easy for the British Parliament to have made the Library which the old physician bequeathed to the nation an almost complete collection, especially of English literature; but the tide of Parliamentary liberality did not set in towards it until the opening of the present century, when that bibliomania had already begun to rage virulently among wealthy individuals and civilised nations, one of the effects of which is that literary treasures which before could have been readily procured by the public funds are now absorbed by private collectors or stray into the various Libraries of America and the Continent.* In 1768 Parliament granted only £1 16s. 8d. for the Library of the British Museum; in 1859 the grant was £22,000 for additions to the Library and Museum alone. The new Reading Room with all its appurtenances cost, before it was opened, £150,000. I suppose Dublin gets her proportionate share of the public treasure for such matters, due regard being of course had for the vested interests of the British Lion, whose share must needs be—a lion's.

The number of books in this Library in the year 1858 was 550,000, and the annual increase is above 20,000.† The Times newspaper alone adds twelve huge folios every year; for it is well to remark, that the authorities in these institutions, aiming at universality, consent now-a-days to store up what they call "lumber" and "trash." By "trash" they understand third-rate novels, fourth-rate poems, and such like; while under the head of "lumber"-the gentlemen of the Press will excuse me-are chiefly included newspapers. Some of this lumber, however, is pretty valuable: it is said, for instance, that Melbourne Library is ready to give a thousand pounds for a complete set of the Times.

On the whole, therefore, though in England itself the Bodleian is in some respects a finer Library, this splendidly lodged and splendidly dowered Institute in Great Russell-square, London, may fairly compete for the second and perhaps the first place among the great Libraries of the world. The exact rank and order of precedence are not easy to determine. For, as I have ventured to give figures, and am going to inflict on you a few more, it is right to warn you that these cannot be by any means implicitly trusted. Even when Libraries are counted accurately, the same system of counting

* One famous instance of this diseased passion for rare books and rare editions may be mentioned. At the sale of the Duke of Roxburgh's Library, in 1812, the Marquis of Blandford gave for a Valdarfer Boccaccio the largest sum ever given for one volume, £2,260. The most curious part of this incident, in commemoration of which the Roxburgh Club was founded, is that the purchaser had at the time in his library a copy exactly similar without knowing or caring anything about it. When his death put the book again in the market-for people cannot bring Valdarfer Boccaccios with them into the other world, and, if they could, all the woful fascinations of the "Decameron" could not save it from a worse fate than the "Index Expurgatorius"-the coveted tome went for less than half the sum that had been paid for it, and was still a very dear bargain.

"The Library now contains, as shown by the laborious but trustworthy test of actual counting, no fewer than 1,100,000 volumes. The sum expended annually in purchases is 10,000; and the total number of volumes added yearly to the collection has increased to 42,000."-Edinburgh Review, January, 1874.

and division of volumes is not always used. Some, for instance, treat each pamphlet as a volume, some reckon them up at the rate of ten to a volume. This great collection of Patents with which our young Library here has just been enriched is presented also to the Library of St. Petersburg. There, it seems, the 3,200 patents of a single year in separate pamphlets are called so many volumes, while in the British Museum the same are bound in 92 volumes. And even if the accuracy and uniformity of the numerical Census could be guaranteed, the real gradations of dignity in Libraries would not at all be decided. Having urged these mitigating circumstances, let me blurt out my last mouthful of bibliothecological statistics. Taking a year for which there are data for a loose approximation towards a comparison of national libraries, it appears that in 1860 Paris numbered about 860,000 volumes; St. Petersburg, 840,000; London, 600,000; Vienna, which was the greatest of all a hundred years ago, only 300,000, about equal to Dresden, and lower than Munich, Copenhagen, and Berlin, which contained 400,000, 450,000, and 500,000 volumes respectively. And, besides many other great Libraries that could be named, there are twenty-five Free Public Libraries in the United States, dividing amongst them more than a million of books.

As our notion of what is conveyed by the words "a hundred thousand books," or "a million of books," is somewhat vague, I have looked about for some term of comparison; and, as I knew that the great Alma Mater of the Irish priesthood would not be unrepresented here to night, I bethought myself at the last moment of ascertaining the extent of the Library of Maynooth College. The reply has just come in time to tell us that the number is 35,000. Anyone who remembers the noble room which the elder Pugin devoted to this purpose in his designs for the new college buildings, and has seen from the entrance to the library the vista of long and heavily laden shelves rising tier above tier so high, and stretching away rank after rank so far, will be helped to attain to the proper reverence for one of those monster Libraries of which we have spoken, of which the Library of St. Patrick's College is but an insignificant fraction.

