It would add greatly to the usefulness of free libraries if judicious lists of books in the different departments of literature were drawn up by the librarians, and placed within the reach of readers. I should like to see the introduction of occasional lectures on the choice of books, by competent men, as an adjunct to the free library system.

I should like readers who have a decided taste for literature to devote a few hours occasionally to our old English writers-such as Bacon, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, and Sir Thomas Browne, and their illustrious contemporaries.

Listen to this sentence from Lord Bacon :-"We enter into a desirè of knowledge sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite, sometimes to entertain our minds with variety and delight, sometimes for ornament and reputation, sometimes to enable us to victory of wit and contradiction, but seldom sincerely to give a true account of our gift of reason for the benefit and use of man-as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort of commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit and sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. Good books are true friends that will neither flatter nor dissemble; be you but true to yourself, applying that which they teach, and you will need no other comfort or counsel."

Here are a few memorable words of Milton:-" Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life!"

Another sentence from Milton:-"In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”

Bishop Jeremy Taylor is the poet of divines. Where is there finer poetry than in the following sentences, which are taken from among hundreds equally beautiful:-"Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is contrary to that state of mind which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back by the loud sighings of an easterly wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more and more at

When

every breath of the tempest, till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel. So is the prayer of a good man anger or infirmity raised a tempest and overruled the man, then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back again and made them without intention; and the good man sighs for his infirmity, but must be content to lose the prayer, and he must recover it when his anger is removed and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus and smooth like the heart of God; and then it ascends to heaven on the wings of the holy dove, and dwells with God till it returns like the useful bee laden with a blessing and the dew of heaven."

One more passage and I have done :-"It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightliness of youth and the fair cheeks and the fair eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty to the hollowness and dead paleness of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was as fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements it began to put on darkness and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces."

Are not writers such as these worthy of study? Let the reader also become familiar with the best works of the successors of these great men in the following century, with Addison, Defoe, Gray, Fielding, Sterne, Goldsmith, Johnson, Cowper, Burke, Gibbon, and Robert Burns, and, later on, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Hazlitt, and Macaulay. If they prefer the writers nearer our own time, or living authors, they have an abundant choice in Carlyle, Emerson, Lowell, Holmes; in Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Mrs. Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Froude, Matthew Arnold, Lecky, Herbert Spencer, J. S. Mill, Frederic Harrison, and John Morley.

Besides the treasures of thought embodied in the works of these masters of thought, let it be noted how they have maintained the strength and precision, as well as the variety, of the English language—

in some instances reaching a vividness and power not previously attained in our literature. It is an education in itself to study and compare these various styles in all their diversities-each attained and perfected by subtle processes of thought and selection, forming the finest outcome of cultivated intellect.

I earnestly hope that this library may be the means of ministering to the moral and intellectual needs of many thoughtful persons who seek in books something higher than amusement or mere passive enjoyment, although I freely admit the claims of both amusement and passive enjoyment, when the bow requires to be relaxed. What I mean by something higher is the inspiration and quickening influence of high aims and noble and worthy purposes. May the best use of this library be to strengthen good resolutions in the young in the direction of manfulness and self-help; may it teach the salutary lesson how to enjoy a little thankfully and to endure much bravely, leading to a habit of mind which has no sympathy with frivolity, irreverence, or debasing views of life. May the use of it implant in the minds of many a love of literature and science which will beautify their daily existence and render it happier and more bearable. May it teach the lesson of patience and hopeful endeavour under difficulties and hindrances. It is not always a disadvantage to have to struggle with these. On the contrary, difficulties often prove to be a beneficent discipline, since they stimulate endeavour and call forth the power to breast and conquer them. If this institution in the course of its existence should be found helpful to some who have passed middle life or arrived at old age, to some to whom ill-health or sorrow has brought weary hours, it will always redound to the credit and honour of its founders that by its aid the monotony of these hours has been lightened or their tediousness beguiled. The greatest of meditative poets, Wordsworth, has said in one of his finest

sonnets

"Books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good,

Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness will grow."

Assuredly an intimate communion with the minds of the wisest and most gifted of our race rarely fails to bring with it not only patience and hope wherewith to meet the inevitable cares and disappointments of life, but also fortitude to bear its worst calamities.

Councillor SOUTHERN moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Ireland for his address. He said, as chairman of the Free Libraries Committee, he wished to refer to those by whose sagacious liberality this building had

become the property of the ratepayers of the city. In the changes which occurred from year to year there was a little danger of forgetting persons who had done pioneer work. The meeting had heard from the Mayor something of the history of the Longsight Mechanics' Institution. He (Mr. Southern) was interested in looking over the minute books to find, that from the early days an endeavour was made to popularise the institution by means of occasional lectures and concerts. A handbill set forth that" on November 2, 1855, the next lecture of the course will be delivered by Mr. Harry Rawson, the subject being English song and glee writers.'" The free library at Longsight was one of a ring of suburban libraries which the Corporation hoped to secure for the people. The Corporation owed a great deal to the old Newton Heath Local Board for the library which had been provided for that district, and recently one had been opened in Rusholme. By-and-by there would be a library in Openshaw, towards which the Whitworth Legatees had contributed £6,000 as well as the gift of a site for the building; and the plans had just been adopted for a library for Gorton.

The motion was seconded by Mr. J. H. NODAL, and carried by acclamation.

Mr. Ireland then declared the library open, and he asked the librarian (Miss Bright) to hand him, as the first borrower, "the greatest book in the world—Shakspere's Plays,' a book that will live to the end of the world." Miss Bright, amidst cheers, handed Mr. Ireland a copy of the Leopold "Shakspere."

On the motion of Alderman Russell, seconded by Councillor Reynolds, a vote of thanks was passed to the Mayor for presiding. The meeting closed with a vote of thanks to Councillor Southern, on the motion of Mr. I. Gleave, seconded by Mr. F. W. Lean.