The library illumination of the future promises to be the electric light.

If only steady and moderate in price, it would be a great boon to public libraries, and perhaps the day is not far distant when it will replace gas, even in private houses.

That will, indeed, be a day of jubilee to the literary labourer.

The injury done by gas is so generally acknowledged by the heads of our national libraries, that it is strictly excluded from their domains, although the danger from explosion and fire, even if the results of combustion were innocuous, would be sufficient cause for its banishment.
The electric light has been in use for some months in the Reading Room of the British Museum, and is a great boon to the readers.

The light is not quite equally diffused, and you must choose particular positions if you want to work happily.