community in an almost ideal relation, not only fulfilling very perfectly Mr. Carlyle's characterization of a "collection of books" as "the people's university," but in the peculiarly wide range shown in the demands made upon it, almost as properly rendering it the people's workshop, or laboratory. The same library report which has several times been cited printed several years since a record of the inquiries made on specific subjects during a single month, which throws significant light upon this subject. Another report of the same library declares that "few can adequately conceive to what extent the inquiries made at the library have become specialized, and require trained facility and research" on the part of the library staff. The library thus becomes a laboratory, in which the reader gains not only the specific information, but the method. An observation of popular movements in their relation to political or economic principles reveals few facts so plainly as that an almost insuperable narrowness of view is, in much the greater number of instances, the barrier to advance in those questions decided mainly by the popular voice. Why then should any one wish to perpetuate the conditions which make this possible? In Mr. O'Brien's view the workingman,--and we ought not to forget how large a percentage of the community this word "workingman" represents, both in England and America,--will be a fortunate man when the contents of free libraries are no longer rendered everywhere accessible to him by public support, for then the workingmen "for one 'penny' can buy their favorite newspaper, which can be carried in the pocket and read at any time"! It is well nigh incredible that an ideal such as this should be looked forward to by thinking men. Whatever may be the fact in regard to the workingmen of Great Britain,--and Mr. O'Brien of course knows them better than we do,--it may confidently be asserted that the American workingman would strike no such false note. Mr. Lowell in one of his admirable orations quotes from a Wallachian legend of a peasant who was "taken up into heaven" and offered his choice among the objects to be seen there. He chose a half worn-out bagpipe, and with this returned to the earth. "With an infinite possibility within his reach, with the choice of wisdom, of power, of beauty, at his tongue's end, he asked according to his kind, and his sordid wish is answered with a gift as sordid." The newspaper is well enough in its way,--even a "penny newspaper,"--but to condemn whole masses of the population to limit themselves to this, is to incur the condemnation of Mr. Lowell's fine scorn when, in another portion of the oration just referred to, he says: "It is we who, while we might each in his humble way be helping our fellows into the right path, or adding one block to the climbing spire of a fine soul, are willing to become mere sponges saturated from the stagnant goose-pond of village gossip." It is more. It is to help