with unprepared and indifferent readers. They led their horses to the stream and had no difficulty in making them drink. The troughs provided by their municipal successors were larger and handsomer, but the excellent supply of water was too often unappreciated. Ewart and his coadjutors in 1850 concentrated on the single object, libraries; and libraries they got, their bare object--bare at first in the literal sense of the word, till they were later on allowed to spend money in furnishing them with books. As a consequence of this policy, libraries and art galleries, schools, technical education, university extension, tutorial and continuation classes, have carried on their work on separate lines, though labouring for identical ends, and though they might have worked in unison much more effectively and economically. The problem now is to bring them into harmony again. Perhaps the time was not ripe for such a comprehensive alliance. Perhaps, also, had such an idea been realized it would have had to undergo the blighting influence of the examination system and payment by results. On the other hand, a popular institution might have contained the antidote to those delusions. At all events, it is a matter for lasting regret that a great opportunity was missed. Nationalized Mechanics’ Institutes, cured of the imperfections due to their dependence on the voluntary support of the unwealthy, with their numerous activities developed, their technical and utilitarian classes supplemented by humanist, non-vocational teaching, and the recreative side fully expanded, would have been an invaluable instrument for the great social effort which was then and is now required. And the initiative would have come from below, not from above; the danger of bureaucratic and academic projects for other people’s welfare would have been avoided. A central part of this many-sided organism would have been the library, a part ministering directly to every other part. Such a conception is still useful. In town life the different agencies may have to work side by side, though there need not be dense partitions between. In the villages, where there are no museums or picture-galleries, and the club is too often only a well-meaning but aimless substitute for the public-house, institutes of such a composite and elastic type are obviously the very thing required.