hoped that they will have the effect of bringing the various premises, as far as possible, up to the standard of safety justly demanded by the public, and will be of great use to the licensees themselves, as well as to architects engaged on new theatres.

Great progress has been made in this direction with the cooperation of architects, owners, and lessees, who are well aware that the greater the proved safety of the theatres is, the larger will be their audiences.

The committee strive hard, with the skilful co-operation of their permanent officials, to mitigate the necessary inconvenience caused to licensees and proprietors by alterations which are deemed necessary for the protection of the public; and all their endeavours are responded to and assisted by the co-operation of the Lord Chamberlain, who declines to issue any licences to places not sanctioned by the London County Council.

At the present time the chief difference of opinion that has arisen between the committee and a minority of the Council has been on the application of temperance legislation.

We are all at one, of course, in our desire to do what is in our power to prevent excessive drinking, but I am always in fear that the extreme portion of teetotalers may damage the cause we all have at heart, by pushing too fast and too far their principles of total abstinence.

An old friend of mine, a witty and Liberal lady, passed a few days in a country house where Radical and teetotal views were pushed to extremes. On leaving it, she exclaimed: 'It is only by God's mercy that I have not become a confirmed Tory and an habitual drunkard.'

When I was Vice-Chairman of the Royal Commission on Licensing, I asked Lady Henry Somerset, who has done more for the cause of temperance than any woman living, whether, if there were no such thing as excessive drinking, there would be any necessity for any of her societies or efforts. Her answer was, 'None whatever.'

It is in a spirit of moderation and reform, not giving occasion to our enemies to blaspheme, that I hope the Council will proceed, removing, where and when it is possible, temptation to drink, and, above all, setting their faces like flints against all excess.

Readers of the Creevey Papers, which have been lately published, will see with pain how common, and almost universal, drunkenness was in the days when the Georges reigned. Such sights, familiar in the times of our ancestors, are unknown among gentlemen of the present generation. This should give us hope that education may step in and accomplish the good work, and remove the shame that still hangs over us of spending millions of our annual income on strong drink.

There is another point on which feeling runs high, and that is

the question of the employment of women at bars where intoxicating liquors are sold. Miss Orme, whose experience is unrivalled, was appointed by the Labour Commission to inquire into the question. She gives many arguments from a moral and physical point of view against such employment, and many good women whose noble efforts on behalf of their sex appeal strongly to the sympathies of men agree with her; on the other hand, it is said it would be cruel to circumscribe the already narrow field in which women can gain a livelihood. In the face of such conflicting opinions, and taking into consideration the comparatively small number of barmaids employed in the music-hall bars under the Council's control, I think that public opinion must be brought to bear on the hardships of their lot, with a view to their amelioration, and that the Council exercised a wise discretion in saying that they would lay down no law on the subject, but that they would view with satisfaction any diminution in the number of young women employed in bars where alcoholic drinks are sold.

ALGERNON WEST.

HARRIS

LENDING LIBRARIES AND CHEAP BOOKS

MUCH has been written lately in condemnation of the free libraries, on the ground that they were chiefly used by those who cared only for light reading, and that the more serious books were rarely in demand. It is quite true that out of each six books taken during the year from a free library five will be novels. But it would be quite unfair to take no notice of the considerable number of more serious books that are read as well. Taking, for instance, the annual report of our Bromley Library, I see that during the last twelve months more than seven thousand books have been borrowed from the departments of theology and philosophy,' 'biography and history,' 'travels and topography,' and 'laws, commerce, politics, &c.' This is certainly a quite respectable figure, the more so as our library contains, all taken, only 5875 volumes in all these departments, to which 120 volumes only were added during the last twelve months. It must also be said that the very wide division of 'laws, commerce, politics, &c.,' which surely would have been in great demand during the last few years, is represented in the library by 260 odd volumes, and that only five new books have found their way to the shelves of this department during the last twelve months (as against 280 in the branch of prose fiction').

Besides, it seems to me that the rôle of the free libraries has not been quite understood in these discussions, and that the poor reader has been unjustly censured. It would be perhaps more correct to say that the free libraries have fulfilled their function admirably, as they have developed a taste for reading, and have powerfully contributed to create a quite new class of readers, especially in the young generation. No very deep investigation is required, indeed, to show that the love of reading has greatly increased wherever free lending libraries have been opened-one has only to look attentively at the scores and hundreds of people who come every day to the libraries to take books. And if these readers have a decided taste for novels, these novels are certainly of a better sort than the penny dreadfuls or the Police News, which were formerly so widely read amidst this class of readers. Busy people, who have little time for reading after a day's work, must

first be brought into the habit of caring for a book in their spare time, and this is generally done by light reading. Besides, let us not forget what quantities of novels have been absorbed in youth by every one of us. Nowadays the novel is the young people's way of learning something about the world and its ways.

