The History of Libraries.
The Library, from very early times, has enlisted the enthusiasm of the learned, and the encomiums of the wise. The actual origin of the earliest collection of books (or rather of manuscripts) is lost in the mists of remote antiquity. Notwithstanding professed descriptions of several libraries found in Aulus Gellius, Athenaeus, and others, who wrote centuries after the alleged collections were made, we lack the convincing evidence of eye-witnesses and contemporaries. But so far as critical research has run, the earliest monuments of man which approached collections of written records are found not in Europe, but in Africa and Asia.
That land of wonders, Egypt, abounds in hieroglyphic inscriptions, going back, as is agreed by modern scholars, to the year 2000 before the Christian era. A Papyrus manuscript, too, exists, which is assigned to about 1600 B. C. And the earliest recorded collection of books in the world, though perhaps not the first that existed, was that of the Egyptian king Ramses I.—B. C. 1400, near Thebes, which Diodorus Siculus says bore the inscription "Dispensary of the soul." Thus early were books regarded as remedial agents of great force and virtue.
But before the library of Ramses the Egyptian king, there existed in Babylonia collections of books, written not on parchment, nor on the more perishable papyrus, but on clay. Whole poems, fables, laws, and hymns of the gods have been found, stamped in small characters upon baked bricks. These clay tablets or books were arranged in numerical order, and the library at Agane, which existed about 2000 B. C. even had a catalogue, in which each piece of literature was numbered, so that readers had only to write down the number of the tablet wanted, and the librarian would hand it over. Two of these curious poems in clay have been found intact, one on the deluge, the other on the descent of Istar into Hades.
The next ancient library in point of time yet known to us was gathered in Asia by an Assyrian King, and this collection has actually come down to us, in propria persona. Buried beneath the earth for centuries, the archaeologist Layard discovered in 1850 at Nineveh, an extensive collection of tablets or tiles of clay, covered with cuneiform characters, and representing some ten thousand distinct works or documents. The Assyrian monarch Sardanapalus, a great patron of letters, was the collector of this primitive and curious library of clay. He flourished about 1650 B. C.
In Greece, where a copious and magnificent literature had grown up centuries before Christ, Pisistratus collected a library at Athens, and died B. C. 527. When Xerxes captured Athens, this collection, which represents the earliest record of a library dedicated to the public, was carried off to Persia, but restored two centuries later. The renowned philosopher Aristotle gathered one of the largest Greek libraries, about 350 B. C. said to have embraced about 1400 volumes, or rather, rolls. Plato called Aristotle's residence "the house of the reader." This library, also, was carried off to Scepsis, and later by the victorious Sulla to Rome. History shows that the Greek collections were the earliest "travelling libraries" on record, though they went as the spoils of war, and not to spread abroad learning by the arts of peace.
Rome having conquered Athens, we hear no more of the Athenian libraries, but the seat of ancient learning was transferred to Alexandria, where were gathered under the liberal sway of the Ptolemies, more books than had ever been assembled together in any part of the world. Marc Antony presented to Cleopatra the library of the Kings of Pergamus, said to have contained 200,000 rolls. There is no space to sketch the ancient libraries, so scantily commemorated, of Greece. Through Aristotle's enthusiasm for learning, as it is believed, the Ptolemies were fired with the zeal of book-collecting, and their capital of Alexandria became the seat of extensive libraries, stored in the Brucheion and the Serapeum. Here, according to general belief, occurred the burning of the famous Alexandrian library of 700,000 volumes, by the Saracens under Omar, A. D. 640. If any one would have an object lesson in the uncertainties of history and of human testimony, let him read the various conflicting accounts of the writers who have treated upon this subject. The number of volumes varies from 700,000, as stated by Aulus Gellius, to 100,000 by Eusebius. The fact that in ancient times each book or division of an author's work written on a roll of papyrus was reckoned as a volume, may account for the exaggeration, since the nine books of Herodotus would thus make nine volumes, and the twenty-four of Homer's Iliad, twenty-four volumes, instead of one. So, by an arbitrary application of averages, the size of the Alexandrian Library might be brought within reasonable dimensions, though there is nothing more misleading than the doctrine of averages, unless indeed it be a false analogy. But that any library eight hundred years before the invention of printing contained 700,000 volumes in the modern sense of the word, when the largest collection in the world, three centuries after books began to be multiplied by types, held less than 100,000 volumes, is one of the wildest fictions which writers have imposed upon the credulity of ages.
