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Imprimés. At the same time he set to work on the enormous arrears, and compiled the large catalogues of the History of France and of Medical Sciences. Still, a fixed plan was lacking for the successful achievement of so important a work as a general catalogue of the Imprimés. The honour of having understood this falls to M. Léopold Delisle. A Commission, of which he was the President, instituted in October 1875-that is to say, shortly after his appointment as General Administrator -evolved a code of measures and rules, destined to lay the foundations of the immense work, to which a considerable impetus was to be given-the general inventory of the riches of the Bibliothèque, that necessary prelude to the future catalogue.

This enormous task, which at that time seemed impossible, is completed to-day; and the three millions of volumes of the Bibliothèque Nationale are at the present moment represented by slips, classified according to subject and in alphabetical order, and which are to assist in the compilation of the General Catalogue. For there is no intention of stopping when all is fairly started. A considerable piece of work has been accomplished at the Bibliothèque Nationale, but the right is not yet theirs to inscribe the words of the Latin poet: "Exegi Monumentum."

The General Administrator did not wish, however, to undertake this new task without having the opinions of competent men. A Commission, instituted for this purpose some months ago, has studied all the details of the new work, and has decided upon its immediate execution on the following lines.

The General Catalogue will comprise all the printed works of the Bibliothèque Nationale: for it is not solely in the department of that name that books exist;

they are also to be found in other departments, and especially in that of Manuscripts. The collectors whose treasures have enriched that department have, for the most part, gathered amongst the manuscripts a quantity of printed matter, often of extreme rarity. The "registers" (registres) given to or acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale have been religiously preserved, as they are full of neglected documents of real value. The "Catechism of Calvin," which no library possessed, and which was published at Geneva on the text discovered in Paris, was found, a few years ago, in one of these collections, in the midst of manuscripts relating to religious

affairs of the sixteenth century. There are, therefore, more than forty thousand printed works in the registers of the Département des Manuscrits which are lost to students. Consequently the decision taken by the Commission cannot be too highly praised.

The inventory, already commenced, proves in fact the usefulness of this work. The Clairambault collection, of which the inventory is now complete, does not comprise less than nine thousand slips relative to pieces of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is intended also to include in the General Catalogue the books of the Fontainebleau Library, which has been associated with the Bibliothèque Nationale since January 16th, 1888, and is particularly rich in pamphlets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The catalogue will comprise three great classes:

1. The class of autonym works.

2. The class of anonymous works, or those considered as such.

3. The class of special works.

The first class will give, under authors' names, in alphabetical order, the titles of all works of which the author is known, with the usual description of edition, date, and size. There will also be appended to the name of each writer a complete list of those of his works represented at the Bibliothèque Nationale, with the different editions and number of copies of each work.

The second class is reserved for anonymous works, or those considered as such for example, those signed by more than five authors, or simply designated by initials.

The third class will be formed of groups of special works. This principle, by the way, has already been applied to the Factums or Law Reports prior to 1789. The Département des Imprimés contains about fifty-seven thousand of these, and a catalogue of them, which is being compiled by M. Corda, will be of great interest for family histories. Three volumes have already appeared of the six destined to form the complete catalogue; the Factums, discovered in the inventory of the manuscripts, are in themselves numerous enough to form at least one supplementary volume. The theses of medicine and law, pieces of music, oriental works whose titles are untranslated, etc., will also be included in this third class.

It is estimated that the General Catalogue will consist of about eighty volumes quarto, of eight hundred pages each, in two columns. The work is already commenced, and at the present moment the materials are being collected for the compilation of a portion of the letter A (A-AC). Whilst awaiting the still distant achievement of this considerable work, which will form a catalogue unsurpassed as a triumph of human thought, the compilers have at their disposal a certain number of incomplete catalogues, from which they are able to gather much useful information, and of which the following are the principal, not including those published in preceding centuries or relative to special collections:

Besides the catalogues the compilers may consult, without authorisation, nine thousand volumes in the reading-room, and the slips of all the works entered at the Bibliothèque Nationale since 1878, classified under authors' names and order of subject.

We must now speak of the reading-room (salle de travail) of the Imprimés. It is there, in fact, that all the workers, all the lovers of books and study assemble. No one is admitted except by a card granted by the Administration; but this is never refused to foreigners who are recommended by their ambassadors or consuls. This imposing room was constructed after the plans of M. Labrouste senior, and was inaugurated in 1868. It contains 344 numbered places; but notwithstanding its immense size, it is often too small to contain the crowd of habitués, which increases every year. In 1894 it was visited by 135, 170 readers, to whom 444,435

books were issued.

Besides this reading-room, the Département des Imprimés possesses a public reading-room, open to every one. It contains 25,000 volumes, chosen from standard works of fiction and reference. In 1894, 61,316 readers came there and made use

of 79,091 volumes.

The staff of the Département des Imprimés comprises about sixty functionaries-viz., one Keeper-in-Chief (conservateur-en-chef), three assistant keepers (conservateurs adjoints), and fifty-six librarians, sub-librarians, and probationers or attachés. Neither the attendants nor the boy attendants are included in the above figures.

Nearly all the functionaries of the Département des Imprimés are chosen, at the present day, from amongst the pupils of the École de Chartes. The Keeper-in-Chief of the Département des Imprimés is M. Marchal, who has succeeded the much-regretted M. Thierry-Poux. M. Marchal was unanimously elected to this responsible post, by

reason of the immense services rendered by him in the great inventory work, which he directed with perfect competence and rare energy. The assistant keepers, MM. Pauly, Blanchet, and Marcel, are all three capable and hard-working men.

The Département des Manuscrits is not of such importance to the mass of the educated public as the Imprimés, but it attracts an élite of faithful workers, desirous of wresting from old parchments the secrets of the Past. It offers to their curiosity one hundred thousand "registers," containing an innumerable quantity of manuscripts.

It has been formed, little by little, by gift or purchase of special collections, which