committee will lie in the selection of books to form the nucleus or starting point of the collection. Without repating anything heretofore suggested, it may be said that great care should be taken to have books known to be excellent, both interesting in substance and attractive in style. To so apportion the moderate amount of money at disposal as to give variety and interest to the collection, and attract readers from the start, is a problem requiring god judgment for its solution. Much depends upon the extent of the fund, but even with small a sum as two or three hundred dollars, a collection of the very best historians, poets, essayists, travellers and voyagers, scientists, and novelists can be brought together, which will furnish a range of entertaining and instructive reading for several hundred borrowers. The costher encyclopaedias and works of reference might be wated for until fund- are recruited by a library far, or 'ectares, or amateur concerts, p'avs, or other evening enterta propts

Another way of recruiting the library which has often proved fruitful is to solet contritestions of books and magazines from families and individuals in the vicinity. This should be undertaken systematically some time after the subscriptions in money have been gathered in. It is *at good policy to am at such donations at the outset, Le many might make them an excise for not subscribing to the fund for four ding the library, which it is to the interest of all to make as large as possible. But when or, e successfully established, appeals for books and peri-beals will surely add largely to the collection, and al*ingh many of such acce its may be duplicates, they will nore the less enlarge the facilities for applying the demands of readers. Fan lies who have read through all or nearly all the books pavi w'lg'ad'y bestow

them for so useful a purpose, especially when assured of

reaping reciprocal benefit by the opportunity of freely perusing a great variety of choice books, new and -- 1. which they have never read. Sometimes, too, a palle spirited citizen, when advised of the lack of a good cy Inpaedia, or of the latest extensive dictionary, or collest ve biography, in the library, will be happy to supply it, tr by winning the gratitude and good will of all who fres, t the library. All donations should have inserted in them a neat book-plate, with the name of the donor inscribi, in connection with the name of the Library.

Many a useful library of circulation has been started with a beginning of fifty to a hundred volumes, and the little acorn of learning thus planted has grown up in the course of years to a great tree, full of fruitful and widespreading branches.

CHAPTER 21.

CLASSIFICATION.

If there is any subject which, more than all others, die vides opinion and provokes endless controversy among lis brarians and scholars, it is the proper classification of books. From the beginning of literature this has been a well-nigh insoluble problem. Treatise after treatise has been written upon it, system has been piled upon system, learned men have theorised and wrangled about it all their lives, and successive generations have dropped into their graves, leaving the vexed question as unsettled as ever.

Every now and then a body of savans or a convention of librarians wrestles with it, and perhaps votes upon it,

"And by decision more embroils the fray"

since the dissatisfied minority, nearly as numerous and quite as obstinate as the majority, always refuses to be bound by it. No sooner does some sapient librarian, with the sublime confidence of conviction, get his classification house of cards constructed to his mind, and stands rapt in admiration before it, when there comes along some wise man of the east, and demolishes the fair edifice at a blow, while the architect stands by with a melancholy smile, and sees all his household gods lying shivered around him.

Meanwhile, systems of classification keep on growing, until, instead of the thirty-two systems so elaborately deribed in Edwards's Memoirs of Libraries, we have almost as many as there are libraries, if the endless modifications of them are taken into account. In fact, one begins to realise that the schemes for the classification of knowledge are becoming so numerous, that a classification of the systems themselves has fairly become a desideratum. The ythful neophyte, who is struggling after an education in

rary science, and thinks perhaps that it is or should be an exact science, is bewildered by the multitude of coun

ors, gets a head-ache over their conflicting systems, and adds to it a heart-ache, perhaps, over the animosities and sarcasms which divide the warring schools of opinion.

Perhaps there would be less trouble about classification, if the system-mongers would consent to admit at the outset that no infallible system is possible, and would endeavor, and all their other learning, to learn a little of the saving grace of modesty. A writer upon this subject has well observed that there is no man who can work out a scheme of classification that will satisfy permanently even himself

Much less should he expect that others, all having the r favorite ideas and systems, should be satisfied with his. there is no royal road to learning, so there can be none to classification; and we democratic republicans, who stand upon the threshold of the twentieth century, may rest satisfied that in the Republic of Letters no autocrat can be allowed.

The chief difficulty with most systems for distributing the books in a library appears to lie in the attempt to apy scientific minuteness in a region where it is largely inapplicable. One can divide and sub-divide the literature of any science indefinitely, in a list of subjects, but such exhaustive sub-divisions can never be made among the b on the shelves. Here, for example, is a "Treatise on d... eases of the heart and lungs." This falls naturally into s two places in the subject catalogue, the one under "Heart" and the second under "Lungs;" but the attempt to class fy it on the shelves must fail, as regards half its contents. You cannot tear the book to pieces to satisfy logical class,fication. Thousands of similar cases will occur, where the same book treats of several subjects. Nearly all per perol cals and transactions of societies of every kind refuse to classified, though they can be catalogued perfectly on paper by analysing their contents. To bring all the resoufres the library on any subject together on the shelves is clearis impossible. They must be assembled for realers fr various sections of the library, where the rule of anal · of superior convenience has placed them.

What is termed close classification, it will be fun, fa's by attempting too much. One of the chief obstacles to lis general use is that it involves a too complicated notat The many letters and figures that indicate position on the shelves are difficult to remember in the direct ratio of the number. The more minute the classification, the n. re

signs of location are required. When they become very numerous, in any system of classification, the system reaks down by its own weight. Library attendants consame an undue amount of time in learning it, and lErary cataloguers and classifiers in aliving the requisite - gns of designation to the labels, the shelves, and the catalogues, Memory, too, is unduly taxed to apply the

While a superior memory may be found equal to ar y task imposed upon it, average memories are not so forate. The expert librarian, in whose accomplished head the whole world of science and literature lies coordinated, tat he can apply his classification unerringly to all the books in a vast library, must not presume that un-killed as*.stants can do the same.

One of the mistakes made by the positivists in classification is the claim that their favorite system can be applied to all libraries alike. That this is a fallacy may be seen an example or two. Take the case of a large and comprehensive Botanical library, in which an exact scientific stribution of the books may and should be made. It is class fed not only in the grand devis,ons, such as scientific i deconomie botany, etc., but a close analytical treatment :* extended over the whole vegetable kingdom. Books treating of every plant are relegated to their appropriate classes, genera, and species, until the whole 1.brary is orKinised on a strictly setentific basis. But in the case, even

chat are called large 1 braries, so minute a class Ccation would be not only unnecessary, but even obstructive to trompt service of the book. And the average town liPary, containing only a shelf or two of botanical works, clearly has no use for such a class.lation. torpse a universal law upon 1hrary arrangement, while the cord tions of "he collect ons are endlessly red, :- foredoomed to failure.

The atten p*