BUILDINGS FOR A FREE LIBRARY

The striking contrast which has just been spoken of in the outward appearance of the two chief Libraries of the neighbour towns of Liverpool and Manchester sums up, so to speak, an important principle which underlies two distinct questions: It brings under the eye of the passerby in the streets of those towns the best possible illustration of the wisdom of forecast in planning and building a Free Library which is intended to grow. It also brings vividly before his mind the wisdom–even when large funds are in question–of beginning with books, and of postponing buildings. Nor is that contrast without a pregnant meaning in relation to a third question,–and one of wider bearing than either of the others. For the building in ‘William-Brown Street’ shows conclusively, on the one hand, that the Corporation of Liverpool has entered, from the first, into the true spirit of the Libraries Acts of 1850 and of 1855; while the building in ‘Camp Field’ shows, on the other hand, that the Corporation of Manchester–even in 1868–and in spite of a large stroke of work which under the provisions of those Acts its members have already performed for their constituents, and which, on the whole, they have performed with much vigour, fidelity and success, has not yet fully entered into the spirit of the legislation initiated in 1850.