Where the deliverances from one and the same source are so contradictory, the impartial inquirer will doubtless feel like looking for some other source of information. From the materials accessible to the present writer in regard to American libraries--and the new edition of Mr. Greenwood's "Public libraries" appears to tell the same tale in regard to Great Britain--the interest of workingmen in the opportunities afforded by public libraries is everywhere emphatically shown; but he who sets out with the purpose of showing that there is any one exclusive class to whom the public library is of service and to no other--be that class workingmen, or students, or manufacturers, or scientists--will find the facts singularly obstinate and unresponsive to his purpose. The truth is--Mr. O'Brien's confident assertion to the contrary--that there is no more "universal" and non-partisan institution than a public library. This is undoubtedly the highest among its several claims to public support. Few among the objects to which the public funds have been appropriated, in American cities, have met with so hearty and unquestioning approval as the public parks, and it is right that it should be so. Yet there are whole classes in every community who not only never do enjoy the public parks, but never care to enjoy them. Even the public schools are for a certain fraction of the population only--the younger portion. In contrast with both of these, the public library extends its resources to the children and the adults alike. Perhaps, however, the fundamentally important question of universality, in the sense of non-partisanship, is one which is seldom appreciated in its full force, as applied to a public library. An independent position, one entirely free from bias, a non-partisan attitude, in fact, is an ideal repeatedly set before the conductors of a school or a newspaper. In both these cases, however, there is too often an element of practical difficulty in carrying these praiseworthy intentions into practice, which is almost completely wanting in the case of a public library. The policy of the latter, is, in its very essence, catholic. It places on its shelves the volumes which represent, not one side, but both, or rather all sides of any subject on which the sentiment of the public divides; and thus, whether the user be Democrat or Republican, protectionist or freetrader, Catholic or Protestant, the aspect which this collection of books presents to him is no less free and uncircumscribed than the illimitable aid.