In this brief account of our public libraries, the work they have done and the far greater work they are capable of doing, many points have been suggested that call for more comprehensive legislation. The one hope now is that the urban and rural libraries already existing or soon to be may be co-ordinated into a national system, or group of systems, worked on economic lines, and empowered to act the part they were surely destined for in a civilized world. Sociologists, including those treating of education in the widest sense, have paid scant attention to the part played by the public library in social life, in the present or the future. Even such an inventory of our intellectual assets as the Cambridge History of English Literature has in its fifteen big volumes no reference to the effects of the Ewart Act or to the vast collections of literature amassed and thrown open to the people through its operation. This book will be a small addition to a very small group of works on various sides of a momentous subject. The author is deeply indebted to Mr. W. C. Berwick Sayers, Chief Librarian, Croydon Public Libraries, for his kindness in reading the proofs and for many useful suggestions, and to his daughter, Miss Ruth Baker, for indexing the book. E. A. B. I. HISTORICAL SKETCH. In the period of reconstruction after Waterloo, there was, among other analogies with the present time, a keen popular desire for education and opportunities for self-culture. It met with both encouragement and discouragement from the governing classes, more of the latter than the former, much more of direct opposition than dare show its head to-day. The state of the universities and the public schools had been since the middle of the last century more backward than ever before in history. Both universities still shut their doors to Dissenters. They had no sympathy with and probably no consciousness of the needs of the masses for self-improvement. In spite of earnest writers on education, and manifold discussions of Rousseau’s doctrines, even in the ingratiating form of fiction, nothing could stir the sullen apathy of the ruling powers; and in educational machinery and practice England lagged far behind both Germany and France. Samuel Whitbread introduced an Education Bill in 1807 which was rejected by the Lords. After his death, Brougham became leader of the group of educationists in the House of Commons, and in 1816 secured the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the education of the lower orders of the metropolis. The report of this committee furnished material for two Bills. The first, for the reform of educational charities, passed in 1818, after its best features had been pruned away by the Government; but the Education Bill of 1820, which would have extended to England the excellent parish school system of Scotland, was thrown out. Not