The first public literary need of a district is a library of the latter type, one in which it is more important that the books should be in general use by lending and by free access to the shelves, than that they should be invested with a fictitious importance and too jealously guarded. This is the way to fan the faint sparks of literary instinct, and is still the common condition of most villages and even towns. But wherever literature has taken a long and firm hold there is a desire for a public library of another kind. By this time private libraries abound, and every serious student surrounds himself with the ordinary books on his special subject. And the public library shares in this general elevation of the personal standard; it becomes a necessary complement to individual effort. It supplies not only the ordinary works on every subject, but also the extraordinary and special books, and owing to the value of its contents has to restrict or abolish the custom of lending, in order that there may be continuous accessibility to its volumes. This division into two kinds is deep and real. The two fall apart according to their answer to the question, _Do you in any real sense aim at being complete?_ All libraries of the second order confess that, in cases where they aim at any completeness, it is in a special subdivision or set of subdivisions of literature—_incunabula_, local books, and so on, or a working series of general reference volumes, or a departmental library rich in books on a particular science. But every library of the first class must have universality and completeness (within human limitations) as its theoretical aim, and must have made substantial progress towards its goal. In countries like Great Britain and the United States there are almost numberless libraries, many of them really large ones; but above them there tower the few, the very few, Libraries of Deposit. These are the super-Dreadnoughts of the literary world, and the Bodleian claims to be among them. It is an especial glory of Sir Thomas Bodley that he, a man of the world as well as a genuine scholar, planned from the first a library of the highest order. Of this highest class it may be said that a really great library should have Universal scope, Independence, Size, Permanence, Wealth, and multiform Utility. Its Catalogue is not a mere book-finder, but a scientific work. Open access and lending are given up, but the Reference library is large. The aim of the British Museum to possess the largest French library outside France, and so with other foreign departments, and to store all local newspapers, is beyond praise. Within the second class of libraries the manifold and various needs of modern students have resulted in a large number of kinds, which have been so seldom and so incompletely methodized that the following first attempt at their classification may be allowed, though cross-divisions cannot be entirely avoided. LIBRARIES