The Free Library : its History and Present Condition. By
John J. Ogle. (George Allen.)—This is a very interesting, carefully written, and eminently opportune contribution to what promises to be the valuable "Library Series," edited by Dr. Richard Garnett,—opportune because the establishment of free libraries all over the country seems to be but a matter of time. Dr. Garnett might have spared his readers the first page of his General Introduction, in which he dilates at undue length on the various epithets that have been applied to the present age, and leads up to the conclusion, "To call it the Age of Light were presumptuous, but an Age of Light it assuredly is, and did we seek for a name we should be inclined to entitle it the Age of Books." After this little outburst of superfluous, if excusable, rhapsody, Dr. Garnett settles down to telling what the series he is editing will deal with,—the establishment of free libraries, library construc- tion, library administration, and the price of books. Mr. John J. Ogle in the present volume takes up the first subject, and narrates the story of the progress—for, on the whole, it has been pro- gress—of the free library movement from its inception to the present time. During the last few years that progress has been not only steady but rapid. At tha.end of 1896 there were in the United Kingdom only ten burghal areas with a population of over fifty thousand that had not adopted the Free Libraries Act. It is a rather curious comment on the reputation of Scotland for intelligence and earnestness that Glasgow should be the one town with a population of more than one hundred thousand that has not adopted the Act. Mr. Ogle's book is a treasure house of facts and figures relating to the free library movement ; his descrip- tions of important libraries, notably of the British Museum, are in every respect admirable.
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