Manchester is now, like Liverpool, if not a school of refinement, one of the principal seats of English culture. It possesses not fewer than ten or twelve fine libraries, including the branches of the City Free Library, established under Mr. Ewart's Act, which last are available on Sundays, and are freely used by the class of people the opening was designed to benefit. The staff of assistants at the City Library and its branches consists very largely of young women. There is another first-class Free Library in Salford, with, in the same building, a Free Gallery of Paintings, and a well-arranged and thoroughly useful museum. The "Athenæum" provides its members with 60,000 newspapers per annum, and, in addition, 9500 weekly, and 500 monthly and quarterly magazines. Societies devoted to science, literature, and the fine arts exist, as in Liverpool, in plenty. The exhibitions of paintings at the Royal Institution have always been attractive, and never more so than during the last few years, when on Sunday afternoons they have been thrown open to the public _gratis_. The "School of Design," founded in October 1838, now called the "School of Art," recently provided itself with a proper home in Grosvenor Square. There is also a society expressly of "Women Painters," the works of many of whom have earned honourable places. In addition to its learned societies, Manchester stands alone, perhaps, among English cities in having quite seven or eight set on foot purely with a view to rational enjoyment in the fields, the observation of Nature in its most pleasing and suggestive forms, and the obtaining accurate knowledge of its details--the birds, the trees, and the wild-flowers. The oldest of these is the "Field-Naturalists and Archæologists," founded in 1860. The members of the youngest go by the name of the "Grasshoppers." Flower-shows, again, are a great feature in Manchester: some held in the Townhall, others in the Botanical Gardens. In August 1881 the greatest and richest Horticultural Exhibition of which there is record was held at Old Trafford, in the gardens, lasting five days, and with award in prizes of upwards of £2000. Laid out within a few yards of the ground occupied in 1857 by the celebrated Fine Art Treasures Exhibition, the only one of the kind ever attempted in England, it was no less brilliant to the visitor than creditable to the promoters. No single spot of earth has ever been devoted to illustrations so exquisite of the most beautiful forms of living nature, and of the artistic talent of man than were then brought together.