signs of location are required. When they become very numerous, in any system of classification, the system breaks down by its own weight. Library attendants consume an undue amount of time in learning it, and library cataloguers and classifiers in affixing the requisite signs of designation to the labels, the shelves, and the catalogues. Memory, too, is unduly taxed to apply the system. While a superior memory may be found equal to any task imposed upon it, average memories are not so fortunate. The expert librarian, in whose accomplished head the whole world of science and literature lies coördinated, so that he can apply his classification unerringly to all the books in a vast library, must not presume that unskilled assistants can do the same.

One of the mistakes made by the positivists in classification is the claim that their favorite system can be applied to all libraries alike. That this is a fallacy may be seen in an example or two. Take the case of a large and comprehensive Botanical library, in which an exact scientific distribution of the books may and should be made. It is classified not only in the grand divisions, such as scientific and economic botany, etc., but a close analytical treatment is extended over the whole vegetable kingdom. Books treating of every plant are relegated to their appropriate classes, genera, and species, until the whole library is organised on a strictly scientific basis. But in the case, even of what are called large libraries, so minute a classification would be not only unnecessary, but even obstructive to prompt service of the books. And the average town library, containing only a shelf or two of botanical works, clearly has no use for such a classification. The attempt to impose a universal law upon library arrangement, while the conditions of the collections are endlessly varied, is foredoomed to failure.

The object of classification is to bring order out of confusion, and to arrange the great mass of books in science and literature of which every library is composed, so that those on related subjects should be as nearly as possible brought together. Let us suppose a collection of some hundred thousand volumes, in all branches of human knowledge, thrown together without any classification or catalogue, on the tables, the shelves, and the floor of an extensive reading-room. Suppose also an assemblage of scholars and other readers, ready and anxious to avail themselves of these literary treasures, this immense library without a key. Each wants some certain book, by some author whose name he knows, or upon some subject upon which he seeks to inform himself. But how vain and hopeless the effort to go through all this chaos of learning, to find the one volume which he needs! This illustration points the prime necessity of classification of some kind, before a collection of books can be used in an available way.

Then comes in the skilled bibliographer, to convert this chaos into a cosmos, to illumine this darkness with the light of science. He distributes the whole mass, volume by volume, into a few great distinct classes; he creates families or sub-divisions in every class; he assembles together in groups all that treat of the same subject, or any of its branches; and thus the entire scattered multitude of volumes is at length coördinated into a clear and systematic collection, ready for use in every department. A great library is like a great army: when unorganized, your army is a mere undisciplined mob: but divide and sub-divide it into army corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and companies, and you can put your finger upon every man.

To make this complete organization of a library successful, one must have an organising mind, a wide acquaintance with literature, history, and the outlines, at least, of

all the sciences; a knowledge of the ancient and of various modern languages; a quick intuition, a ripe judgment, a cultivated taste, a retentive memory, and a patience and perseverance that are inexhaustible.

Even were all these qualities possessed, there will be in the arrangement elements of discord and of failure. Α multitude of uncertain points in classification, and many exceptions will arise; and these must of necessity be settled arbitrarily. The more conversant one becomes with systems of classification, when reduced to practice, the more he becomes assured that a perfect bibliographical system is impossible.

Every system of classification must find its application fraught with doubts, complications, and difficulties; but the wise bibliographer will not pause in his work to resolve all these insoluble problems; he will classify the book in hand according to his best judgment at the moment it comes before him. He can no more afford to spend time over intricate questions of the preponderance of this, that, or the other subject in a book, than a man about to walk to a certain place can afford to debate whether he shall put his right foot forward or his left. The one thing needful is to go forward.

Referring to the chapter on bibliography for other details, I may here say that the French claim to have reached a highly practical system of classification in that set forth in J. C. Brunet's Manuel du Libraire. This is now generally used in the arrangement of collections of books in France, with some modifications, and the book trade find it so well adapted to their wants, that classified sale and auction catalogues are mostly arranged on that system. It has only five grand divisions: Theology, Law, Arts and Sciences, Belles-lettres, and History. Each of these classes has numerous sub-divisions. For example, geog

raphy and voyages and travels form a division of history, between the philosophy of history and chronology, etc.

The classification in use in the Bibliothèque nationale of France places Theology first, followed by Law, History, Philosophy and Belles-lettres. The grand division of Philosophy includes all which is classified under Arts and Sciences in the system of Brunet.

In the Library of the British Museum the classification starts with Theology, followed by 2. Jurisprudence; 3. Natural History (including Botany, Geology, Zoology, and Medicine); 4. Art (including Archaeology, Fine Arts, Architecture, Music, and Useful Arts); 5. Philosophy (including Politics, Economics, Sociology, Education, Ethics, Metaphysics, Mathematics, Military and Naval Science, and Chemistry; 6. History (including Heraldry and Genealogy); 7. Geography (including Ethnology); 8. Biography (including Epistles); 9. Belles-lettres (including Poetry, Drama, Rhetoric, Criticism, Bibliography, Collected Works, Encyclopaedias, Speeches, Proverbs, Anecdotes, Satirical and facetious works, Essays, Folklore and Fiction); 10. Philology.

Sub-divisions by countries are introduced in nearly all the classes.

In the Library of Congress the classification was originally based upon Lord Bacon's scheme for the division of knowledge into three great classes, according to the faculty of the mind employed in each. 1. History (based upon memory); 2. Philosophy (based upon reason); 3. Poetry (based upon imagination). This scheme was much better adapted to a classification of ideas than of books. Its failure to answer the ends of a practical classification of the library led to radical modifications of the plan, as applied to the books on the shelves, for reasons of logical arrange

ment, as well as of convenience. A more thorough and systematic re-arrangement is now in progress.

Mr. C. A. Cutter has devised a system of "Expansive classification," now widely used in American libraries. In this, the classes are each indicated by a single letter, followed by numbers representing divisions by countries, and these in turn by letters indicating sub-divisions by subjects, etc. It is claimed that this method is not a rigid unchangeable system, but adaptable in a high degree, and capable of modification to suit the special wants of any library. In it the whole range of literature and science is divided into several grand classes, which, with their sub-classes, are indicated by the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Thus Class A embraces Generalia; B to D, Spiritual sciences (including philosophy and religion); E to G, Historical sciences (including, besides history and biography, geography and travels); H to K, Social sciences (including law and political science and economics); L to P, Natural sciences; Q, Medicine; and R to Z, Arts (including not only mechanical, recreative and fine arts, but music, languages, literature, and bibliography).

The sub-divisions of these principal classes are arranged with progressive fullness, to suit smaller or larger libraries. Thus, the first classification provides only eleven classes, suited to very small libraries: the second is expanded to fifteen classes, the third to thirty classes, and so on up to the seventh or final one, designed to provide for the arrangement of the very largest libraries.

This is the most elaborate and far-reaching library classification yet put forth, claiming superior clearness, flexibility, brevity of notation, logical coördination, etc., while objections have been freely made to it on the score of over-refinement and aiming at the unattainable.

What is known as the decimal or the Dewey system of