education by Sunday schools, and other efforts of that kind, have been brought within the reach of a considerable number of the population--why the good effects of education have not been continued in after life." The committee very justly place much value on the opinions and suggestions of M. Libri. The thorough knowledge which that eminent bibliographer possesses of all matters pertaining to the condition and wants of public libraries, as well as of the needs of literary men, renders his remarks worthy of careful consideration. In a letter addressed to Mr. Ewart, the chairman of the committee, he develops his views at some length, and shows the necessity of having in great countries libraries "in which one may expect to find, as far as it is possible, all books which learned men--men who occupy themselves upon any subject whatever, and who cultivate one of the branches of human knowledge--may require to consult. Of these there is nothing useless, nothing ought to be neglected; the most insignificant in appearance, those which on their publication have attracted the least attention, sometimes become the source of valuable and unexpected information." It is in the fragments, now so rare and precious, of some alphabets--of some small grammars published for the use of schools about the middle of the fifteenth century--or in the letters distributed in Germany by the religious bodies commissioned to collect alms, that bibliographers now seek to discover the first processes employed by the inventors of xylography and typography. It is in a forgotten collection of indifferent plates, published at Venice by Faush Verantio towards the end of the sixteenth century, that an engineer, who interests himself in the history of the mechanical arts, might find the first diagrams of iron suspension-bridges.