I cannot even touch upon the libraries of the Romans, though we have very attractive accounts, among others, of the literary riches of Lucullus, of Atticus, and of Cicero. The first library in Rome was founded 167 B. C. and in the Augustan age they multiplied, until there were twenty-nine public libraries in Hadrian's time, 120 A. D. The emperor Julian, in the fourth century, was a founder of libraries, and is said to have placed over the doors this inscription: "Alii quidem equos amant, alii oves, alii feros; mihi vero a puerulo mirandum acquirendi et possidendi libros insedit desiderium."
The libraries of the middle ages were neither large nor numerous. The neglect of learning and of literature was wide-spread; only in the monasteries of Europe were to be found scholars who kept alive the sacred flame. In these were renewed those fruitful labors of the scriptorium which had preserved and multiplied so many precious books in classic times among the Romans. The monks, indeed, were not seldom creators as well as copyists, though the works which they composed were mainly theological (as became their sacred profession and ascetic life). The Latin, however, being the almost universal language for so many centuries, the love of learning conspired to widen the field of monastic study. Many zealous ecclesiastics were found who revived the classic authors, and copies of the works of poets, historians, philosophers and rhetoricians were multiplied. Then were gradually formed those monastic libraries to which so many thousands of mediaeval scholars owed a debt of gratitude. The order of Benedictines took a leading and effective part in this revival of learning. Taxes were levied on the inmates of monasteries expressly for furnishing the library with books, and the novices in many houses must contribute writing materials upon entering, and books at the close of their novitiate, for the enrichment of the library. Among notably valuable libraries, several of which still survive, were those of Monte Cassino in Italy, the Abbey of Fleury in France, St. Gall in Switzerland, and that of the illustrious congregation of St. Maur in France. The latter had at one time no less than one hundred and seven writers engaged in multiplying books.
The first library in England is recorded (in the Canterbury Chartulary) to have been given by Pope Gregory the Great, and brought by St. Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, on his mission to England about A. D. 600. It consisted of nine precious volumes on vellum, being copies of parts of the Scriptures, with commentaries, and a volume of Lives of the Martyrs. The library of the Benedictine Monastery at Canterbury had grown in the 13th century to 3000 titles, being very rich in theology, but with many books also in history, poetry and science. At York had been founded, in the 8th century, a noble library by Archbishop Egbert, and the great scholar Alcuin here acquired, amidst that "infinite number of excellent books," his life-long devotion to literature. When he removed to Tours, in France, he lamented the loss of the literary treasures of York, in a poem composed of excellent hexameters. He begged of Charlemagne to send into Britain to procure books, "that the garden of paradise may not be confined to York."
Fine libraries were also gathered at the monasteries of Durham, of Glastonbury, and of Croyland, and at the Abbeys of Whitby and Peterborough.
Nor were the orders of Franciscans and Dominicans far behind as book-collectors, though they commonly preferred to buy rather than to transcribe manuscripts, like the Benedictines. "In every convent of friars," wrote Fitzralph to the Pope, in 1350, "there is a large and noble library." And Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and Chancellor of England in 1334, whose "Philobiblon" is the most eloquent treatise in praise of books ever written, said, when visiting places where the mendicants had convents; "there amid the deepest poverty, we found the most precious riches stored up." The Pope, it appears, relaxed for these orders the rigor of their vows of poverty, in favor of amassing books—mindful, doubtless, of that saying of Solomon the wise—"Therefore get wisdom, because it is better than gold."
