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of which about three-fourths have been completed, it is impossible not to speak highly. It occupies, or will eventually occupy, the entire rectangle which is bounded on the east and west by the Rue Vivienne and the Rue de Richelieu, and intercepted north and south between the cross-streets Rue Colbert and Rue Neuve des Petits Champs. Even when completed, the building will have little of architectural pretension; but it cannot fail to strike, by its vastness, its simplicity, and its seeming fitness for the uses for which it is destined. With a view to secure unity of design, the architect, M. Labrouste, had the courage to sacrifice almost the entire of the previously existing building; preserving only the ancient Salle de Lecture (which now serves as the reading-room of the Free Library), and the magnificent apartment known to all visitors of the old Library under the name of the Galerie Mazarin, which is to be used as a show-room for MSS., incunabula, and other objects of bibliographical interest. By utilising, after the example set in the British Museum, the principal court on the side of the Rue de Richelieu, M. Labrouste was enabled to provide a spacious and very handsome reading-room, with a nine-domed roof, supported upon light and very elegant cast-iron pillars. It is in form a square, with a semicircular apse; and, besides the ample space reserved in the apse for the officials, contains accommodation for 400 readers. This room is lighted from the domed roof. The heating, which is by means of hot-water pipes, is said to be thoroughly satisfactory; but complaints have been made as to the imperfect provision for ventilation. The desks, although not so lavish in space or so elaborately fitted as those in the British Museum, are abundantly sufficient for all reasonable requirements. At the back, in immediate connexion with the reading-room, is the new magazin or book-room, a vast apartment open to the roof, in which the book-shelves, supported on cast-iron pillars, are arranged in five stages with floors of iron grating; each stage having a separate staff of attendants, through whom, by means of lifts, the orders for books are transmitted and executed with a despatch and precision deserving of all commendation.

The conditions on which readers are admitted to the National Library are most liberal. There are two reading-rooms. One of the recent reforms has been the opening, in connexion with the great library and from out its limitless store of books, of a Popular Library, which is literally free to every applicant beyond the age of sixteen. The reading-room of this library is called the Salle de Lecture. It is in one of the galleries of the

old palace, and is furnished with a separate collection of books, selected with a view to the wants of the general reader. It is open to the public without ticket, introduction, or other formality. The number of volumes is said to be 40,000, and is evidently greater than that of the collection in the readingroom of the Museum; but in variety, comprehensiveness, judicious selection, solidity, and general value for the purposes of study, the inferiority of the books in the Salle de Lecture to those of the Museum is painfully apparent.

The reading-room of the great library is reserved for students of higher acquirements; and its more serious purpose is indicated by its name, Salle de Travail. But, although a

ticket is required for admission to this room, it is only necessary that the intending reader should apply by letter to the secretary, stating his name, age, profession, and residence, when a ticket, either permanent or temporary as he may desire, will either be sent to him by post or left at the library for him within two days. At entering, the reader is furnished with what is called a bulletin personel,' on which are to be registered the titles of all the books which may be furnished to him during his visit, and which he will be required to give up at leaving the library, with the several entries cancelled by a stamp, indicating that the books have been returned. Only two works are supplied at the same time, nor can the total number delivered to a reader on any day exceed five; and the inconvenience of this restriction is aggravated by a regulation which prohibits readers from receiving maps or manuscripts at the same time with printed books, the latter alone being supplied at the Salle de Travail. Maps and manuscripts not merely form separate departments, but are only furnished to readers in the reading-rooms attached to these departments respectively. A very limited collection of books of reference in the Salle de Travail is directly accessible to the readers, but the number of volumes does not exceed 3,000, and they are for the most part of a class which, although of standard excellence in themselves, are far from being suited to the every-day requirements of the higher class of students.

The new catalogue, which has been a subject of much interest to scholars, has been compiled under the direction of M. Taschereau; the first volume of the section with which he commenced that of the History of France'-having been printed in 1855, and the whole section of the History of France' completed in ten volumes in 1870. Great part of the tenth volume is occupied with a supplement of the additions which had accrued to the Library during the printing of the work. It is intended

to add an eleventh volume of tables, with such still further supplements as must meantime have become necessary. Simultaneously with this section has also been printed that of Medical Sciences, that of Hebrew and Samaritan Books, and the first volume of French Manuscripts.' A further subdivision of the class History'-the History of England '—was also in progress; but it has been abandoned, or at least indefinitely postponed, and with it, the design of a complete printed classified catalogue of the Library.

