It has been a great pleasure to us to entertain at Bromborough Hall many of the artists entrusted with the hanging of the exhibitions. On retiring from the Library Committee in 1908, after nineteen years' service as chairman, I gave an account of my stewardship, which was reported as follows in the local press:-- "In returning thanks Sir William Forwood said it was with very deep regret that he had to take leave of them as their chairman. He felt the time had come when the trust should be placed in younger hands. On the 9th of next month it would be forty years since he entered the City Council, and his first committee was the Library Committee, of which he was elected chairman in 1890. Much had happened during that time. In 1890 they had only two small branch libraries, and there were no reading-rooms in the great centres of population. Early in that year the Kensington Branch Library and Reading-room was opened. The total issue of books and periodicals at all the libraries was 1,514,545; last year the issue was 4,417,043, an increase of nearly 300 per cent. These figures became more striking when it was remembered that the population during this period had increased only 17 per cent. Not only had the appetite for reading grown, but the growth had been in a very satisfactory direction. Whereas in 1890 76 per cent. of the total issues were of prose fiction, last year this percentage had fallen to 55 per cent. He did not wish to disparage the reading of good fiction; on the contrary, he had always contended that the reading of fiction frequently formed the habit of reading, which would otherwise never be obtained. They had worked upon this view, and gave to the borrower of a work of fiction the right to take out another book of a more serious character. In 1890 the number of our home readers was 7,300; to-day they had 41,000, and during this period they had added 145,672 books to the shelves. The total issue of books, etc., during the past eighteen years reached the enormous total of 47,343,035. In place of forty-nine free lectures, all given at one centre, they now gave 186 lectures distributed over nineteen centres.