Richard de Bury, the enthusiast of learning, wrote thus:
"The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches, and nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it. Whosoever, therefore, acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of the truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith, must of necessity make himself a lover of books."
And said Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich—"I can wonder at nothing more than how a man can be idle—but of all others a scholar; in so many improvements of reason, in such sweetness of knowledge, in such variety of studies, in such importunity of thoughts. To find wit in poetry; in philosophy profoundness; in history wonder of events; in oratory, sweet eloquence; in divinity, supernatural light and holy devotion—whom would it not ravish with delight?"
Charles the Fifth of France amassed a fine library, afterwards sold to an English nobleman. Lorenzo de Medici, of Hungary, and Frederic Duke of Urbino, each gathered in the 15th century a magnificent collection of books. All of these became widely dispersed in later years, though the manuscripts of the Duke of Urbino's collection are preserved in the library of the Vatican.
I may here note a very few of the most extensive library collections now existing in Europe and America.
1. Of the great public libraries of Europe, which owe much of their riches to the government privilege of the copy-tax, the national library of France is the oldest and the largest, now numbering two million six hundred thousand volumes. Founded in the 15th century, it has had four hundred years of opportunity for steady and large increase. Paris abounds in other public libraries also, in which respect it is far superior to London.
2. Next to the Bibliothèque nationale of France, comes the Library of the British Museum, with 2,000,000 volumes, very rich both in manuscripts and in printed books in all languages. A liberal Parliamentary grant of $60,000 a year for purchase of books and manuscripts keeps this great collection well up to date as to all important new works, besides enabling it constantly to fill up deficiencies in the literature of the past. Following this, among the great libraries having over half a million books, come in numerical order
| Volumes. | ||
| 3. | Russian Imperial Library, St. Petersburg, | 1,200,000 |
| 4. | Royal Library of Prussia, Berlin, | 1,000,000 |
| 5. | Royal Library of Bavaria, Munich, | 980,000 |
| 6. | Library of Congress, Washington City, | 840,000 |
| 7. | Boston Public Library, | 734,000 |
| 8. | University Library, Strasburg, Germany, | 700,000 |
| 9. | Imperial Public Library, Vienna, | 575,000 |
| 10. | Bodleian Library, Oxford | 530,000 |
It is a notable fact that among the richest monuments of learning that have been gathered by mankind, the University libraries hold a very high rank. Reckoned in number of volumes, there are many of them which far outrank the government libraries, except in six instances. Out of 174 libraries, all exceeding 100,000 volumes, as reported in the annual Minerva, in October, 1898, no less than 72 are the libraries of universities. Strasburg heads the list, with a noble collection of 700,000 volumes; then Oxford university, whose Bodleian library numbers 530,000; Leipzig university, 504,000; Cambridge university, England, Göttingen university, and Harvard university, 500,000 each; the university of Vienna, 475,000; the universities of Heidelberg and of Munich, 400,000 each; Ghent and Würzburg universities, 350,000 each; Christiania, Norway, university, and Tübingen, each 340,000; University of Chicago, 330,000; Copenhagen university, 305,000; Breslau, Cracow, Rostock and Upsala, 300,000 each; Yale university, New Haven, 280,000; St. Petersburg, 257,000; Bologna, 255,000; Freiburg and Bonn universities, 250,000 each; Prague, 245,000; Trinity, Dublin, 232,000; Königsberg, 231,000; Kiel, 229,000; Naples, 224,000; and Buda-Pest, 210,000. I need not detain you by enumerating those that fall below 200,000 volumes, but will say that the whole number of volumes in the 72 university libraries embraced in my table is more than fifteen millions, which would be much enlarged if smaller libraries were included. A noble exhibit is this, which the institutions of the highest education hold up before us.
We may now consider, somewhat more in detail as to particulars, the origin and growth of the libraries of the United States. The record will show an amazingly rapid development, chiefly accomplished during the last quarter of a century, contrasted with the lamentably slow growth of earlier years.
