A good many of my friends are strong party men of a more or less rabid type, and I hope that they are well informed when they tell me that this purely literary question about the Bodleian is not going to be turned into one of those faction fights, which occasionally disturb and disgrace this place; but that each man will judge for himself, and vote accordingly, without divesting himself of what little reason he may happen to possess, and blindly following a leader, who may know and care less about the matter than he does himself. I hope that it will be so, yet I have my doubts; for this vile spirit of faction clings like the robe of Nessus to all who have ever been weak enough, or wicked enough, to yield to its temptations; and one side is just as bad as the other. Whether Convocation can be got to see the real question in these unlearned and vulgar times may be questionable; at any rate, I should have felt myself a traitor to Bodley, to Oxford, and to learning itself, if I had not done what little I could to prevent an act, which, if perpetrated, must end, sooner or later, in the irreparable damage, or the complete destruction of a library intended by its founder to be a perpetual help to all true scholars, an inexhaustible treasure-house of learning to last as long as England itself. H. W. C. _Oxford, Jan. 15th, 1887._ _Remarks on the Practice and Policy of lending Bodleian Printed Books and Manuscripts._ Before offering any remarks on the policy of lending books out of the Bodleian Library it may be well to give a brief account of the practice of lending, so far as it has been sanctioned there. From the foundation of the Library down to 1873, though practised, it cannot be said to have been sanctioned at all, except as regards certain books given on the condition that they should be lent. On the 20th of June, 1610, a complete Bodleian Statute was promulgated and confirmed in Convocation (Appendix Statutorum, p. 5 sqq. ed. 1763). This statute was drawn up by Sir Thomas Bodley himself, and the eighth section of it--'de Libris extra Bibliothecam non ferendis, aut ullo modo commodandis'--fully expresses his firm and rooted detestation of book-lending. Bodley's own words, of which the Latin statute is a literal translation, run thus:--