From an early period of their existence those among the Provincial Libraries of France which belong to the municipalities–or which are under the management, more or less exclusive, of such bodies–have been made widely accessible to the Public generally, so far as concerns the liberality of their rules of admission. But in very many cases, the liberal regulations were by no means duly supported by liberal maintenance. Many a Town Library, the doors of which stood freely open, was very little used. Some collections were adapted to meet scarcely any demand save that of the learned. Others were suffered to fall so greatly into arrear as scarcely to answer the requirements of any class of readers whatever.

The history even of those among the French Town Libraries which combine remote antiquity of origin with great existing worth is a very chequered one. Some of them can trace their first germ to a period as remote as the earlier part of the sixteenth century; and can show the records of splendid gifts–coupled in some instances with express injunctions, from the donors, or testators, of unrestricted publicity of access–made in the seventeenth century. But the period of vigour is very often followed by a period of torpor and neglect.