Page:Address on the opening of the Free Public Library of Ballarat East, on Friday, 1st. January, 1869.djvu/16

 10 worthy authors, dead or living, than in the debasing, brutalising communications from which it is so difficult otherwise to escape.

We may well rejoice, then, when we see a room such as this filled with attentive and reflective readers. And when we occasionally recognise at an unusual hour in the day-time the well.known [sic] face of an habitual evening visitor, we may feel assured without inquisitive intrusion upon him for the cause that he can supply a reason which reflects upon him no kind of discredit as a deserter from his necessary avocation.

Respecting the freedom of admission, it seems not only one of the most unreasonable of objections, but singular enough to say, it is only to be heard of in this land of wide equality. Elsewhere it is made matter of astonishment and of envy that a people whose time is supposed by those ignorant of our real position to be altogether engrossed in the pursuit of wealth, relieved only by periodical political convulsions, can nevertheless expend £70,000 in the erection of a Free Library in its metropolis, and place 47,000 volumes of choice and valuable books at the disposal of 200,000 visitors in the course of one year. You will not object to hear the terms in which we are spoken of in a country the circumstances of which resemble in many particulars those by which we are surrounded. The extract is from the 15th annual report of the Mercantile Library Association of the City and County of San Francisco, California, 1868:—

"As a specimen of what a young population can do, we refer, almost enviously, to a catalogue lately received from the Melbourne Public Library. It is true that that establishment has a wealth created by