A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
AIONG lending libraries," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, " should be noticed the London Library in St. James's Square, Pall Mall." It indisputably should, pre- eminently so in this week in which it celebrates its centenary. The library was opened on May 3rd, 1841, at 49 Pall Mail (the aura of the Dodsleys must have still overhung that famous thoroughfare) in the fourth year of Queen Victoria's reign. Its founders in those peaceful days no doubt made provision for exhibiting rare books under glass ; they could hardly have expected that a hundred years later there would be books under glass in a very different way, with notices warning readers of the need for care in handling what they read. I suppose if a claim had to be made for the London Library it would be that it reckons to be able to supply any book that a serious person is likely to want to read—and to supply them by the armful, for town members can have out ten volumes at a time and country members fifteen, Lord Balfour said that what it existed for in the main was " to supply the student with all the books he required for carrying on his work." As one student—who is himself a member of the library and presented it with an autograph copy of the first volume of his Marlborough— put it, " Give us the tools and we will finish the job." He finished that particular job in four volumes.
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