tainly see that the means of approach are as easy and pleasant as possible.

So I will begin my suggestions by pleading for the inclusion in every new secondary school of a room set apart for, and sacred to, the library, a room such as I have seen in a few especially favoured schools, but which should be a feature of every school, included in the architect's plan as a matter of course, just like the laboratories or cloak-rooms. The room should be regarded as a place of quiet and retirement from the hubbub of class-room or playground, and it should therefore be furnished in a more attractive way than the rest of the school; and I should banish from it all those pitchpine tables and fittings which are so suggestive of a waiting-room at a railway station, yet so dear to the manufacturer of school furniture. Plain deal stained a soft shade of green or brown is no dearer, and much more restful to the eye than pitchpine, or grained and varnished wood. The floor should be of hard wood, polished, the walls of some neutral tint to harmonize with the furniture, and on the space not occupied by bookshelves there should be a few good pictures; those engraved portraits of authors salvaged from old folios which may be bought at many second-hand printshops are cheap and appropriate; or, if they can be afforded, some Medici prints or other good reproductions of famous paintings may be hung. Whatever pictures there are should be very good of their kind. I say this because in some schools I have seen quality has been sacrificed to quantity, and the pictures have been too small and too crude in colouring to do any justice to their originals.

The windows of the library should, if possible, be, like the windows of the other rooms, on one side of the room only, so that the light may fall on the left hand of the reader; they should be curtained lightly with some washing fabric, and on the sills should be plants in pots. Running

across the rooms there should be tables, covered with cloths by preference, but if this is considered too extravagant, owing to the danger from ink, the tops could be stained to match the rest of the room. The chairs should, I think, be of the rush-seated kind, as they are so much more comfortable than those of all wood; and there should be two or three easy chairs as well. All this is because the library should be as little like an office and as much like a sittingroom as possible; it should be planned to attract visitors, and since it should be one of the principal means of refining and educating the taste of our pupils, it should give them some idea of how beautiful and restful a room may be made with comparatively little expenditure on furniture.

As for the bookshelves, one of the advantages of having a room specially set aside for the library is that these may then be fitted into the walls, shelves being fastened into uprights with holes at various intervals for the supporting pegs. Except in very dusty and dirty towns, I do not advocate glass, and indeed, this is an expensive luxury. Yet if the school is so fortunate as to possess any very valuable books, first editions, or expensive copies, glass might be allowed for these, and for this purpose I would advise a set of sections, in which the glass can be lifted easily from any particular shelf, thus avoiding the exposure of the entire contents of the bookcase at the same time.

Sometimes, however, though we may be able to set aside a particular room for the purpose of the library, we may not be able to count on it for permanent use; and we must have bookshelves that can be moved as easily as any other furniture. In this case I would suggest the "Libraco" shelves, which can be put up and taken down in a very short time by any carpenter, or, indeed, any amateur. They consist of two uprights, a base and a cornice. The uprights are seven feet long, and this is a very suitable height, because

if you have the top shelf more than seven feet from the ground the books may suffer badly from the hot air, which, rising to the top of the room, is apt to rot the paper and binding; but if the pupils are to have free access to the shelves, this is rather too high, and two feet should be taken off. To the uprights there are fastened metal fittings, with movable bolts, so that the shelves, which rest on the bolts, can be adjusted to any desired interval. One bay, to hold from one hundred and seventy to two hundred and seventy books, costs from £2 4s. 8d.; and each additional bay about ten shillings less, as the intervening upright is not required. Thus a school library of some two thousand books could be accommodated for an outlay of about £14 in shelving, which would occupy some twenty-four linear feet of wall space. The firm that supplies the "Libraco " book-shelves supplies also some very useful library accessories, among which I may mention those metal book supports frequently seen in public libraries. They consist of a metal slide with an upright arm attached; when books are taken from the shelf the slide is passed underneath those which stand next; the upright piece prevents them from falling over, and so keeps the shelf tidy.

Before considering the choice of books for a school library I should like to discuss binding, and methods of buying. Binding is a constant difficulty, especially in the lending library, for books that are frequently read and carried backwards and forwards are very soon worn out. A common practice, especially in girls' schools, is to cover every new book in black calico. This certainly preserves them, but at the cost of giving them a most repulsive and unattractive appearance, and unless a school is very poor some other means of protection should be devised. When one is investing in books it is true economy to buy them in the stoutest binding available; thus if I were buying the

Letters of Charles Lamb in Dent's excellent "Everyman series, I should buy the two shilling edition with the pigskin back, which is both pretty and substantial, rather than the shilling edition, on which the gay gilt lettering so soon becomes dimmed and faded. But most newly published books are available only in one binding, and we must buy them in cloth or not at all. In this case one must be content to let them wear out and then have them rebound, preferably in cloth boards and leather backs. Care should be taken to have them well taped; three tapes are much stronger than two.

Now as to buying books. If the school is so fortunate as to have a yearly grant for the purpose, this may be kept in reserve and drawn on as occasion presents itself, for it is a great mistake to buy books in a hurry. By watching one's opportunity one may often purchase them much more cheaply than if one is obliged to acquire them at any particular date. The wise buyer, in procuring English and French classics for instance, will, unless some definite modern edition is desired, prefer to get good second-hand eighteenth century or early nineteenth century copies, which are often advertised very cheaply by second-hand booksellers. These have the advantage of being generally very strongly bound in calf, and the type and paper are very much better than one could expect in a modern reprint at the same price. Care must of course be taken to reject any with broken hinges, unless, indeed, it is considered worth while to rebind at once, as it sometimes is. Thus the other day I bought an early eighteenth century edition of Waller's Poems, with Tonson's imprint, for a shilling. Rebinding in cloth boards and leather back will cost two shillings, and I shall then have an excellent copy for three shillings. My other copy of Waller in the Muses' Library is in two volumes at one shilling each, and though it has a good introduction and notes, it is not

nearly so durable as the older book, which has already stood the wear of nearly two hundred years. There is to my mind some advantage in presenting old books to pupils in the form in which they first appeared, for it helps the learner to realize that the works which he now studies as literature were as truly the spontaneous expression of the writer's age as the poems of, let me say, Mr. Masefield or Mr. Abercrombie are of one phase of the thought and sentiment of the present day. The traces of former ownership in these copies are also often very interesting, and carry their own lesson of love and reverence for good books.

Another way of buying books cheaply is to deal with the circulating libraries. Smith, Mudie, and the Times Book Club periodically issue catalogues of books withdrawn from circulation, and by this means recently published works of criticism, biography, history, geography, and travel, may often be bought at a third or half the published price. Sometimes the binding is a little soiled, but it is not often seriously damaged, and if one is able to pay a personal visit quite good copies are generally forthcoming. The library label may easily be removed, if one does not wish to rebind the book immediately.

A third way of purchasing books for the school library is to buy them through remainder booksellers. Some booksellers, make a speciality of this business. It is well known that the demand for many of the more serious books, and of modern editions of classical works, is not sufficient to exhaust the first edition, and when the publisher has spent as much on advertisement as he thinks he can afford he parts with the remaining copies to a remainder bookseller, who in his turn sells them retail at a great reduction on the published price. As examples of books that have been " remaindered" I may mention Herbert Spencer's Autobiography, the original Muses' Library, and the Old Authors' Library,