i6 



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 in extenso : — 



" It must be admitted that, in the totals, the instructive book is far from 

 furnishing the largest quota. Of the 1,386,642 issues in 1S90, 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 employe^ 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. 



" It 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 immoial 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 sine qua 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 



