_A word about the Alexandrian Museum. Learned men dwelt in it supported from the Public Funds. Kings and Emperors made this Museum their special Care._ I have nothing further that seems worth saying on this subject of libraries, except a few words about their use. If they stand empty, or with only an occasional visitor; if students do not frequent them and make use of their books, why were they ever established, and what are they save that “idle luxury in the garb of scholarship” to which Seneca alludes? The Alexandrian kings saw to it that there were students to make use of their library, for they built near it a Museum, so called because it was, so to speak, a temple of the Muses, in which it was possible to follow the Muses, to cultivate the humanities, free from all cares, even from the labour of providing food and lodging, since the students in it were supported from the public funds. How admirable an institution! Strabo gives us the best description of it: “Part of the royal palace is a Museum, in which one may stroll or sit at ease, with a great hall, in which men of letters, who are members of the Museum, hold meetings and take their meals together. Moreover, this college, as we may call the Museum organization with its students, has a foundation or common fund for its support; and a priest, who is president of the Museum, formerly appointed by the kings of Egypt, but at the present time by the emperor.” He says this was part of the royal palace. Doubtless the kings wished it to be near their own apartments that they might have at hand the learned men who were its inmates, and converse with them when they pleased; thus acquiring knowledge and training their minds. It had porticoes and exedras, the former being more for the exercise of the body, the latter for the training of the mind, as in them the students gathered, conferred, and held discussions. There was also a hall, where they ate together. Philostratus says the same thing in speaking of Dionysius, who was, he writes, “received into the Museum;” and then adds, “The Museum is the Egyptian banquet-hall of learning, which brings together all the men of letters from all parts of the world.” Note particularly the words, “all the men of letters from all parts of the world,” for even if not to be taken literally they show that the number was very large and the expense very great. Timon the satirist calls our attention to the same points when he says, in his satirical and carping way, “Many people are supported at public expense in Egypt the populous, that they may idly browse among books and quarrel over them in the cave of the Muses.” Athenaeus, commenting on this passage, says, “Timon spoke of the Museum as a cave or cage, thus making sport of the philosophers maintained there, as if they were so many rare birds.”