i88o-i88i.] 43 



fitting receptacle for some of the best works from our School of 

 Art. At present it is simply discreditable to such a town as 

 Belfast, that we have no fit place even to exhibit the year's works 

 of our art students. 



In addition to all the wants I have already detailed, our 

 crowning deficiency is the want of a town library — in fact, a 

 Free Public Library. In these days of primary, intermediate, and 

 higher education, it should be wholly unnecessary to advocate 

 the establishment of libraries. They are essential to the success 

 of any sufficient scheme of national education. We properly 

 denounce all systems of cramming, and insist that the education 

 of the schoolroom should be but the foundation on which, or 

 the scaffolding by which, the intellectual superstructure shall be 

 subsequently erected through the proper use of observation, and 

 books ; but, unless the student has ready access to books, his 

 education is a sham. 



The necessity, therefore, for libraries will be in proportion to 

 the success of our educational schemes. The wealthy can pro- 

 cure books by purchase, or through the agency of circulating 

 libraries, but the great bulk of the people in search of informa- 

 tion cannot afford this, and are consequently denied the pleasure 

 and advantage of reading, with all its elevating and refining 

 influences. But public libraries are as necessary for men of 

 taste and learning in every rank of life as they are for the 

 intelligent industrial classes, or to make better citizens of the 

 ignorant and vicious. Since 1852 when the first library under 

 the Free Libraries Act was established at Manchester, there 

 have been about 100 similar libraries established in the principal 

 towns throughout the kingdom, and the uniform success that 

 has attended the undertakings in the great majority of cases, is 

 the strongest recommendation to Belfast to adopt the same plan. 

 From a Parliamentary return published in 1877, I give below a 

 tabular statement, showing the application of this system in 

 fifteen towns of over 40,000 inhabitants. Each library, it will 

 be seen, has a lending and a reference department. The number 

 of books in stock for each department is given ; also, the number 



