16 
had only reached 23,339. Verily a good record in twelve short years. Of 
course the Libraries are small, and the total amount raised for their support 
being only £9,000, gives each an annual income of only about £140. 
The expense falls on the City funds, and the Libraries are managed by 
small Committees appointed by the Mayoralty, and presided over by the 
Mayor ; and these Committees are responsible to the Prefect of the Seine. 
We are told that cases of theft or ill-usage of books is very rare indeed, and 
that the multiplication of Libraries has had the happiest of effects on the 
people of Paris. 
Some remarks of M. le Ministre on the reading ot fiction are so much 
to the point that I quote them 7” exfenso :-— 
“Tt must be admitted that, in the totals, the instructive book is far from 
furnishing the largest quota. Of the 1,386,642 issues in 1890, Fiction alone 
laid claim to 690,105. 
“The proportion is a considerable one, although from the first the Administration 
has endeavoured to discourage the taste of the public for merely light reading. 
“Some years ago, instructions to this effect were given to the librarians, who 
were invited to use the influence their almost daily intercourse with the 
frequenters of their libraries was able to give them, to induce the latter to 
turn, by choice, to works of a more serious nature. The result of this 
campaign was that, in 1887, the average of issues fell from 24,764 to 22,517. 
Rather than confine themselves to instructive books, the novel-readers chose to 
desert the library. 
“‘ And the fact is easily explained. It is hard to require of a labourer, or of an 
artisan, or of a young shop employé, kept close all day long to his bench or 
his counter, that after his toil he should devote his leisure hours to kinds of 
reading which require a certain tension of mind, for which, too, his early 
education has little prepared him. 
““Tt seems, moreover, that it is just this class of readers who deserve thoughtful 
attention. For the very reason that they come to the municipal libraries to 
seek amusement, and amusement only, is not the keeping of them away 
attended with danger? Is not the denial to them of the only kind of reading 
in which they know how to be interested the way to compel them to take 
elsewhere pleasures often of a far less innocent nature? The only precaution 
that need be observed is not to let books of an immoral nature fall into 
their hands; and it is to this object that the committees, whose business it is 
to purchase the books, should direct their care and thought.” 
Ten of the municipal libraries make the lending out of Art books 
and single drawings and designs a special feature, and this to me was 
an entirely new and interesting arrangement. I again quote from the 
Report before referred to. 
** Apart from practical work, books are not sufficient of themselves for the education 
either of the labourer or of the artisan engaged in manufacture; to complete 
their technical instruction, and above all to mould and refine their taste, the 
study of patterns is a size gua non. To this idea is due the creation of 
municipal libraries for Industrial Art, where is studied, and, above all, lent 
out, patterns (in the form of prints, photographs and designs) which are of the 
greatest possible use to the section of the working-class population of Paris 
