much felt." The chief
readers in these libraries are the working-classes, and persons who are
engaged in active business through the day. Works on physical science,
history, biography, and of a superior class, are those chiefly read by
them; and Mr. Stevens stated, that when he came to England, he could not
help being struck by the "little reading that there is among the
laboring and business classes" of this country as compared with the
United States. This is succinctly explained by Mr. Dawson, who says:
"The quantity of people who cannot read and write in this country is a
very great hinderance to the demand for books. We have _eight millions_
who cannot write yet!" Mr. Edwards, in his evidence, also points to the
same deficiency of elementary education, "In addition," he says, "to the
positive want of schooling on the part of large numbers of the
population who are now growing up, those who do get some partial
education, habitually neglect to improve what they get from the want of
cultivating a taste for reading. Unless good books are made accessible
to the people, this is very likely to continue to be a cause--even where
education by Sunday schools, and other efforts of that kind, have been
brought within the reach of a considerable number of the population--why
the good effects of education have not been continued in after life."

The committee very justly place much value on the opinions and
suggestions of M. Libri. The thorough knowledge which that eminent
bibliographer possesses of all matters pertaining to the condition and
wants of public libraries, as well as of the needs of literary men,
renders his remarks worthy of careful consideration. In a letter
addressed to Mr. Ewart, the chairman of the committee, he develops his
views at some length, and shows the necessity of having in great
countries libraries "in which one may expect to find, as far as it is
possible, all books which learned men--men who occupy themselves upon
any subject whatever, and who cultivate one of the branches of human
knowledge--may require to consult. Of these there is nothing useless,
nothing ought to be neglected; the most insignificant in appearance,
those which on their publication have attracted the least attention,
sometimes become the source of valuable and unexpected information." It
is in the fragments, now so rare and precious, of some alphabets--of
some small grammars published for the use of schools about the middle of
the