resistance to papal supremacy which in the West repeatedly succumbed to the overwhelming power of the Inquisition. The sudden change which followed on the invasion of the Turks is instructive as showing the political danger attendant upon excessive persecution. As the armies of Muhamad II. were making their way toward Bosnia, King Stephen of Hungary began cutting the throats of his Bogomile subjects, some forty thousand of whom are said to have fled. into the Herzegovina, while others were sent in chains to be burned at Rome. Bosnia was again threatened with an orthodox crusade, but the people, preferring to take their chances of religious immunity with the Turk, threw themselves on him for protection, and surrendered their inexpugnable country to Muhamad without striking a blow. The surrender, indeed, went further than this; for though the Serbs of Bosnia have several times asserted their political independence, more than a third of the population have become followers of the Prophet, and furnish to-day the sole example of a native European race of Mussulmans.

December 1876.

XII.

A LIBRARIAN'S WORK.

I AM very frequently asked what in the world a librarian can find to do with his time, or am perhaps congratulated on my connection with Harvard College Library, on the ground that "being virtually a sinecure office (!) it must leave so much leisure for private study and work of a literary sort." Those who put such questions, or offer such congratulations, are naturally astonished when told that the library affords enough work to employ all my own time, as well as that of twenty assistants; and astonishment is apt to rise to bewilderment when it is added that seventeen of these assistants are occupied chiefly with "cataloguing;" for generally, I find, a library catalogue is assumed to be a thing that is somehow "made" at a single stroke, as Aladdin's palace was built, at intervals of ten or

is

a dozen years, or whenever a "new catalogue thought to be needed. "How often do you make a catalogue?" or "When will your catalogue be completed?" are questions revealing such transcendent misapprehension of the case that little but further mystification can be got from the mere answer, “We are always making a catalogue, and it will never be finished." The "doctrine of special creations," indeed, does not work any better in the bibliographical than in the zoological world. A catalogue, in the modern sense of the term, is not something that is "made" all at once, to last until the time has come for it to be superseded by a new edition, but it is something that "grows," by slow increments, and supersedes itself only through gradual evolution from a lower degree of fulness and definiteness into a higher one. It is perhaps worth while to give some general explanation of this process of cataloguemaking, thus answering once for all the question as to what may be a librarian's work. There is no better way to begin than to describe, in the case of our own library, the career of a book from the time of its delivery by the express-man to the time when it is ready for public use.

New American books, whether bought or presented, generally come along in driblets, two or three at a

time, throughout the year; large boxes of pamphlets, newspapers, broadsides, trade-catalogues, and all manner of woful rubbish (the refuse of private libraries and households) are sent in from time to time; and books from Europe arrive every few weeks in lots of from fifty to three or four hundred. It is in the case of foreign books that our process is most thoroughly systematised, and here let us take up our illustrative example.

When a box containing three or four hundred foreign books has been unpacked, the volumes are placed, backs uppermost, on large tables, and are then looked over by the principal assistant, with two or three subordinates, to ascertain if the books at hand correspond with those charged in the invoice. As the titles are read from the invoice, the volumes are hunted out and arranged side by side in the order in which their titles are read, while the entry on the invoice is checked in the margin with a pencil. These pencil-checks are afterwards copied into the margins of the book in which our lists of foreign orders are registered, so that we may always be able to determine, by a reference to this book, whether any particular work has been received or not. This order-book, with its marginal checks, is the only im

mediate specific register of accessions kept by us, as

our peculiar system entails considerable delay in bringing up the "accessions-catalogue."

After this preliminary examination and registry, the books are ready for me to look over, and I must first decide to what "fund" each book entered on the invoice must be charged. The university never buys books with its general funds, but uses for this purpose the income of a dozen or more small funds, given, bequeathed, or subscribed, expressly for the purchase of books. Sometimes the donors of such funds allow us to get whatever books we like with the money, but more often they show an inclination to favour the growth of departments in which they feel a personal interest. Thus the munificent bequest of the late Mr. Charles Sumner is appropriated to the purchase of works on politics and the fine arts, while Dr. Walker's bequest provides more especially for theology and philosophy, and the estate of Professor Farrar still guards the interests of mathematics and physics. Under such circumstances, it is of course necessary to keep a separate account with each fund, and the data for such an account are provided by charging every new book as it arrives. On the margin of the invoice the names of the different funds are written in pencil against the entries, while the assistants separate the books into groups according