Thirty years ago the present year, I was invited to give to the American Social Science Association, then meeting at New York, a discourse upon Public Libraries in the United States. On recurring to this address, I have been agreeably surprised to find how completely its facts and figures belong to the domain of ancient history. For, while it may excite a smile to allude to anything belonging to a period only thirty years back as ancient history, yet, so rapid has been the accumulation, not only of books, but of libraries themselves in that brief period of three decades, as almost to justify the term employed.
Antiquarians must ever regard with interest the first efforts for the establishment of public libraries in the New World. The first record of books dedicated to a public purpose in that part of this country now occupied by the English-speaking race is, I believe, to be found in the following entry in the Records of the Virginia Company of London:
"November 15, 1620.—After the Acts of the former Courte were read, a straunger stept in presentinge a Mapp of Sr Walter Rawlighes contayinge a Descripcon of Guiana, and with the same fower great books as the Guifte of one unto the Company that desyred his name might not be made knowne, whereof one booke was a treatise of St. Augustine of the Citty of God translated into English, the other three greate Volumes wer the works of Mr. Perkins' newlie corrected and amended, wch books the Donor desyred they might be sent to the Colledge in Virginia there to remayne in saftie to the use of the collegiates thereafter, and not suffered at any time to be sent abroade or used in the meane while. For wch so worthy a guifte my Lord of Southampton desyred the p'tie that presented them to returne deserued thanks from himselfe and the rest of the Company to him that had so kindly bestowed them."[1]
The college here referred to was the first ever founded in America, and was seated at Henrico, at the confluence of the James River with the Chickahominy. It was designed not only for the education of the Virginia settlers, but to teach science and Christianity to the Indians. Large contributions were raised in England by Sir Edwin Sandys, and others of the Virginia Company, for its support. But this Virginia college and its incipient library were doomed to a speedy extinction. Like so many other brilliant "prospects for planting arts and learning in America," it did not survive the perils of the colonial epoch. It was brought to a period by the bloody Indian massacre of March 22, 1622, when three hundred and forty-seven of the Virginia settlers were slaughtered in a day, the new settlement broken up, and the expanding lines of civilization contracted to the neighborhood of Jamestown.
Harvard University Library was founded in 1638 by the endowment of John Harvard, who bequeathed to the new college his library and half of his estate. Soon afterwards enriched by the zealous contributions of English Puritans and philosophers, of Berkeley, and Baxter, and Lightfoot, and Sir Kenelm Digby, the first university library in America, after a century and a quarter of usefulness, was totally destroyed with the college edifice in the year 1764 by fire. When we contemplate the ravages of this element, which has consumed so many noble libraries, destroying not only printed books of priceless value, but often precious manuscripts which are unique and irreplaceable, a lively sense of regret comes over us that these creations of the intellect, which should be imperishable, are even yet at the mercy of an accident in all the libraries of the world save a very few. The destruction of books in private hands is natural and inevitable enough, and goes on continually. Whole editions of books, now sought with avidity as the rarest volumes known to literature, have been gradually destroyed in innumerable fires, worn out in the hands of readers, used for waste paper by grocers and petty tradesmen, swallowed up in the sack of towns, or consumed by dampness, mould, or, in rare instances, by the remorseless tooth of time. Yet there have always existed public libraries enough, had they been fire-proof, to have preserved many copies of every book bequeathed to the world, both before the invention of printing and since. But, when your insurance office is bankrupt, what becomes of the insured? When nearly all our public libraries are so constructed as to become an easy prey to the flames, the loss of so many books which have completely perished from the earth ceases to be wonderful.
The growth of Harvard University library, from its second foundation a century ago, has been steady, though at no time rapid. Select and valuable in its principal contents, it has received numerous benefactions from the friends of learning, and promises to become the best, as it already is much the largest, among the university libraries of the country. Its present strength is about 500,000 volumes.
