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The English Patent Office Library.

If the poor inventor is not entirely ignorant of patent procedure, he knows that the patent office makes no search to test the validity of his invention, and so he comes to undertake it himself. If he finds that his invention appears in no previous patent, he is confirmed in his belief that he will at last see his dreams realized and that he will in a short time possess great wealth. If, on the other hand, he finds his ideas have been anticipated, his dreams of fortune fade away like mist before a morning sun, and life, as he has known it for so many weary years-hard, toilsome, pitiless to those who, like himself, lack money-lies painfully clear before his view.

A short three hours-or even less-spent in this library may plunge the man who entered it hopeful and bright into deepest despair, and it is certain that within its walls many silent tragedies of this kind are enacted week by week and noticed by only few if any of those around. But inventors are a hopeful race, and though some who suffer such a disappointment of all their hopes may never recover from it there is no doubt many recommence their experiments and elaborate other inventions from which they expect the same, or even greater, realities of wealth and happiness.-Chambers' Journal.