editions afresh, with specially written introductions, defining the relationship of each book to the general literature of the subject. [Footnote: In America Mr. George Iles is already organizing the general appraisement of books for the public library reader in a most promising manner. The Bibliography of the Literature of American History , with an appraisal of each book, which has appeared under his direction, is edited by Mr. Larned, and is a most efficient performance; it is to be kept up to date by Mr. P. P. Wells, librarian of the Yale Law School. It includes an appendix by Professor Channing, of Harvard, which is on the lines of the “Guides” I suggest, though scarcely so full as I should like them. This appendix is reprinted separately for five cents, and it is almost all English public librarians and libraries need so far as American history goes. The English Fabian Society, I may note, publishes a sixpenny bibliography of social and economic science, but it is a mere list for local librarians, and of little use to the uninitiated reader.]
Such an Association in the present state of publishing would become—in Great Britain, at any rate—quite inevitably a Publishing Association. A succession of vigorous, well-endowed Voluntary Publishing Associations is a quite vital necessity in the modern state. A succession is needed because each age has its unexpected new needs and new methods, and it would not be a bad idea to endow such associations with a winding-up clause that would plump them, stock, unspent capital, and everything except perhaps a pension fund for the older employés, into the funds of some great Public Library at the end of thirty or forty years. Several such Associations have played, or are still playing a useful part in British affairs, but most of them have lost the elasticity of youth. Lord Brougham’s Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was one of the earliest, and we have today, for example, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Catholic Truth Society, the Rationalist Press Association, and the Fabian Society. There is a real need to-day for one—indeed there is room for several—Publishing Associations that would set themselves to put bright modern lights into