The year 1700 witnessed the birth of the first New York library open to public use. The Rev. John Sharp, then chaplain of His Majesty's forces in that city (it was in the days of good King William of Orange), bequeathed his private collection of books to found a "public library" in New York. The library thus organized was placed in charge of the corporation of the city, but the first city library of New York languished with little or no increase until 1754, when a society of gentlemen undertook to found a public library by subscription, and succeeded so well that the city authorities turned over to them what remained of the Public City Library. This was the beginning of the New York Society Library, one of the largest of the proprietary libraries of the country. It was then, and for a long time afterwards, commonly known as "The City Library." The Continental Congress profited by its stores, there being no other library open to their use; and the First Congress under the Constitution, which met in New York in 1789, received the free use of the books it contained. The library is conducted on the share system, the payment of twenty-five dollars, and an annual assessment of six dollars, giving any one the privilege of membership. It now contains about 100,000 volumes.
The same year, 1700, in which the New York Library was founded, ten Connecticut ministers met together at Lyme, each bringing a number of books, and saying, "I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony." Such was the foundation of Yale University, an institution that has done inestimable service to the cause of letters, having been fruitful of writers of books, as well as of living contributions to the ranks of every learned profession. Thirty years later, we find the good Bishop Berkeley pausing from the lofty speculations which absorbed him, to send over to Yale College what was called "the finest collection of books that ever came together at one time into America." For a century and a half the growth of this library was very slow, the college being oppressed with poverty. In 1869, the number of volumes had risen only to 50,000, but it is cheering to relate that the last thirty years have witnessed a growth so rapid that in 1899 Yale University Library had 285,000 volumes.
The fourth considerable library founded in the United States was due in a large degree to the industry and zeal for knowledge of the illustrous Franklin. As unquestionably the first established proprietary library in America, the Library Company of Philadelphia merits especial notice. Let us reverently take a leaf out of the autobiography of the printer-statesman of Pennsylvania:
"And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library. I drew up the proposals, got them put into form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and by the help of my friends in the Junto [the Junto was a club for mutual improvement, founded by Franklin] procured fifty subscribers at forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our company was to continue. We afterwards obtained a charter, the company being increased to one hundred; this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries now so numerous. It is become a great thing itself, and continually increasing. These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defence of their privileges."
When this Philadelphia Library was founded, in 1731, not a single city or town in England possessed a subscription library. Even the library of the British Museum, since become the greatest collection of books in the world, save one, was not opened until 1759, more than a quarter of a century afterwards. Although not designed as a public library of circulation, save to its own subscribers, the Philadelphia Library has been kept free to all for reference and consultation. The record of the gradual increase of the first Philadelphia Library from its first few hundred volumes, when Franklin was but twenty-five years of age, to its present rank as the largest proprietary library in America, with 195,000 volumes of books, is highly interesting. Its history, in fact, is to a large extent the history of intellectual culture in Philadelphia, which remained, until the second decade in the present century, the foremost city of the Union in population, and, from 1791 to 1800, the seat of government of the United States.
The Philadelphia Library Company, in 1774, voted that "the gentlemen who were to meet in Congress" in that city should be furnished with such books as they might have occasion for; and the same privilege was exercised on the return of the Government to that city, in 1791, and until the removal of Congress to Washington in 1800. During the nine months' occupation of Philadelphia by the British army, it is refreshing to read that the conquerors lifted no spear against the Muses' bower, but that "the officers, without exception, left deposits, and paid hire for the books borrowed by them." The collection, in respect of early printed books, is one of the largest and most valuable in America, embracing some books and files of newspapers which are to be found in no other public library. The selection of new books has been kept unusually free from the masses of novels and other ephemeral publications which overload most of our popular libraries, and the collection, although limited in extent in every field, and purposely leaving special topics, such as the medical and natural sciences, to the scientific libraries which abound in Philadelphia, affords to the man of letters a good working library. The shares in the library cost forty dollars, with an annual assessment of four dollars to each stockholder.
