THE VALUE OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES.
/THE public-spirited action of Mrs. Rylands in present- ing the city of Manchester with a Public Library of exceptional interest and value is an event of national interest. Manchester has been peculiarly fortunate for many years in possessing a very good system of district free libraries with a large and excellent central library in the heart of the city. But the gift of Mrs. Rylands is by no means a mere extension of this system, but rather the establishment of a library for scholars.
She secured, at the cost of £250.000, the magnificent collection of books, many of unique value, made by the Spencer family, and formerly housed at Althorp.
Those who have seen that collection, with its magnificent Boccaccio and other rare books, know what a splendid prize has fallen to Manchester through the wise generosity of a noble woman, and they will be able to con- gratulate the capital of industrial Lancashire on having been raised at one bound to the plane of our Uni- versity towns. The Rylands Library is not, indeed, BO large as the University libraries of Oxford and Cam- bridge, or that of the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh ; but the present nucleus will grow into a very great institu- tion, which, along with the Owens College, will make of Manchester almost as great a centre of culture as it has long been of trade.
From every point of view this fact is one on which both Winchester and the country at large may be congratulated. In the first place, it is a great object-lesson as to the worthy uses of wealth. At the risk of repeating what we have said more than once, we will say again that it is not merely public generosity on the part of the owners of wealth which one rightly Tooke for, but also wise generosity. There are, so to speak, many obvious and commonplace forms of generosity which we should not disparage, but which, nevertheless, are so utilitarian that they could scarcely fail to suggest themselves to any wealthy man or woman. But it is comparatively rare to find a rich person whose imagination transcends the ordinary ideal, and who is prepared to give to the com munity not so much what it wants as what it needs,— a very important distinction.. It is easy to see that people want creature comforts, baths, washhouses, in- firwaries,—all excellent, necessary things, but the provision of which, even on the most magnificent scale, might still leave a community mentally and spiritually starving. It is left for a few wealthy people to exhibit a care for the higher part of man's nature, for art, science, scholarship, things of the mind. Mr. Middlemore has done this for Birmingham through his Art Gallery, as Mr. Tate has for London, and as John Owens did for Manchester by his College ; and now Mrs. Rylands has added to these splendid and enduring monuments of civic greatness devoted to the higher life of the people.
The gift is also a most important means of rescuing our industrial and commercial life from the grip of that materialism, that low utilitarianism, to which we are all too prone. The nation has been long accustomed to separate culture from business and industry, with very questionable results. It was thought that great libraries were well enough in our University towns, for they constituted, so to speak, the means, the tools, for turning out the particular com- modity manufactured there. But Manchester existed to supply us with cotton, Leeds and Bradford with woollen goods, Newcastle with coal, Glasgow with steamers, Leicester with hosiery. Therefore, so the unconscious and unformulated, but very real; argument ran, we need not trouble about supplying these places with instruments of the higher culture ; let us see that the drainage is all right and the machinery good, and we can ignore the higher ends of life. Well, the results, as we have said, were questionable, and we might use a far stronger word. We had ugliness, sordidness, ignorance, vice, and the general reign of Mr, Gradgrind ; poetry, art, culture, banished from his grimy domain. But this condition of things could not last, and it was soon found through the medium of the University Extension and other movements that there was a demand for something else than machinery and trade returns; and Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, and other great centres secured their local Colleges, which, imperfect as they still are, have worked beneficent results in the education and character of large sections of our people. The divorce of culture from trade is not only singularly unwise, it is opposed to the best traditions of European history. Venice was not simply an emporium, it was a great centre of art, a centre of perhaps the finest printing the world has known ; and the art of Venice was all the better for her industry, and the industry all the better for her art. Florence, Genoa, Nuremberg, Antwerp, and many another city of the Middle Ages found it impossible to live by bread alone, and built up grand monuments of culture and art which are our admiration to-day. Now, it may be hoped that the unnatural divorce between learning and life is over in England, and that the notion that large libraries with splendid editions for scholars should exist in Universities only is also dead. " The best University," said Carlyle, " is a library of books," and many a lonely scholar has verified the truth of that saying.
There is still another ground on which the munificence of Mrs. Rylands may be praised. The great library is not only for the great scholar, it is for all who desire to know more than can be found on one's private shelves, or even in the ordinary public free library, useful institution as that is. Because one cannot read Sanskrit like Professor Max Muller, or make extended researches into mediaeval history like Lord Acton, or explore the recesses of English history like Mr. Gardiner, it does not follow that one may not make for oneself valuable and interesting reading in works not readily accessible if one but got the chance. It does not fall to the lot of every one to go to Oxford any more then it fell to the lot of every one in the ancient world to go to Corinth ; but there must be in all our large towns quite a number of persons with fair education who desire to carry on their researches to a point wholly beyond the resources of the local library. For such persons a gift like that of Mrs. Rylands in invaluable. It means an addition to solid and lasting satisfaction of powers in their nature which have never found a necessary organ for such satisfaction. They may never produce any- thing in the way of a book (but there are books enough, in all conscience), but they will become comparatively learned and cultivated persons, and will to that extent add to the stock of intelligence and, in the main, of virtue.
For, while we admit that learning does not necessarily lead to conduct, yet, on the whole, we think that where the intellectuels are found, there will be found also a higher range of motives, a deeper sense of human responsibility, and a finer moral courage than else- where. If knowledge be in itself a good thing, notwith- standing the increase of sorrow it is said to bring, the more it is extended among men the better. At any rate, modern society is built up on that hypothesis ; and, accepting it as true, we see in the public library the best means of promoting sound learning and wise thinking among mankind.
Previous page
