In 1850 came the Government Commission. The Commissioners have a good deal to say about the Bodleian, which will be found in their Report made in 1852, p. 115 sqq. I do not quote their remarks for a reason which appears to me valid. There were seven Commissioners all told, and although they were very eminent persons, there was not one amongst them, so far as I can discover, who had any special knowledge of libraries, or of the best way of managing them. Moreover, I myself heard one of those seven Commissioners say, more than once in the course of conversation, that he should think it no particular misfortune if the Bodleian and its contents were totally destroyed. Nor do I feel called upon to incur the expense of reproducing _in extenso_ the evidence on which the Commissioners based their recommendations. It may be sufficient to say that the following witnesses were in favour of the lending system, some with restrictions and some with hardly any:--the Rev. R. W. Browne; the Rev. R. Walker; the Rev. B. Jowett; the Rev. W. H. Cox; E. A. Freeman, Esq.; the Rev. H. Wall; the Rev. R. Congreve; Sir E. Head; N. S. Maskelyne, Esq.; and the Rev. J. Griffiths. It is not very easy to say whether Prof. H. H. Wilson and Dr. Greenhill did or did not belong to the lending party; but if they did, they proposed such restrictions as would materially lessen the evil. Prof. H. H. Vaughan (a most wordy person) wished to confine the right of borrowing to the Professors. Against lending were H. E. Strickland, Esq.; Prof. W. F. Donkin; the Rev. R. Scott; Travers Twiss, Esq.; Dr. Macbride; the Rev. E. S. Ffoulkes; and Dr. Phillimore: and I hope nobody will be offended if I say that knowledge of books and the way to use them is, as might be expected, very much more conspicuous in those who oppose lending than in those who advocate it. The Rev. R. W. Browne observes, that 'probably manuscripts and such books as are unable to be replaced should not be lent, because it would be quite worth the while of those who wished to consult them to visit the Library for that purpose.' It is not often that one meets with so cogent a piece of reasoning, and Mr. Browne's 'because' proves that he had studied Logic with considerable benefit; he also thinks that the system in the Public Library at Cambridge 'works well.' Another witness tells us that 'the experience of the Cambridge University Library, and of many foreign libraries, shews that this [i.e. lending under certain restrictions] can be done without danger, and with small loss compared to the immense benefit obtained by it.' Sir Edmund Head also admires the Göttingen and Cambridge plan, and avers that experience has proved that the risk of loss and damage is groundless. How different are these airy speculations from the hard facts of Mr. Bradshaw the Cambridge Librarian, of the Librarian of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, and of Mr. Panizzi (see below, p. 50 sqq.); but then these gentlemen had the immense and perhaps unfair