effectually served by national institutions, so long as the system of private photography and piece-work endured: for the artist must have his profit, put it how you will: and it is this simple, and in the present state of things, legitimate condition, which cripples the library and museum on this side of their activity; and, while enriching the individual, impoverishes the State in its spiritual aspect, by impeding the free circulation of intellectual wealth. If the cause is as simple as I have stated, the remedy, fortunately, is no less so. In so far as photography for public objects is concerned, we must suppress the photographer as a tradesman. The State must enlist him, pay him a fixed salary, requiring his whole time in return, and minimise this source of expense by allowing him the rank of a civil servant, and a status on a par with that of any other head of a department. It must also provide the assistance which would be requisite, and the necessary apparatus and chemicals. The photographer's time being thus paid for, his profit abolished, and the material provided for him, what source of expense remains? Absolutely none, until there is a tax upon sunshine. It may still be fairly inquired:— 1. Whether such an undertaking is within the legitimate sphere of Government? 2. Whether it is of sufficient public utility to justify Government action? 3. How far such action would be remunerative financially? On the first point I shall say hardly anything. I can conceive no greater objection in principle to an official photographer than to an astronomer-royal, and I do not expect to hear any objections to the latter functionary in the city of Sir William Rowan Hamilton and Dr. Ball. Nor do I apprehend that many among us will require to be convinced of the advantage of photography as an auxiliary to library work. It has already been sufficiently impressed upon us by our friend Mr. Henry Stevens. We meet here, however, in the hope that our voice on this and other subjects will penetrate beyond our own circle, and arrest the attention of many to whom these topics are at present unfamiliar. It is, further, by proving the utility of photography as an auxiliary to libraries and museums, and the extent to which these institutions are trammelled by the present impediments to its exercise, that I shall best encounter the more difficult question of the financial advantage of the proposal. For we shall all agree that the more generally useful anything may be, the more likely it is to be profitable.