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ESSAYS IN LIBRARIANSHIP

have been under of drinking wine every day has almost totally removed my complaint. I have nothing now to complain of but a considerable degree of nervous debility, which I hope will depart in a few days."


The conclusion of the rural peregrinations of the Commission at the beginning of 1837 threatened Mr. Jones with loss of employment, although he was still engaged in town in reducing its voluminous proceedings to print, and the extant correspondence shows that his work was very important. He says in a letter of this period:—

"I am ready to be knocked down to the highest bidder in any honourable service, and have no objection to write speeches and pamphlets and frame bills for laws and schemes for mines provided I am properly remunerated, but there's the rub." The real occupation of his life, however, was unexpectedly at hand. Within two months after writing as above he was appointed (April 1837) to the situation of permanent assistant in the Printed Book Department of the British Museum. The suggestion that he should apply for this post seems to have come from his friend Mr. Nicholas Carlisle, an assistant-officer who had come to the Museum from Windsor, along with the King's Library, and who is perhaps best remembered by a work on the endowed grammar schools of England, valuable in its time. The application was, moreover, strongly supported by Mr. Johnstone, a member of the Charity Commission,