In 1869, the great bequest of Doctor James Rush to the Philadelphia Library of his whole property, valued at over $1,000,000, was accepted by its stockholders, by the bare majority of five votes in a poll of over five hundred. This lack of harmony is attributable to the fact that the bequest, so generous in itself, was hampered by the donor with numerous conditions, deemed by many friends of the library to be highly onerous and vexatious. Not the least among these was the following, which is cited from the will itself:
"Let the library not keep cushioned seats for time-wasting and lounging readers, nor places for every-day novels, mind-tainting reviews, controversial politics, scribblings of poetry and prose, biographies of unknown names, nor for those teachers of disjointed thinking, the daily newspapers."
Here is one more melancholy instance of a broad and liberal bequest narrowly bestowed. The spirit which animated the respectable testator in attempting to exclude the larger part of modern literature from the library which his money was to benefit may have been unexceptionable enough. Doubtless there are evils connected with a public supply of frivolous and trifling literature; and perhaps our periodicals may be justly chargeable with devoting an undue proportion of their columns to topics of merely ephemeral interest. But it should never be forgotten that the literature of any period is and must be largely occupied with the questions of the day. Thus, and thus only, it becomes a representative literature, and it is precious to posterity in proportion as it accurately reflects the spirit, the prejudices, and the personalities of a time which has passed into history, leaving behind it no living representatives. If we admit that the development of the human intellect at any particular period is worth studying, then all books are, or may become, useful. It is amazing that a person with any pretensions to discernment should denounce newspapers as unfitted to form a part of a public library. The best newspapers of the time are sometimes the best books of the time. A first-class daily journal is an epitome of the world, recording the life and the deeds of men, their laws and their literature, their politics and religion, their social and criminal statistics, the progress of invention and of art, the revolutions of empires, and the latest results of science. Grant that newspapers are prejudiced, superficial, unfair; so also are books. Grant that the journals often give place to things scurrilous and base; but can there be anything baser or more scurrilous than are suffered to run riot in books? There is to be found hidden away in the pages of some books such filth as no man would dare to print in a newspaper, from fear of the instant wrath of the passers-by.
When I consider the debt which libraries and literature alike owe to the daily and weekly press, it is difficult to characterize with patience the Parthian arrow flung at it from the grave of a querulous millionaire, who will owe to these very newspapers the greater part of his success and his reputation. The father of the respectable testator, Doctor Benjamin Rush, has left on record many learned speculations concerning the signs and evidences of lunacy. We may now add to the number the vagaries of the author of a ponderous work on the human intellect, who gravely proposed to hand over to posterity an expurgated copy of the nineteenth century, with all its newspapers left out.
The Library of Congress, or, as it was called in its first general catalogue in 1815, "The Library of the United States," was founded in 1800, by the purchase of five thousand dollars' worth of books by act of Congress, upon the removal of the government to Washington. By the act of January 26, 1802, entitled "An act concerning the Library for the use of both Houses of Congress," this library was placed in charge of a joint committee of both Houses of Congress, consisting of three Senators and three Representatives, and a Librarian, to be appointed by the President of the United States. It had grown to the number of only 3,000 volumes in 1814, when the British army made a bonfire of our national Capitol, and the library was consumed in the ruins. The first library of Congress being thus destroyed, ex-President Jefferson, then living, involved in debt, and in his old age, at Monticello, offered his fine private library of 6,700 volumes to Congress, through friends in that body, the terms of payment to be made convenient to the public, and the price to be fixed by a committee. The proposition met with able advocacy and also with some warm opposition. It is illustrative of the crude conceptions regarding the uses of books which prevailed in the minds of some members, that the library was objected to on the somewhat incongruous grounds of embracing too many editions of the Bible, and a number of the French writers in skeptical philosophy. It was gravely proposed to pack up this portion of the library, and return it to the illustrious owner at Monticello, paying him for the remainder. More enlightened counsels, however, prevailed, and the nation became possessed, for about $23,000, of a good basis for a public library