Of the order of classified catalogues to which, like its really excellent predecessor printed in the middle of the last century, it belongs, the new catalogue is an elaborate specimen. have not seen any official exposition of the system of classification which it was designed to follow; but it is plainly the so-called French System,' with certain modifications. Accordingly, the ten volumes of the History of France' represent only one subdivision of the section Modern History 'in the general class of History.' It is arranged in fifteen chapters, comprising, under distinct heads: Introductory works on French history and general histories of France; histories of France by epochs and by reigns; political history, including periodical and semi-periodical works of a political character; religious, administrative, diplomatic, military, and social history; archæology and numismatology; social history; genealogy and biography. Up to the reign of Francis I. the books are catalogued in the chronological order of their publication, from that reign downwards in the order of events. The titles are not altered, except by omission of words, which is always indicated by dots. In books anterior to Henry IV.'s reign the exact orthography of all words is preserved, and as regards proper names this principle is rigorously followed through all periods. One of the great difficulties of our domestic controversy as to the Museum Catalogue-that regarding the cataloguing of anonymous works-is, of course, avoided in this, it being a non-alphabetical catalogue; and for books without title M. Taschereau has followed the plan of giving (in a parenthetic form) a descriptive title, followed by the first words of the book itself. In these, and indeed in most other cases of difficulty, the titles are accompanied by bibliographical remarks and notices, of the utmost value, not only in illustrating the titles, but also in directing further research whether as to the book itself or as to its subject.

Indeed it is impossible to exaggerate the value of this catalogue as a guide to the student, whether of particular epochs and events, or of the religious, the constitutional, and, above all,

the social history of France. We have examined it carefully under a variety of heads, and have invariably found it to open up new lines of inquiry; nor could there be a more satisfactory confirmation of the opinion which, while contending for an alphabetical catalogue as alone satisfactory for the use of a library, we have uniformly expressed as to the unquestionable advantages of a classified catalogue for the purposes of bibliography and of systematic research. Unhappily, however, the catalogue of the History of France is but a splendid fragment of a still uncompleted, and, at least in its integrity, as yet almost uncomprehended whole. M. Taschereau, in the preface of his first volume, estimated that the entire work would occupy, when complete, from sixty-five to seventy-two volumes. When we last referred to the subject, we showed, by a comparison of the volumes already in print, with the estimated total contents of the library, that the catalogue of the whole library, upon the same scale, would occupy at least two hundred volumes: and the completion of the catalogue of the section of the Histoire de France' makes it plain that even this estimate of ours was considerably below the reality.

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Much difficulty has always been experienced in ascertaining the exact number of volumes which the Bibliothèque contains. No actual and exhaustive enumeration, by the only perfectly reliable test of counting, appears to have taken place since that of Van Praet in 1791, when the volumes numbered 152,868. Thirty years later, in 1822, the same veteran authority again surveyed the contents, but without the actual process of counting; and he then estimated the number of volumes at 450,000, not including pamphlets and fugitive pieces, which he set down at the same number. In 1850, when an official return was procured by the British Ambassador, the number of volumes was reported at 750,000, of which 50,000 were volumes of tracts or pamphlets, containing about ten tracts each, according to which return the number of volumes and pieces' or tracts taken together, would amount to 1,200,000. In the preface of the first volume of the Catalogue de l'Histoire de France,' published five years later, M. Taschereau reports the total number of volumes and 'pieces' at 1,500,000, without distinguishing the two classes. The late Mr. Watts, of the British Museum, probably one of the most accomplished masters in his age of the practical science of library economy, attempted from this return to form, in the article Libraries' in the English Encyclopædia, published in 1860, an approximate estimate of the contents of the National Library in that year. Assuming

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that Van Praet's estimate in 1822, according to which the number of volumes and of pieces' in the library was about the same, might be taken as still sufficiently reliable, and reducing the smaller pieces' to the standard of volumes' at the rate of ten to the volume, Mr. Watts estimated the contents of the library in volumes in 1855 to have been 808,000; and, taking the yearly additions to the library from that date at the number officially returned, 11,000 per annum, he concluded that the total number of volumes' and 'pieces' reduced to volumes, might, at the date at which he wrote, 1860, reasonably be supposed to be 863,000.

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It might have been expected that the occasion of the transfer of the books from the old to the new structure in 1869 would have been used as an opportunity for an exact counting of the volumes; and in the summer of 1870, we were informed by an official of the library that, besides a reserve of 40,000 volumes for the Popular Library ('Salle de Lecture'), 1,400,000 volumes and pieces' were ascertained by actual counting to have been transferred to the new Magazin. Nevertheless, this counting can hardly have been more than partial. We were favoured a few months later with an official return from the office of Public Instruction, from which it appeared that the number of volumes transferred to the new Magazin (which this return set down at 1,500,000), was only ascertained approximativement, et d'après le calcul des rayons ' et de leur contenance;' and further, that there still remained to be disposed of in other receptacles (the new Magazin being entirely filled) about 750,000 volumes et pièces.' By applying Mr. Watts' scale to this total of 2,250,000 volumes and pieces,' it would follow that in 1868 the number of volumes or their equivalents must have been about 1,237,500. We have received a further official return of the works (not volumes) added to the collection in the four years up to 1871, amounting in the whole to 92,772. Many of the 'works,' however, contain several volumes, and as the return estimates the annual increase of the library in volumes at 40,000, the increase during these four years reckoned in volumes would amount to about 140,000. Assuming the accuracy of this result, the number of volumes and of pieces' reduced to volumes for the purposes of the estimate, contained

* This return, we believe, does not include the important Labedoyère Collection. But we are satisfied that full, and indeed liberal compensation is made for the omission. by estimating the annual increase at 40,000 volumes.

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