Those who claim that we might as well let the libraries down to the level of the poorest books, because unformed and ignorant minds are capable of nothing better, should be told that people are never raised by giving them nothing to look up to. To devour infinite trash is not the road to learn wisdom, or virtue, or even to attain genuine amusement. To those who are afraid that if the libraries are purified, the masses will get nothing that they can read, the answer is, have they not got the entire world of magazines, the weekly, daily, and Sunday newspapers, which supply a whole library of fiction almost daily? Add to these plenty of imaginative literature in fiction and in poetry, on every library's shelves, which all who can read can comprehend, and what excuse remains for buying what is neither decent nor improving? Take an example of the boundless capacity for improvement that exists in the human mind and human taste, from the spread of the fine arts among the people. Thirty years ago, their houses, if having any decoration at all, exhibited those fearful and wonderful colored lithographs and chromos in which bad drawing, bad portraiture, and bad coloring vied with each other to produce pictures which it would be a mild use of terms to call detestable. Then came the two great international art expositions at Philadelphia and Chicago, each greatly advancing by the finest models, the standard of taste in art, and by new economies of reproduction placing the most beautiful statues and pictures within the reach of the most moderate purse. What has been the result? An incalculable improvement in the public taste, educated by the diffusion of the best models, until even the poor farmer of the backwoods will no longer tolerate the cheap and nasty horrors that once disfigured his walls. The lesson in art is good in literature also. Give the common people good models, and there is no danger but they will appreciate and understand them. Never stoop to pander to a depraved taste, no matter what specious pleas you may hear for tolerating the low in order to lead to the high, or for making your library contribute to the survival of the unfittest.