I will read the other words which follow on the post-card which has given us this last bit of information, because they refer to the source to which I am indebted for most of the facts I have set before you, and I am glad to seize this opportunity of confessing that, if quotations could thus be marked in the spoken word, inverted commas would during this lecture have frequently wreathed the speaker's lips. "You could not have a better or more exhaustive account than that in the English Cyclopedia'-it is by the late Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum."†

* Dr. O'Hanlon's valuable collection and other additions have increased it since. In writing out these notes almost exactly as they were jotted down in December, 1870, I have not been able to sprinkle these quotation-marks plentifully enough over the text. Nor have I thought it well to pad out my thin-chested lecture with the fuller and more accurate details furnished just four years later by an Edinburgh Reviewer. From this latest and most complete account of the subject I have taken a few corrections and additions in my notes to the preceding pages. I should have wished to borrow from this high authority many other interesting particulars such as

But ah! that word "exhaustive"-word of evil omen, like the "forlorn" of Keats' "Nightingale,"

"The very sound is like a bell

That tolls me back from you to my sole self;"

for it reminds me that the first thing an exhaustive lecture is likely to exhaust is the patience of the audience. Of course you are bound as Christians to interrupt me with an indignant No; but yes, yes! for, while even your patience can be exhausted, the subject itself is inexhaustible. Not only are there exhaustive articles and sketches without number in magazines, cyclopedias, and reviews, not only have large tomes been compiled, treating of the history and management of Libraries in general and separate biographies (so to speak) published of nearly all the great Libraries; but one of those indefatigable Germans has carried on for thirty years a periodical devoted exclusively to matters connected with this science of Libraries, this bibliothekwissenchaft or bibliothecology.

66

From the earliest and greatest Libraries we have come too slowly to this least and latest of its race. And now, to go back for a moment to the thought we began with-standing by its cradle, shall we forecast its destiny? What shalt thou be hereafter ?" "Twenty golden years ago" and more, I knew a little fair-haired peasant-boy, who did not seem likely ever to be much taller than any of his neighbours; but though he died some ten or twelve years ago, he had lived to be over thirty stone in weight and I forget how near to nine feet in height-near enough to be the hero of innumerable newspaper paragraphs about Murphy the Irish giant, and (more solid even than such fame!) to amass some thousands of pounds by being exhibited in all countries of Europe except Ireland-for he never would consent to make a show of himself amongst his own people. It is more than probable that the present promising bairn, whose birthday feast we are celebrating, will never surprise us in like manner by shooting up into one of those giants of its race, such as we have spoken of. But still the inauguration in which we are taking part will be of no mean importance if it help to fix in us, according to our various circumstances and opportunities, the wish and purpose of using, and aiding others to use, the advantages offered by such institutions as this. It would be, in the first place, discreditable to our fine old city to remain longer without some such establishment. To put it on the lowest ground, a Public Library is an ornament and a cheap ornament. As was said in recommendation of the planting of trees, "it will grow when you are sleeping." Or,-to change the figure abruptly, if the stones had been cleared away and the spring allowed to gush forth earlier, already the stream might long have gone on its course, refreshing and fertilising, receiving accessions from the right hand and

this circumstance which gives such a wonderful idea of the British Museum Library -that its catalogue now forms one continuous alphabetical series of 1,522 volumes, with twenty-one volumes of indexes.

* At Marseilles, but his body was brought home all the way to be buried in the old Kilbroney graveyard, near Rostrevor. His height was 8 feet 4 inches.

the left, and increasing steadily, though imperceptibly, its beneficent flood

"As, fed by many a rivulet,
Our lordly Shannon flows."

