The Free Library system extends slowly. Mr. John Lovell, on
Wednesday week, read a paper to the Library Association, in which he showed that the Act enabling ratepayers to establish such libraries passed in 1850, but in twenty-one years only
thirty-six libraries had been opened. Since 1871, however, progress had been more rapid, and there were now one hundred and thirteen communities possessing free libraries, and seventy.. nine of them which publish exact returns have among them 2,344,736 volumes, an average of 30,000 volumes each. The books, moreover, are greatly in demand, though the passion for fiction is still unabated, the issue of novels never being less than fifty-six per cent. of the whole, and rising in places to seventy-seven per cent. The building difficulty is still great, and there is a dispute about the best kind of building, many librarians, we regret to see, being in favour of a division between the library proper and the reading-room. That is convenient for them, but all experience shows that the presence of books in masses tempts to reading. Nothing is more dreary or depressing than a reading-room looking like an exaggerated. class-room without books.
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