wetting a finger I have seen practised in this seat of learning over and over again by Graduates, by Professors, by Heads of Houses; and years ago I saw that same nasty trick played _pro pudor!_ in the sacred precincts of the Bodleian itself _on a manuscript_, which will bear to its last moment the impression of the dirty thumb (and it _was_ dirty) that perpetrated the uncleanly act. Often and often you see a man sitting close over the fire with a well-bound volume; a few such experiments will ruin the binding of any book; if it is his own, well and good, though even so the act is that of a barbarian: but suppose it a Bodleian book, what then? Why in that case the binding bills will be higher than ever, to say nothing about the ruin of the book itself. A man who knows how to handle a book will use a volume habitually for years and leave no trace of wear and tear behind him; but the average man, even though he may be a Master of Arts, is, not unfrequently, totally unfit to have the use of any books in good condition, even in a library, much less out of one. The scholars and readers of former days seem to have been far more careful in their habits than men are now. Look at the books of the great collectors--Grolier, the Maioli, Selden, De Thou, the Colberts, and the like. These men read their books; and Grolier and Thomas Maioli certainly lent them: yet even after all these years, though time and neglect may have ruined the magnificent bindings--bindings such as few, if any, modern collectors ever indulge in--the books themselves are internally spotless. I have myself scores of volumes, many of them three or four hundred years old, clean and pure as the day they were issued from the press; they have most certainly been used and read, but used by men of clean hands and decent habits. In the present day books are so common and so cheap, and modern readers too frequently so unrefined, that they get into a vile habit of misusing them, and to such persons--that is, to the great majority--the books of a public library cannot be safely trusted except under the very strictest supervision. The slovenly practice of placing one open book on another, a practice sternly forbidden in many foreign libraries, may be seen in full swing both at the Camera and in the Bodleian; and no one seems to be aware how ruinous it is, or to have the least suspicion that he who knows how to handle books never treats them so. Treated in a cleanly and decent manner, there is not the least reason why a book printed on good paper should not last for twenty centuries or more; treated as they are too often treated here in Oxford, they will hardly last as many months. By lending the books as we illegally do, we are perceptibly hastening the destruction of a library intended by its founder and benefactors to be a blessing for generations of scholars yet unborn.