other countries. I asked Signor Castellani what increase in the number of volumes the _locale_ now at the disposal of the library would be capable of accommodating. He said that there would be room for about seven hundred thousand volumes, evidently a quite inadequate provision for the future. Many years will not elapse before the measure which is now demanded at the British Museum--viz., the removal of all the various collections housed there to other localities, and the dedication of the entire building to the library--will become necessary at the old Collegio Romano. Vast as the building is, the entirety of it is not at all too large for the Roman library of the future. Or--since we _are_ allowing our thoughts to consider events which cast their shadows before as if they were accomplished facts--may it not perhaps be found better some of these days to move the whole of the present collection to the Vatican, to be united with the colossal and almost unknown hoards there buried in one collection? As it is, a new reading-room, after the model of that existing at the National Library in Paris, is about to be built in the courtyard of the Collegio Romano. The classification, arrangement and methods of working the library will be copied in great measure from those introduced by Mr. Panizzi at the British Museum. Unlike the liberal practice of the great German libraries, no volume will be on any account permitted to leave the library. I was sorry to find that in one all-important respect the Roman practice as regards the national library will differ from that of London. The collection is being catalogued in slips, to be kept, after the fashion of booksellers, in boxes made for the purpose, and there is no present intention of making any catalogue in volumes accessible to the public. Of course it is impossible to allow the public to have access to the slips; and all who have ever really used a great library know but too well that a library the catalogue of which is not accessible to the student is at least _half_ useless. Even putting aside the numerous cases in which an inquirer knows of the existence of such or such a work, but is not aware of the author's name, and cannot therefore ask for or obtain the book in question, it happens more often than not that a person inquiring on any given subject finds his best guide to the available sources of information in the catalogue.