Page:Essays in librarianship and bibliography.djvu/264

 244 matter of rare books, demand has now almost killed supply. The wish to possess them is more general than ever, but the means of gratifying it become from day to day more restricted by the tendency of such books to drift into public libraries, or into large private collections where they may be locked up indefinitely, and especially by the competition of America. At this juncture, photography, particularly in its form of photo-zincography, steps in, and offers the means of doing for the amateur of ancient and curious literature, for maps and MSS., precisely what the printing-press does for the great body of readers. All we need is that the obstacles which still render this process expensive, except when applied to objects in great demand, should be removed, that the scholar should be enabled to procure a cheap photographic reproduction as easily as the general reader can obtain a cheap book. Such scholars are numerous enough, I feel convinced, to defray the cost of material and of minor assistance, leaving in the worst case nothing for the State to pay but the insignificant salary of the chief photographic officer. Now let us take the case of another class of students, who deserve even more consideration, the collators of MSS. and rare books. Why should the scholar of the nineteenth century be in no better position than the scholar of the sixteenth? Why should he continue to be exposed to hardships which science has met? Think of the waste of human effort, the fret and friction of human temper entailed by the inability to procure accurate