There has been an illustration of this in the difficulty which the Bennis collection has experienced in finding "a local habitation" in the native city of its collector. Many similar benefactions, large and small, will no doubt be made to our Library during each decade of its lifetime. On this point I would invite the attention of the Library Committee to two precedents which seem worthy of imitation. The Scotch Universities formerly enjoyed the privilege of obtaining on demand a copy of every book published within these realms. This right was exercised in very unequal degrees : for when it was abolished in 1835, and compensation granted in proportion to the actual loss sustained, Aberdeen was ordered to receive only £320 a year from the Consolidated Fund, while Glasgow was rewarded for its diligence in dunning the booksellers, with an annuity for ever of £707. From this "modern instance" may be drawn as a moral this "wise saw"—“ Ask as a favour whatever you have the faintest chance of getting, and demand as a right whatever you have the smallest right to." The other hint is suggested by Sir Thomas Bodley, one of whose first cares was to furnish his great Bodleian Library with a handsome volume wherein to record gratefully every donation, and so hand down to posterity a tradition of gratitude towards the donors.

It would be a blessing if all classes, high and low, could be provided with better means of amusing themselves rationally. You have heard of that king of France who "with fifty thousand men marched up the hill and then marched down again."

And is it pastime meet for all our fine young men

To stroll up George's-street and then stroll down again?

By keeping this Library open every evening it is sought to benefit those who, after their hard day's work is done, have no club to turn into, no place in which to spend their evening agreeably, except such places as leave anything but agreeable reminiscences behind them— places from which many a good poor fellow reels home with difficulty to a bare enough fireside, to wake up next morning with an aching head, a remorseful conscience, an empty pocket, and a heavy heart.

"All's well that ends well;" and, in this season when all the world is beginning to gather round the cradle of our Infant Saviour, how can we end better than by yielding to the genial influence of the holy and kindly Christmas spirit, and in this spirit wishing to each other and to all who are dear to us, and to all around us, rich and poor, those who can help others to be happy and those whose Christmas depends so much on the charity of such hearts as oursto all of these, and to ourselves, and to all that interests and concerns us, including even this Public Library now inaugurated-wishing (if libraries are not capable of a merry Christmas) at least many a useful and prosperous New Year.

1

THE RELATIONS OF THE CHURCH TO SOCIETY

BY THE REV. EDMUND J. O'REILLY.

XV. OBEDIENCE DUE TO THE POPE (continued).

IMMEDIATELY after the words just quoted, Mr. Gladstone adds: “I must confess that in this apology there is to me a strong, undeniable smack of Protestantism. To reconcile Dr. Newman's conclusion with the premises of the Vatican will surely require all, if not more than all, the vigilance, acuteness, and subtlety of the Schola Theologorum in its acutest member." What precisely Mr. Gladstone means by "this apology," whether it be the whole of Dr. Newman's letter to the Duke of Norfolk or his restriction of the supposed absoluteness of the obedience defined to be due to the Pope, is not perfectly clear. But, as Mr. Gladstone has been just speaking of Dr. Newman's "exceptions to the precept of obedience," I will take his criticism here expressed as directed mainly, at least, against the restriction alluded to. This being supposed, we may inquire whether the "smack of Protestantism" lies directly in the liberty taken-as he conceives -with the meaning of the Vatican definition, by diminishing the stringency of that meaning, or in simply asserting the right of conscience to decline, in certain contingencies, obeying the Pope's commands; in other words, whether the resistance imputed is to the definition or to the Pope's possible orders. I should say rather the former. But, in reality, there is no smack of Protestantism in either. Not in the first, because the pretence that the Constitution asserted a duty of absolute obedience in Mr. Gladstone's sense is perfectly groundless, and the denial of such duty implies not the smallest violence done to the definition, nor the smallest explaining away of its force. Not in the second, partly as a consequence of what has been said about the first- inasmuch as this definition does not stand in the way-partly because the Popes do not pretend to be free from the danger of giving wrong commands in particular instances, and do not ignore the rational rights of conscience.

As we have come upon conscience and its rights, I will say a few words on this subject, which has been already so ably and eloquently dealt with by Dr. Newman. There is no need of repeating his statements, unless where this may be unavoidable on account of their connection with what I am going to add. What, then, is conscience? It is a practical judgment concerning the lawfulness, or unlawfulness, or obligation, of doing an act which is in one's power, and of doing or not doing which there is question at the time. Under the name of an act I include an omission, which, in moral matters, is equivalent to an act. The act may be internal only-for thoughts are acts-or external also, and speaking is of course comprised.

Conscience, I have said, is a judgment. It is, therefore, itself an

"Vaticanism," p. 69.