know only what he chooses to allow. In this case it must 

 be admitted that his game is an easy one to play, the 

 Trustees, under his manipulations, have become mere 

 Merovingian rots faintnants, while he has acquired all the 

 influence and authority of the Mayors of the Palace, without 

 having the administrative ability of a Pepin or a Charles 

 Martel. 



In concluding this part of my subject I cannot but think 

 that those who will take the trouble to go fairly through the 

 facts adduced, will see that they can be reconciled with no 

 other interpretation than that the Library Department and 

 the departments allied, are in the hands of a clique of 

 inferior and unqualified men, whose treatment of their 

 subordinates is most discreditable, and who manage such 

 promotion as they can grasp with utter disregard of the 

 public interest, and with a single eye to the advancement of 

 favourites and relatives. 



II. MISMANAGEMENT. 



THE next thing that I have to show is that the Library 

 Department of the Museum is in truth so badly 

 managed that its value to the public is indescribably dimin- 

 ished. That the public for whose benefit the institution 

 exists, and at whose expense it is maintained, have to com- 

 plain of vexatious and unnecessary restrictions on their use 

 of it, and that those who overcome these difficulties do not 

 always find themselves treated with the courtesy they have a 

 right to expect from their servants. I am sorry to be 

 obliged to add that in some of these respects the Library 

 does not stand alone among the departments. In this 

 branch of my subject I propose to cite the testimony of 

 others rather than to speak in my own person, and the cha- 

 racter of the witnesses I shall call will be such as to leave 



