Literature has hitherto had no such magnificent institutions in London
as science,—nothing to compare, for instance, with the Royal Society at Burlington House and the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street. But the lack is being in large measure remedied by that new, youthful and vigorous body, the National Book League; which has -just taken a fifty years' lease of an historic Queen Anne house. No. 7 Albemarle Street, once known as Grillion's Hotel—where Louis XVIII lodged in 1814 after Napoleon's escape from Elba. The League, I gather, intends not only to make this beautiful house its headquarters, but to turn it into an active centre for literature (such as the Royal Institution provides for science further up the Street) by arranging lectures by eminent men of letters and showing exhibitions of books and providing a meeting-place for writers and
readers.
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