All this is popular enough.  But the unpopular library must not be overlooked, for, after all, libraries are for the learned.  We must not let the babes and sucklings, or the weary seamstress or badgered clerk, or even the working-man, ride rough-shod over Salmasius and Scaliger.  In the papers of Mr. Garnett, Mr. Pollard, Mr. Dziatzko, Mr. Cutter, and others, the less popular and nobler side of the library is duly exhibited.

My anxiety about these librarians, who are beginning to be a profession by themselves, is how they are to be paid.  That librarians must live is at least as obvious in their case as in that of any other class.  They must also, if they are to be of any use, be educated.  In 1878 the late Mr. Robert Harrison, who for many years led a grimy life in the London Library, advocated L250 as a minimum annual salary for a competent librarian.  But, as Mr. Ogle, of Bootle, pertinently asked at the Conference, ‘Are his views yet accepted?’ We fear not.  Mr. Ogle courageously proceeds: 

’The fear of a charge of trades unionism has long kept librarians silent, but this matter is one of public importance, and affects educational progress.  A School-Board rate of 6d. or 1s. is willingly paid to teach our youth to read.  Shall an additional 2d. be grudged to turn that reading talent into right and safe channels, where it may work for the public welfare and economy?’

Festina lente, good Mr. Ogle, I beseech you.  That way fierce controversy and, it may be, disaster lies.  Do not stir the Philistine within us.  The British nation is still savage under the skin.  It has no real love for books, libraries, or librarians.  In its hidden heart it deems them all superfluous.  Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper sweep you all away.  The loss of our free librarians would indeed be grievous.  Never again could they meet in conference and read papers full of quaint things and odd memories.  What, for example, can be more amusing than Mr. Cowell’s reminiscences of forty years’ library work in Liverpool, of the primitive days when a youthful Dicky Sam (for so do the inhabitants of that city call themselves) mistook the Flora of Liverpool for a book either about a ship or a heroine?  He knows better now.  And what shall we say of the Liverpool brushmaker who, at a meeting of the library committee, recited a poem in praise of woman, containing the following really magnificent line?—­

       ‘The heart that beats fondest is found in the stays.’

There is nothing in Roscoe or Mrs. Hemans (local bards) one half so fine.  Long may librarians live and flourish!  May their salaries increase, if not by leaps and bounds, yet in steady proportions.  Yet will they do well to remember that books are not everything.

LAWYERS AT PLAY