Three Centuries obi' City Library. By G. A. Stephen. (Norwiehs
Public Library Committee. 3s. net.)—Norwich has had a public library from 160.8 and a free library of the modern type from 1837. The history of the united institutions is related fully and clearly in this interesting book. Outside London, Norwich was apparently the first English town to have a municipal library, though Ipswich (in 1612) and Bristol (in 1613) soon followed her example. Archbishop Wake appears among the early borrowers who forgot to return their books. The volume that he took—still to he seen in the Wake collection at Christ Church —is nothing less than a Prayer Book of 1632, with, alterations in Lauds hand and a note signed by Charles I. to the effect that these alterations were to be followed in the new Scottish Liturgy. Archbishop Wane clearly had a keen eye for a valuable book. But for that amended liturgy, the history of Scotland and England, of Laud and his master. might have been very different.
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