On Friday week Lord Rosebery, as the Chancellor of the
University of London, opened the library of the University, which has been recently enriched by Professor Foxwell's unique collection of books on economics, purchased and pre- sented by the Goldsmiths' Company. Lord Rosebery in an interesting speech regretted that so many valuable libraries passed "in disastrous vessels of the 'Mayflower' type" across the Atlantic, and suggested that Mr. Asquith might apply some of his vast surplus from the Death-duties to saving such collections for Britain. He went on to deal with the true function of a library, and denied that it could be any real sub- stitute for a University. "You might just as well say that the true regiment is a butcher's shop." Books were the food of the mind, but the mere habit of reading copiously might become injurious rather than beneficial,—a kind of mental paralysis. Strangely enough, Lord Rosebery disapproves of haphazard reading, which involves the reading of obsolete and second-rate books, and thinks that the most urgently needed Royal Commission is one to determine what books are super- seded. It is good advice in its way, but somehow we did not. expect it from Lord Rosebery. If readers are not to browse at large in a meadow, but to be tethered like a Dutch cow to a peg, the day of the agreeable dilettante is over.
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