number of volumes, of parts of volumes, of maps, and of sheets of maps, are taken out and entered in a book in their respective columns. The same is done with objects presented. At the end of the year these columns are cast up, and it is immediately known what has been the number of articles procured during the year through these channels respectively.

The duplicate receipts kept by the receiver of works under the Copyright Act give the same information for this branch of the acquisitions.

The register shews the number of books returned to the shelves every day. A book kept by the attendant who has charge of the closets affords similar details respecting the number of books kept for the readers from day to day.

Every cataloguer registers daily, in a book kept by himself, the number of titles written by him; the aggregate of these books gives the number of titles written in the department during any period.

Revisers and transcribers keep similar accounts.

One of the superintendents of the reading-rooms registers the number of visits made daily to the reading-rooms, and reports the total, at the end of the year, to the keeper of the department of printed works. A similar account is kept in the readers' lobby; but as this latter account makes no distinction between those who come to read and those who may pass into the readingrooms for other purposes, discrepancies may occur, and in the returns for the year 1850 actually did occur, between the two

accounts.

The result of all this is, that in the course of a few hours an exact and minute return can be given of everything done in the department during the year, or any other given period, the whole forming an array of numbers truly startling.

We have before observed that one process, whenever it is possible, is made to subserve several objects. We have shewn how the receipts for books delivered under the Copyright Act answers not only the ordinary purpose of a receipt, but also of a register of such books.

The readers' register shews at one glance how many books were sent to the reading-rooms on a particular day-the day any book was removed from the shelves-for whom it was taken— by whom it was taken-the particular board left for it—and when it was returned. Each attendant's register shews what books he removed from the shelves on a particular day-for whom, and the number of his board; while the boards on the shelves shew what attendant removed the book, and by its number points to the particular entry in his register. By means of this system a book can be traced regularly through any number of hands for

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any length of time, and faults in the reading-room service can in like manner always be traced to the guilty party.

The binding of books forms a very important item in the economy of a public library. The great desideratum for the mass of books is strength and durability at the least possible expense. In a library like that of the British Museum, it may well be imagined, there is abundant opportunity for testing the various styles of binding and kinds of leather, so as to arrive at the most correct judgment upon this point. The general plan now adopted is as follows:-All dictionaries to be full-bound in russia. Other works likely to be in frequent use to be half-bound in morocco, with cloth sides. Two or more volumes of the same work are always bound together where their bulk will permit it. Pamphlets are half-bound in roan, with paper sides. Experience has shewn that this plan is in every respect the most economical that could be adopted. Different colours are used according to the subject of the book, thus, red for history, green for botany, blue for theology, &c.

In the library of the British Museum, as in other large libraries, certain works considered to be select are set apart from the rest and preserved with greater care. Among these are several remarkable for their bindings, which are arranged so as to illustrate as far as practicable the styles of different schools, English, French, Italian, &c. The present keeper of the department, looking upon bookbinding as something more than the art of stitching loose sheets neatly into a cover, has endeavoured, in binding rare and valuable books, to follow the grand example set by Grolier, Majoli, De Thou, and others, and would fain give an individuality to the dress of his protégés. In some instances the success has been great. A good bookbinder ought to be a man of great taste, and an artist. All use flowers and studs and fillets; but what flowers were ever so graceful as the flowers of Roger Payne? who has ever sprinkled his studs as he sprinkled them? who cannot immediately recognise Lewis's simple fillet, so beautifully true? The German style of tooling at the end of the 15th century was heavy, but it was blind, and the effect, consequently, was massive and grand. German tooling at the present day is no less heavy, but it is no longer blind, but in gold ; the effect is no longer massive and grand but vulgar. The materials are there, but the artistic taste is wanting.

But we are diverging into a dissertation upon bookbinding. By the Statutes of the British Museum, no object is allowed to be removed from the premises. This regulation involves the necessity of having a bookbinder attached to the establishment. When books are removed from the shelves for the purpose being bound or repaired, a board similar to those above described

of

as used by the attendants is left in its place. On this board the letter B. is stamped, indicating that the book is in the hands of the binder. The books so sent are entered by an assistant in what is termed the binder's book, a margin being left on both sides. In that on the left the binder writes the press-mark of the book, in that on the right Mr. Panizzi writes directions as to the manner in which the book is to be bound or repaired. The entry of each batch of books is dated and signed by the binder, and when returned each entry is stamped with the date. The signature makes the binder responsible for the books, the stamp is his discharge. The date at the head and the stamp on the entry shew how long he has kept each book. The entries also are made in the form to be observed for the lettering piece on the back of the book, and this is again an instance of one process serving a double purpose.

We will only mention one point more: all the shelves upon which large and heavy or handsomely bound books are placed are lined with hard and smooth leather. This simple process tends greatly to preserve the binding.

