If Convocation could only seize the full significance and incalculable value to present and future generations of a library of reference, a library, that is, where, at all lawful times, every book deposited in it should always be forthcoming in a moment, it would at once see that from such a library no lending whatever ought to be permitted, simply because lending and deposit are practical contradictories; and if Convocation could plainly see this, it would make very short work of any statute which legalized loans. There is no denying, however, that in the present day the public mind, as it is playfully called, and the University mind as well, is in a wonderfully flabby condition. Nobody seems to be thoroughly convinced of the unquestionable truth, that every possible plan in this world is open to objections more or less serious, and so they go hunting about for a scheme that shall embrace all good and exclude all evil; such people are emphatically limp and unpractical. All that is offered to our choice here below is a lesser evil, and experience has proved over and over again, that it is a lesser evil never to lend a book out of such a library as the Bodleian, than it is to lend one. But if the University in its inscrutable wisdom should choose to do the wrong thing, there are more ways than one of doing it,-- +esthloi men gar haplôs, pantodapôs de kakoi.+ It might, for instance, confine the actual granting of a loan to Convocation. If an application for a book were made, the University might impose on the Curators the duty of stating in writing their reasons for advocating the loan, and Convocation might determine to lend, if it judged those reasons to be sound. This would be an approximation to what was the law (though not by any means the practice) prior to 1873; nor could it be described as a retrograde step, unless the reformation of a bad habit is necessarily a step backwards. If, however, the University resolves to copy the practice of foreign libraries, it might be wise, first, to appoint a small committee to discover and report what that practice really is. If, like a mob of monkeys, we are determined to imitate, it is just as well that our imitation should be a good one, and not a caricature. In either, or indeed in any, case some effectual provision should be made for enforcing the statute; it ought no longer to be possible for the Curators to act with impunity as they have been in the habit of acting for almost a quarter of a century.