech. It is true that they are mostly, as is only natural, the utterances of literary men, and there is a well-founded proverbial distrust of herring that bear only the brand of the packer, and not that of the sworn inspector. But to this objection a cynic might answer with the question, Are authors so prone, then, to praise the works of other people that we are to doubt them when they do it unasked?' Perhaps the wisest thing I could have done to-night would have been to put upon the stand some of the more weighty of this cloud of witnesses. since your invitation implied that I should myself say something, I will endeavor to set before you a few of the commonplaces of the occasion, as they may be modified by passing through my own mind, or by having made themselves felt in my own experience.

But

This

"The greater part of Mr. Ireland's witnesses testify to the comfort and consolation they owe to books, to the refuge they have found in them from sorrow or misfortune, to their friendship, never estranged and outliving all others. testimony they volunteered. Had they been asked, they would have borne evidence as willingly to the higher and more general uses of books in their service to the commonwealth, as well as to the individual man. Consider, for example, how a single page of Burke may emancipate the young student of politics from narrow views and merely contemporaneous judgments. Our English ancestors, with that common-sense which is one of the most useful,

Address at the opening of the Chelsea Library. (See P. 17 of this issue of LIB. JNL.),

though not one of the most engaging, properties of the race, made a rhyming proverb, which says that:

When land and goods are gone and spent,
Then learning is most excellent ;'

and this is true, so far as it goes, though it goes, perhaps, hardly far enough. The law also calls only the earth and what is immovably attached to it real property, but I am of opinion that those only are real possessions which abide with a man after he has been stripped of those others falsely so called, and which alone save him from seeming and from being the miserable forked radish to which the bitter scorn of Lear degraded every child of Adam. The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot be alienated. But they may be shared, they may be distributed, and it is the object and office of a free public library to perform these beneficent functions.

Books,' says Wordsworth, are a real world,' and he was thinking, doubtless, of such books as are not merely the triumphs of pure intellect, however supreme, but of those in which intellect infused with the sense of beauty aims rather to produce delight than conviction, or, if conviction, then through intuition rather than formal logic, and, leaving what Donne wisely calls

'Unconcerning things matters of fact'

to science and the understanding, seeks to give ideal expression to those abiding realities of the spiritual world for which the outward and visible world serves at best but as the husk and symbol. Am I wrong in using the word realities?-wrong in insisting on the distinction between the real and the actual? in assuming for the ideal an existence as absolute and selfsubsistent as that which appeals to our sensesnay, so often cheats them in the matter of fact? How very small a part of the world we truly live in is represented by what speaks to us through the senses when compared with that vast realm of the mind which is peopled by memory and imagination, and with such shining inhabitants! These walls, these faces, what are they in comparison with the countless images, the innumerable population which every one of us can summon up to the tiny show-box of the brain, in material breadth scarce a span, yet infinite as space and time? And in what, I pray, are those we gravely call historical characters, of which each new historian strains his neck to get a new and different view, in any sense more real than the personages of fiction? Do not serious and earnest men discuss Hamlet as they would Cromwell or Lincoln? Does

Cæsar, does Alaric, hold existence by any other or stronger tenure than the Christian of Bunyan or the Don Quixote of Cervantes or the Antigone of Sophocles? Is not the history which is luminous because of an indwelling and perennial truth to nature, because of that light which never was on land or sea, really more true, in the highest sense, than many a weary chronicle with names, date, and place in which 'an Amurath to Amurath succeeds'? Do we know as much of any authentic Danish prince as of Hamlet?

"But to come back a little nearer to Chelsea and the occasion that has called us together. The founders of New England, if sometimes, when they found it needful, an impracticable, were always a practical people. Their first care, no doubt, was for an adequate supply of powder, and they encouraged the manufacture of musket bullets by enacting that they should pass as currency at a farthing each-a coinage nearer to its nominal value, and not heavier than some with which we are familiar. Their second care was that 'good learning should not perish from among us,' and to this end they at once established the Latin Schoool in Boston, and soon after the college at Cambridge. The nucleus of this was, as you all know, the bequest in money by John Harvard. Hardly less important, however, was the legacy of his library, a collection of good books, inconsiderable measured by the standard of to-day, but very considerable then as the possession of a private person. From that little acorn what an oak has sprung, and from its acorn again what a vocal forest, as old Howell would have called it-old Howell, whom I love to cite, because his name gave their title to the Essays of Elia,' and is borne with slight variation by one of the most delightful of modern authors! It was, in my judgment, those two foundations, more than anything else, which gave to New England character its bent and to Boston that literary supremacy which, I am told, she is in danger of losing, but which she will not lose till she and all the world lose Holmes.

The opening of a free public library, then, is a most important event in the history of any town. A college training is an excellent thing; but, after all, the better part of every man's education is that which he gives himself, and it is for this that a good library should furnish the opportunity and the means. I have sometimes thought that our public schools undertook to teach too much, and that the older system, which taught merely the three R's, and taught them well, leaving natural selection to decide who should go farther, was the better. However this may be, all that is primarily needful in order to use a library is the ability to read. I say primarily, for there must also be the inclination, and, after that, some guidance in reading well. Formerly the duty of a librarian was considered too much that of a watchdog to keep people as much as possible away from the books, and to hand these over to his successor as little worn by use as he could. Librarians now, it is

pleasant to see, have a different notion of their trust, and are in the habit of preparing for the direction of the inexperienced lists of such books as they think best worth reading. Cataloging has also, thanks in great measure to American librarians, become a science, and catalogs, ceasing to be labyrinths without a clew, ale furnished with finger-posts at every turn. Subject catalogs again save the beginner a vast deal of time and trouble, by supplying him for nothing with one at least of the results of thorough scholarship, the knowing where to look for what he wants. I do not mean by this that there is or can be any short-cut to learning, but that there may be, and is, such a short cut to information that will make learning more easily accessible.

But have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key that admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination; to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us; it revives for us without a miracle the Age of Wonder, endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness, so that we walk invisible like fern seed and wit ness unharmed the plague at Athens or Florence or London; accompanying Cæsar on his marches, or look in on Catiline in council with his fellow-conspirators, or Guy Fawkes in the cellar of St. Stephen's. We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult, for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be admitted for the asking a society, too, which will not involve them in ruinous expense and still more ruinous waste of time and health and faculties?

Southey tells us that, in his walk, one stormy day, he met an old woman, to whom, by way of greeting, he made the rather obvious remark that it was dreadful weather. She answered, philosophically, that, in her opinion, 'any weather was better than none!' I should be half inclined to say that any reading was better than none, allaying the crudeness of the statement by the Yankee proverb, which tells us that, though all deacons are good, there's odds in deacons.' Among books, certainly there is much variety of company, ranging from the best to the worst, from Plato to Zola, and the first lesson in reading well is that which teaches us to distinguish between literature and merely printed matter. The choice lies wholly with ourselves. We have the key put into our hands ; shall we unlock the pantry or the oratory? There is a Wallachian legend which, like most of the figments of popular fancy, has a moral in it. One Bakála, a good-for-nothing kind of fellow in his way, having had the luck to offer a sacrifice especially well pleasing to God, is