In 1856 the University, probably suspecting that the board as originally constituted was not the best that could be devised, yet timidly shrinking from a radical and salutary reform, endeavoured to improve matters by a measure which, if it remedied one defect, unquestionably increased another. It made a board already too large, still larger by the addition of five members elected by Congregation. In the course of thirty years fourteen different men have been so elected. That all were properly qualified to discharge the duties of their office no one will assert who knows what those qualifications are. Why they were chosen the University best knows. If Congregation would but remember what a unique and priceless treasure it possesses in this noble library, if it only knew how easy it is for rashness and ignorance to damage and to ruin it, how difficult it is even for knowledge to preserve it, ability and willingness to serve it would be the indispensable and the only qualifications demanded, and neither age nor rank, dignity, nor above all party, would be for one moment taken into account. It may be remarked that all the thirteen Curators very rarely attend a meeting: in the course of the last two years such a thing has happened once only; but a board, the members of which attend intermittently, is apt to show signs of discontinuity in its proceedings; and a firm, consistent policy is as necessary in the management of a library as it is in any other affair of life. What is wanted in Curators is common sense, business capacity, and a special knowledge of books. No one would dream of appointing any man an inspector of locomotives on a railway, unless he were thoroughly acquainted with the structure and working of a locomotive, and capable, at a push, of driving it himself: a large library is as complex as a locomotive, and quite as difficult to manage effectively. Experts, who are not so numerous as might be supposed, will back me in this assertion; but Convocation must not be astonished if it is hotly and contemptuously denied. The minutes of the Curators' Meetings begin on March 20, 1793, and, with a break of some four years when there are none (from Nov. 26, 1849, to May 27, 1854), they continue to the present time. On Dec. 7, 1803, four printed books were allowed to go out of the Library 'for the use of the Clarendon Press, to be returned when done with,' contrary to statute so far as appears; and there was a somewhat similar transaction on June 2, 1815. On Nov. 27, 1841, the sum of £500 was paid for the Sanscrit MSS. of Prof. H. H. Wilson, who 'stipulated that the Boden Professor of Sanscrit for the time being should be allowed the privilege of borrowing MSS. (not more than two volumes at one time), giving for them a receipt, and engagement for their safe return.'