These are some of the details of the management of the British Museum Library, which, although we do not pretend to say that they are, as a whole, applicable to all libraries, may suggest to every intelligent librarian arrangements, even for libraries of the most limited extent, which are invaluable, and which it might have been well that one so experienced as Mr. Panizzi, had obtained an opportunity of explaining to the Committee.

The length to which this Article has already extended compels us to bring our remarks to a close. The public libraries on the Continent would present many interesting materials for comment; but however well adapted they may be to the wants of the districts in which they respectively exist, it is doubtful if they would afford many points fit for imitation in this country. Mr. Panizzi states in his evidence given before the Committee, that he had visited about ninety foreign libraries, and that he had not learnt a single fact that he could apply to the library of the British Museum under its present constitution. It is this consideration which has led us, in the preceding Article, to present so fully to our readers that which we believe likely to prove of most practical utility, the broad and comprehensive scheme, and admirable details of the management of our own great National Library.

Arago's Life of Carnot.

185

ART. VIII.-Biographie de LAZARE NICOLAS MARGUERITE CARNOT, Membre de la première classe de l'Institut de France (section Mécanique.) Par M. ARAGO, Secrétaire Perpétuel de l'Académie des Sciences. Paris, 1850.*

It is only in seasons of danger, and during the emergencies of a Revolution, that the genius of an empire is roused from hybernation, and summoned into life and activity. When France lay prostrate under the despotism of her kings, her military and her intellectual glory were equally eclipsed. The privileges of class overbore the claims of merit, and the very power of competing for the prizes of the State was denied to those who would have carried them off in triumph. Among a people thus morally degraded, the seeds of discontent ripened where the seeds of glory had been crushed; and that which would have been the ornament and safeguard of the throne was stimulated to dishonour and to destroy it. The moral of the French Revolution, pregnant with individual and national instruction, has been appreciated neither by the people whom it scourged, nor the nations whom it scared. The terrors of anarchy and democratic violence, indeed, are destined to have a broader field and a longer reign before the rulers of nations are taught to govern ;-and education and knowledge must have a wider range, and take a deeper hold, before the people learn to obey.

There is no phase in which man can be contemplated more painful and humiliating than that in which he appears as the pilot of the State; and in the history of European governments, whether absolute or constitutional, we have too frequently to deplore the consequences of presumptuous statesmanship, and of imbecile or reckless legislation. When incapacity and ignorance are placed at the helm, and talent and wisdom in the hold, the vessel of the State may survive the summer l'ghtning and the zephyr gale, but it will in vain seek its haven when Jove brandishes his thunderbolt, and Neptune upheaves his trident. The revolutionary history of France displays to us the magnitude and grandeur of achievements when genius and talent are the only passports to power, and proclaims to us how nobly the intellectual and military glory of a people may be sustained even when civil war rages in the midst of them, and external foes threaten them from without. In the chronicles of our own country, whether of peace or of war, we may study the baneful

* Extrait du Tome xxii. des Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences.

effects of an opposite system. In what age have we found a Colbert, whose appreciation of knowledge inspired him with the patronage of literature and science-whose taste fostered the arts of polished and industrious life-whose liberality endowed the educational institutions of his country, and whose piety and wisdom prompted him to suppress immorality and vice by teaching and reforming the immoral and the vicious? The records of the past have not preserved to us even the shadow of so glorious a name. The experience of passing years exhibits to us no such minister, and in the horizon of the future there looms no auroral gleam of a luminary on its way. We have, on the contrary, to mourn over establishments destroyed-churches breaking down -colleges in decay-teachers starving-and wise men consigned to poverty and degradation.

Nor are these evils counterbalanced by financial wisdom,-by commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural prosperity, or even by the vain splendour of military and naval glory. Science was not more assailed in a darker age by the persecution of Galileo, the exile of Tycho, and the poverty of Kepler, than it is at this hour, and in this land, by the miserable expediency of heaping imposts upon knowledge, and the heartless taxation of invention and discovery; and the heart of the philanthropist could not have been more lacerated by the sight of negro humanity in chains, than it might now be by the imposition of taxes on the health, the prudence, and the parental forethought of British subjects.

We wait for the advent of a minister strong in piety, knowledge, and moral energy, who shall raise to the same platform all the various interests of the State, and who shall give its honours to those who merit them, its offices to those who can best discharge their duties, and its patronage and support to everything that can advance the intellectual glory and the material interests of the nation. Such a pilot must be willing to quit the helm when his people cease to obey him, and must seek for permanent fame from the measures which he has lost, as well as from the trophies which he has won. The man who can thus act must be moulded from a nobler material than vulgar clay-not from the fragile pottery which a breath can break, and a vibration shiver; but from the tough and shining porcelain which rings when it is struck, and rebounds when it falls.

We have been led into these reflections by the perusal of the admirable Biographical Memoir of Carnot, which we owe to the eloquent pen of M. Arago. The history of a great man by a man equally great-of a patriot of the first French Revolution by a patriot of the last, cannot fail to rivet the attention of thoughtful men, even if it did not, as it does, throw the brilliant