Oh! Richard of Bury, I sighed, for a sharp stone from your sling to pierce with indignant sarcasm the mental armour of these College dullards.
Happily, things are altered now, and the disgrace of such neglect no longer hangs on the College.

Let us hope, in these days of revived respect for antiquity, no other College library is in a similar plight.
Not Englishmen alone are guilty, however, of such unloving treatment of their bibliographical treasures.

The following is translated from an interesting work just published in Paris,[1] and shows how, even at this very time, and in the centre of the literary activity of France, books meet their fate.
[1] Le luxe des Livres par L.Derome.8vo, Paris, 1879.
M.Derome loquitur:-- "Let us now enter the communal library of some large provincial town.
The interior has a lamentable appearance; dust and disorder have made it their home.

It has a librarian, but he has the consideration of a porter only, and goes but once a week to see the state of the books committed to his care; they are in a bad state, piled in heaps and perishing in corners for want of attention and binding.

At this present time (1879) more than one public library in Paris could be mentioned in which thousands of books are received annually, all of which will have disappeared in the course of 50 years or so for want of binding; there are rare books, impossible to replace, falling to pieces because no care is given to them, that is to say, they are left unbound, a prey to dust and the worm, and cannot be touched without dismemberment." "All history shows that this neglect belongs not to any particular age or nation.