To create in the reading public a love for a higher order of books is certainly an urgent necessity; but for this purpose something else besides the lending library is necessary-I mean cheap editions of serious books. It is a fact that books of a serious character cannot be read quickly, and a volume borrowed from a lending library cannot be kept for months. If it takes a philosophically trained man more than a month to read a volume of Spencer or Darwin, in order that he may properly understand and assimilate to some extent the teaching, how much more necessary is it for the average reader of the free lending library to have plenty of time for the comprehension of such books?

I have often heard French working men say: 'I cannot read a serious book from a public library; I must pick it up second-hand. Then I read it at my leisure, which is generally at night only, when all is quiet, when the family is asleep; and even that I cannot do every day. Very often when I am reading a borrowed book, part of it leads me to consult another book; so I try to get this second book from the library. Sometimes I can get it, sometimes not. If I succeed in getting it, and have read what I want, I then go back to the library for the first book, and as often as not it is out. No, I must have the book upon my own shelf.' That is really how it ought to be.

Books of serious matter must be the property of the reader. Even to a good novel we all like to refer occasionally, and it is the same with a book of poems; but still more is this the case with a book more or less scientific. To such a book we should have the facility to refer constantly and on all sorts of occasions. It may be that we want to read a passage from it to a friend with whom we have a discussion, or we may look in the book for a point to be used in argument at a meeting, or else we are anxious to get a general idea before going to hear a lecture, or we may want to compare the ideas of one writer with those of some other writer on the same subject. Only in this way we learn to fully understand an author and to appreciate books. Good books must be a possession, if it be only to open one of them in some idle moment, to read a few lines at random, to pencil upon the margin our own observation, even though it be only the remark How beautiful!' or a mere sign of interrogation.

The free lending libraries are undoubtedly developing the taste for books; but are English books cheap enough for the reader with small means to buy them? The stream of good books in cheap editions, published of late in this country, has been a most

encouraging symptom, and the appearance of any good book in a shilling or a sixpenny edition has been greeted with delight by all serious readers. But we claim more from the publishers. First, the price of some of these books must be still further reduced, and we welcome the pretty shilling edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, even though we have had (since 1901 only!) a half-crown edition of the same work; secondly, the cheap books should be of a library shape; thirdly, the cheap edition should not be kept until years and years after the more expensive one has been in circulation, as is now the case. This last is a most important point, for every keen reader wishes to have the book while it is spoken about, and while the reviews are calling attention to its merits. Furthermore, there should be the means for circulating cheap editions of serious books in the country, so that even in small provincial towns new books should be brought under the eyes of the would-be buyers.

The high price of most serious books has been until lately the chief obstacle in the way of spreading good educational literature in England, and the great majority of excellent works that came out during the last half-century still remains very expensive. The English publisher seldom realises how unjust he is, not only to the reader and the writer, but to himself, in bringing out only expensive editions of such books, which in a cheap form could be sold by the thousand instead of by the hundred. It would be extremely interesting to know the exact number of copies of the half-crown edition of Darwin's more popular works, and especially the shilling edition, that have been sold lately, as compared with the previous editions; but, failing these figures, we may perhaps take as a striking example in point the sixpenny edition of Tolstoy's Resurrection: 130,000 copies of it were sold last winter, while of the beautifully illustrated six-shilling edition only a few thousand copies have been sold in the course of two years.

In France, in Germany, but especially in Russia, the publishers understand perfectly well the advantage of cheap publications, and a vast amount of books, marvellously cheap and well printed, crowd the Continental book market. The result is that such books not only satisfy the need of the reader who is looking out for them, but they also attract those who otherwise would not have thought of buying books and of starting a little library of their own. Perhaps the greatest successes in this direction have been attained in Russia. Cheap editions of good books, both by Russian authors and as translations, began to come out in that country about forty-five years ago; and I must here say that this excellent tendency was due to a great extent to the Russian women. At present Russian classics are circulating in numbers of cheap editions. The whole of Poush

prose and verse costs only three shillings in a quite decent tenvolume edition, while his separate poems and stories can be obtained