readers in the use of the catalogue, or invited confidence as to their book requirements, does not always meet with the grateful response which good intentions might justify. Whether they think that curiosity and officiousness prompt our action rather than an honest intent to render them a disinterested service is not always apparent, though the supposition tends in that direction.

How far voluminous, badly constructed, or what I venture to call over-refined catalogues are responsible at times for keeping readers from our institutions I will not pretend to say; but it does not require any strong effort of the imagination to conceive that our artisan class might be repelled from a library through such a cause. Based upon the experience gained both by the publication of the little catalogue of technical books already referred to and a very useful annotated hand-list of books of general reference prepared for literary men and students frequenting our reference library, I have no hesitation in saying that much good can be done and much popularity obtained for your library by employing a little of your time and ability in compiling and publishing, and may be circulating gratis, hand-lists or broadsides of the books in the library on certain important businesses, particularly the trade or manufacture which forms the staple industry of your city or town. I admit that figures are deceptive-and what is more wonderful very often than library statistics? -but it is a fact that conjointly with the introduction into our reference library and its three branches of a large number of new works of a technical character and the circulation of a special catalogue of them, the issue of this class of books increased from 42,519 in 1891 to 53,239 in 1892.

There are few cities and towns even of small size but can boast of several literary and scientific societies; and although their contributions to literature or science are very much on a par with their customary financial position it is none the less satisfactory that a number of persons have associated themselves, and do meet together from time to time to exhibit various objects of literary and scientific interest, and make what they are pleased to think literary and scientific speeches.

Now, whatever the professional scientist or littérateur may think of the majority of the members of these small provincial societies, there are always among them a percentage of bona fide workers and real lovers of science who demand and deserve our highest respect. Through the possession of several class-rooms and a small lecture hall in our library we are in a position to render to some half dozen learned societies, of

the usual rich-in-purpose-poor-in-pocket character in our city, valuable help in providing them a room at a very nominal rent, while the societies are pleased to take advantage of the something like prestige which our combined institutions of Library, Museum, and Art Gallery give them as a meeting place.

Another means of making the public library popular and extremely useful is to allow such literary and scientific societies to meet occasionally -say once a session-in some room of the library where you could show the members the best and latest books most interesting to them, with, it may be, other books of special and general interest. Such meetings would practically resolve themselves into conversaziones, where pleasant talk about books, and complimentary speeches, would be the order of the evening. I know something of meetings of this kind and can testify to their usefulness and educational value, apart from the ulterior object of making the library known and appreciated.

At times an exhibition of professional books has been arranged for other societies not holding their regular meetings in our building, when the meeting of the society has taken the form of a conversazione, tea and coffee having previously been partaken of in a separate room. Seldom a year passes without one or other and sometimes the whole three of our institutions being used for the purpose of a conversazione on a grand scale, given in honour of the visit to Liverpool of some one of the London or great learned societies. On such occasions our library displays on its tables as many as possible of its illustrated and valuable books. In one way or another, through the studious or through the social medium, we approach our citizens and endeavour to reveal to them the literary wealth of which they are the possessors, not unfrequently to their great surprise.

In drawing attention to some methods adopted for bringing our reference library at Liverpool into touch with its citizens, I do so in no spirit of boastfulness, but simply to point out some characteristics of the path of public usefulness which we have tried to follow, and so, perchance, inspire emulation. How far anything I have related of the work carried on with such successful results in Liverpool has the freshness of novelty I am unable to say. In Lancashire our example in regard to organised and systematic lecturing is being largely followed, and always with satisfactory results. It is greatly due to the honourable rivalry of Manchester and Liverpool in their libraries (respecting the inception and foundation of which it is

doubtful which city can boast of precedence, though the former was opened to the public just six weeks before that of Liverpool) that Lancashire towns stand out so creditably in the history of the free library movement in England. No doubt the bold and broad conception of the work of a free library by the founders of the Liverpool institution has placed me in the position to recount successes in the work not yet generally recognised as part and parcel of the work of a free library. The Act of Parliament under which our library was established is entitled "An Act to establish a library, museum, and gallery of art," and by virtue of this conception and the liberality of Liverpool citizens, a library, museum, and art gallery, each now of no mean character, stand side by side, forming an imposing tria juncta in uno. The character of the library has been affected by the natural history museum and art gallery, with the result that it is particularly rich in books on natural history and the fine arts. Herein, perhaps, may be detected a note of boastfulness, but I am content to sound such note if by it an equally bold or bolder conception of educational work will be taken up and carried out by other cities, which have yet to erect public libraries in order to bring into their midst those "angels of entertainment, sympathy, and provocation which illuminate our solitude, weariness, and fallen fortunes."

