is contrary to all our experience of human nature. With careful guidance and restraint a boy may be brought from the Dime novel to read Scott and Macaulay. But without this restraint and guidance, where one will rise, a hundred, a thousand rather, will remain at the level from which they started, or more naturally sink to still lower depths. The question is, Can anything be done to help the young who throng our public libraries to read well and wisely? Shall these boys and girls, with their unknown powers both for good and evil, be left to grope helplessly amid these treasures of wisdom and knowledge which our libraries contain, or shall the attempt at least be made to give them a kindly and intelligent guidance? This work, of such incalculable importance, I hasten to say, is already well done to a certain extent by a few librarians in the country. But it is a work which requires time, patience, tact, an insight into character, and a very varied and extensive knowledge. It is evident that the librarians who combine these requisites are few in number. It is a work which cannot be done by them as a class. Nor can it be done by the ordinary catalogues, however skilfully prepared. For it is evident that there needs to be some personal knowledge of each reader's capacities in order to help him intelligently and profitably. Nor is it something which the school-teachers, willing though many of them are, can do, except in a limited degree, as many of those who need help are not school-children. There are, however, a few persons in every town fitted by their education and their circumstances in life for this work, and it is to them we must finally appeal.