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of old ballads or broadsides that are somewhat rare or 

 curious, should be marched from his seat in the Reading- 

 Room into an interior chamber, and be there requiied to 

 make his researches under the gaze of eyes appointed to 

 see that he does not steal the pages which he only desires 

 to peruse. The Librarian must be strangely ignorant of 

 the sensitiveness of students, or he would not require us 

 to tell him that such treatment is not conducive to the 

 equanimity requisite for study. What, again, can be more 

 ridiculous than the official order, obeyed by the attendant, 

 who, on giving some richly-bound or otherwise curious- 

 volume to a reader incapable of injuring any book, observes, 

 This, sir, is a case book, and you are requested to bo 

 very careful with it " ? Nor can anything but annoyance 

 to readers result from the rule which forbids a receiver of 

 books at the central bar to take a known reader's books, 

 and restore him his tickets, until the pressmarks of the 

 tickets have been compared with the press-marks on the 

 restored volumes. At the close of the day, when readers 

 are giving back their volumes in quick succession, this 

 order is somewhat fruitful of prodigious worry and trouble 

 and we cannot imagine any good that can follow from its 

 observance which might not be compassed by other, and 

 quite unobjectionable means. Hitherto, we, like the pub- 

 lic, have been long suffering and submissive, out of proper 

 reluctance to increase the embarrassments of a gentleman 

 who has undoubtedly a desire to do his duty. But the 

 Chief Librarian has exhausted our patience by his last ex- 

 travangances. Now that an Archbishop has been refused 

 admittance to the Reading-Room, as though he were an 

 impertinent intruder, till provided with a special order, and 

 the chief of a great public department, personally known 

 to almost every officer of the Library, has endured the 