PETER COWELL.

The Editor of this Review does not undertake to return any Manuscripts.

THE

NEW REVIEW.

No. 54.-NOVEMBER, 1893.

STUDY IN CHARACTER: MARSHAL MACMAHON.

A

FTER the Peace of Utrecht, Marshal Villars sent to compliment Marlborough on his victories in Flanders. "The secret of my success," said Churchill, modestly, "means simply this: I made a hundred blunders, my adversaries made a hundred and one." One would not willingly depreciate the military talents of the eminent French soldier who has just gone to his last rest, but the student of history cannot but be aware that this hundred and first blunder which would have reduced him in the estimation of his countrymen to the level of a Wimpffen, Trochu, Ducrot, and even of a Bourbaki, though perhaps not to that of a Bazaine, was mercifully averted from him by chance in the shape of the splinter of a shell early in the morning of September 1st, 1870. In a German adaptation of Lord Lytton's Night and Morning, by Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer-not to be confounded with Ida Pfeiffer -Lord Lilburne, the villain of the play, limps in at the very moment that Beaufort has been killed by a fall from his horse. "He couldn't have broken his neck at a more favourable opportunity," he chuckles. The same might be said with regard to MacMahon's mishap. He could not have been wounded at an opportunity more favourable to himself; for it saved him the humiliation of putting his signature to the capitulation of Sedan; it left his countrymen under the pleasing delusion that he might have retrieved his crushing defeat at Reichshofen by a signal victory on the banks of the Meuse. The halo of Magenta was dimmed-not destroyed.

One may well doubt whether that delusion was ever shared to any appreciable extent by the honest, valiant soldier himself. To have imagined such a reversal of misfortune would have argued a sanguineness of disposition, a buoyancy of temperament, and a vividness of imaginaVOL. IX.-No. 54.

2 G

tion which were altogether lacking in Marie-Patrice de MacMahon.

Of all the qualities that seem, as it were, to be the moral and mental appanage of the race whence he sprang, he only preserved one-his reckless physical courage; the rest, to use a popular term, "had become mixed." The descendant of Patrick MacMahon, of Torrodile, should have either remained frankly Royalist or become frankly Imperialist or Republican, but in no case ought he to have perpetually oscillated between the two former, and by his own want of firmness have virtually become the founder of the Third Republic, seeing that it was a form of government he detested even more than he despised the so-called incarnation of it in the form of Gambetta. When he unbuckled his sword in the end of May, 1871, after having wiped out the Commune, he ought to have retired from the scene, unless his country needed that sword again, and not have allowed himself to be cast for the part of a second-rate Monk in a drama the final act of which was a ballet-like apotheosis of the Third Republic. I am alluding to the fêtes decreed by Gambetta and Co. at the opening of the Exhibition of 1878, which to all intents and purposes have been continued ever since-though with less éclat on July 14th.

I called MacMahon the virtual founder of the Third Republic just now. Lest the reproach implied from my point of view in that appellation should seem exaggerated, I quote textually the conclusion of a conversation between the late M. Eugène Pelletan, the father of M. Camille Pelletan, Clemenceau's lieutenant-one of the staunchest and most upright Republicans that ever lived-and the Comte Henri d'Ideville, one of the staunchest, most upright, and able Royalists it has ever been my lot to meet. The conversation took place one May morning in that year 1878, on the Quai Voltaire.

"I can well understand," said the Republican, "your being violently irritated, nay, exasperated, with that poor man (MacMahon); but we, there is no doubt of it, appreciate him greatly. Of course, you, from your point of view, are justified in judging him very severely, for he has disappointed all your hopes. But, as far as we Republicans are concerned, we could not wish for a more respectful and docile functionary at the head of the Republic. Thanks to him, our Government enjoys the consideration and esteem of foreign nations, and the world's opinion, recovered from its fright, is gradually accepting our new institutions. In short, MacMahon is the most marvellous pioneer we could wish. Without the least ambition, without the slightest will of his own, without