beyond all question, what we may term topical researches. To pursue one subject though many authorities is the true way to arrive at comprehensive knowledge. And in this kind of research, the librarian ought to be better equipped than any who frequent his library. Why? Simply because his business is bibliography; which is not the bussness of learned professors, or other scholars who visit the library.

The late Librarian Winsor said that he considered the librarian's instruction far more valuable than that of the specialist. And this may be owing largely to the point of view, as well as to the training, of each. The special.st, perhaps, is an enthusiast or a devotee to his science, and so apt to give undue importance to the details of it, or to magnify some one feature: the librarian, on the other hand, who is nothing if not comprehensive, takes the larger view of the wide field of literature on each subject, and h.s suggestions concerning sources of information are correspondingly valuable.

In those constantly arising questions which form the subjects of essays or discussions in all institutions of learning, the well-furnished library is an unfailing resource. The student who finds his unaided mind almost a biank upon the topic given out for treatment, resorts at once to the public library, searches catalogues, questions the libra rian, and surrounds himself with books and periodicals which may throw light upon it. He is soon master of facts and reasonings which enable him to start upon a train of thought that bears fruit in an essay or discourse. In fa t. it may be laid down as an axiom, that nearly every new book that is written is indebted to the library for most of its ideas, its facts, or its illustrations, so that libraries actually beget libraries,

Some of the endlessly divers.fied uses of a well-eq; ped

the

rary, not only to scholars but to the general public, may here be referred to. Among the most sought for sources of information, the periodical press, both of the past and e current time, holds a prominent rank. When it is ondered how far-reaching are the fields embraced in the wide range of these periodicals, literary, religious, sciente, political, technical, philosophical, social, medical, gal, educational, agricultural, bibliographical, commeral, financial, historical, mechanical, nautical, military, ar*stic, musical, dramatic, typographical, sanitary, sporting, economic, and miscellaneous, is it any wonder that specialsts and writers for the press seek and find ready aid therein for their many-sided labor?

To the skeptical mind, accustomed to undervalue what does not happen to come within the range of his pet idols or pursuits, the observation of a single day's mult fold rearch in a great library might be in the nature of a revelaHither flock the ever-present searchers into family Story, laving under contribution all the genealogies and town and county histories which the country has produced Here one finds an industrious comp.ler intent upon the Story of American duels, for which the many files of Northern and Southern newspapers, reaching back to the rning of the century, afford copious materal. erler table sits a deputation from a government departcop.nassioned to make a record of al' notable strikes bor troubles for a series of years, to be gleaned from the columns of the journ's of lea ng cites.

At an

An absorbed reader of French romances sits side by side ha clergyman perung homilies, or endeavoring to elso late, through a mass of commentators, a special text. Here are to be found ladies in pursu costumes of Very age, artists turning over the great folio galleries of Europe for models or suggestions; lawyers seeking precedents or

leading cases; journalists verifying dates, speeches, conventions, or other forgotten facts; engineers studying the literature of railways or machinery; actors or amateurs in search of plays or works on the dramatic art; physicians looking up biographies of their profession or the history of epidemics; students of heraldry after coats of arms; inventors searching the specifications and drawings of patents; historical students pursuing some special field in American or foreign annals; scientists verifying facts or citations by original authorities; searchers tracing personal residences or deaths in old directories or new-papers; querists seeking for the words of some half-remembered passage in poetry or prose, or the original author of one of the myriad proverbs which have no father; architects or builders of houses comparing hundreds of designs and models. teachers perusing works on education or comparing textbooks new or old; readers absorbing the great poems of the world; writers in pursuit of new or curious themes among books of antiquities or folk-lore; students of all the questions of finance and economic science; naturalists seeking to trace through many volumes descriptions of spec... pursuers of military or naval history or science; ent.. asts venturing into the occult domains of spiritual-m thaumaturgy; explorers of voyages and travels in every region of the globe; fair readers, with dreamy eyes, devouring the last psychological novel; devotees of muses" art perusing the lives or the scores of great composers; cc!lege and high-school students intent upon "booking up" on themes of study or composition or debate; and a host of other seekers after suggestion or information in a library of encyclopedic range.

CHAPTER 15.

THE HISTORY OF LIBRARIES.

The Library, from very early times, has enlisted the entusiasm of the learned, and the encomiums of the wise. The actual origin of the earliest collection of books (or rather of manuscripts) is lost in the mists of remote antiquity. Notwithstanding professed descriptions of several libraries found in Aulus Gellius, Athenaeus, and others, who wrote centuries after the alleged collections were made, we lack the convincing evidence of eye-witnesses and contemporaries. But so far as critical research has run, the earliest monuments of man which approached elections of written records are found not in Europe, but in Africa and Asia.

That land of wonders, Egypt, abounds in hieroglyphic ns riptions, going back, as is agreed by modern scholars, to the year 2000 before the Christian era. A Papyrus tatum ript, too, exists, which is assigned to about 1600 B.

And the earliest recorded collection of books in the world, though perhaps not the first that existed, was that of the Egyptian king Ramses I.-B. C. 1400, near Thebes, wi.. h Diodorus Siculus says bore the ins ription "Dispensary of the soul." Thus early were books regarded as rene hal agents of great force and virtue.

But before the library of Ramses the Egyptian king. there existed in Babylonia collections of books, written not ot par hment, nor on the more perishable papyrus, but on Clay Whole poems, faldes, laws, and hymns of the gods have been found, stamped in small characters upon baked br. ks These clay tablets or books were arranged in nu

merical order, and the library at Agane, which existed about 2000 B. C. even had a catalogue, in which each piece of literature was numbered, so that readers had only to write down the number of the tablet wanted, and the Librarian would hand it over. Two of these curious poems in clay have been found intact, one on the deluge, the other on the descent of Istar into Hades.

The next ancient library in point of time yet known to us was gathered in Asia by an Assyrian King, and this collection has actually come down to us, in propria persona. Buried beneath the earth for centuries, the archaeol g Layard discovered in 1850 at Nineveh, an extensive coc tion of tablets or tiles of clay, covered with cuneiform characters, and representing some ten thousand distinct works or documents. The Assyrian monarch Sardanapalus, a great patron of letters, was the collector of this primitive and curious library of clay. He flourished about 1650 B. C.

In Greece, where a copious and magnificent literature had grown up centuries before Christ, Pisistratus collected a library at Athens, and died B. C. 527. When Xeries captured Athens, this collection, which represents the earliest record of a library dedicated to the public, was carried off to Persia, but restored two centuries later The renowned philosopher Aristotle gathered one of the largest Greek libraries, about 350 B. C. said to have ebraced about 1400 volumes, or rather, rolls. Plato caled Aristotle's residence "the house of the reader." This !.brary, also, was carried off to Scepsis, and later by the victorious Sulla to Rome. History shows that the Greek collections were the earliest "travelling libraries" on record, though they went as the spoils of war, and not to spread abroad learning by the art of peace.