which might become worthy of the country. The collection thus formed grew by slow accretion until, in 1851, it had accumulated 55,000 volumes. On the 24th of December in that year, a defective flue in the Capitol set fire to the wood-work with which the whole library was surrounded, and the result was a conflagration, from which 20,000 volumes only were saved. Congress at once appropriated, with praiseworthy liberality, $75,000 for the purchase of new books, and $92,500 for rebuilding the library room in solid iron; the first instance of the employment of that safe and permanent material, so capable of the lightest and most beautiful architectural effects, in the entire interior structure of any public building. The appropriation of $75,000 was principally expended in the purchase of standard English literature, including complete sets of many important periodicals, and a selection of the more costly works in science and the fine arts. In 1866, two wings, each as large as the central library, and constructed of the same fire-proof material, were added to it, and quickly filled by the accession, the same year and the following, of two large libraries, that of the Smithsonian Institution, and the historical library of Peter Force, of Washington. The latter was the largest private library ever then brought together in the United States, but its chief value consisted in its possession of a very great proportion of the books relating to the settlement, history, topography, and politics of America, its 45,000 pamphlets, its files of early newspapers of the Revolution, its early printed books, and its rich assemblage of maps and manuscripts, many of the latter being original autographs of the highest historical interest, including military letters and papers of the period of the American Revolution. The Smithsonian library, the custody of which was accepted by Congress as a trust, is rich in scientific works in all the languages of Europe, and forms an extensive and appropriate supplement to the Library of Congress, the chief strength of which lies in jurisprudence, political science, history, and books relating to America. Yet no department of literature or science has been left unrepresented in its formation, and the fact has been kept steadily in view that the Library of the Government must become, sooner or later, a universal one. As the only library which is entitled to the benefit of the copyright law, by which copies of each publication for which the Government grants an exclusive right must be deposited in the National Library, this collection must become annually more important as an exponent of the growth of American literature. This wise provision of law prevents the dispersion or destruction of books that tend continually to disappear; a benefit to the cause of letters, the full value of which it requires slight reflection to estimate.
This National Library now embraces 840,000 volumes, besides about 250,000 pamphlets. It is freely open, as a library of reference and reading, to the whole people; but the books are not permitted to be drawn out, except by Senators and Representatives and a few officials for use at the seat of government. Its new, commodious and beautiful building, which may fitly be called the book-palace of the American people, open day and evening to all comers, is a delight to the eye, and to the mind.
The library of the Boston Athenaeum originated, in the year 1806, with a society of gentlemen of literary tastes, who aimed at creating a reading-room for the best foreign and American periodicals, together with a library of books. To this a gallery of art was subsequently added. The undertaking proved at once successful, leaving us to wonder why cultivated Boston, though abounding in special and parish libraries, should so long have done without a good general library; New York having anticipated her by fifty-two years, and Philadelphia by three-quarters of a century. The Athenaeum Library is peculiarly rich in files of American newspapers, both old and new, and its collection of early pamphlets is one of the largest in the country. In literature and science it embraces a heavy proportion of the best books, its total number of volumes being reckoned at 190,000. Its collection of books, pamphlets, and newspapers relating to the recent civil war is among the completest known. The price of a share in the Athenaeum is three hundred dollars, a large sum when compared with that of other proprietary libraries; but it involves much more valuable property-rights than any other. The annual assessment is five dollars to shareholders, who alone possess the right to draw books. The proprietors have also the power to grant free admission to others, and the library and reading-room are thus thrown open for reference to a wide range of readers.
The history of the Astor Library, opened in 1854, has been made too familiar by repeated publication to need repetition here. The generous founder gave two per cent. out of his fortune of $20,000,000 to create a free public library for the city which had given him all his wealth. The gift was a splendid one, greater than had ever before been given in money to found a library. Moreover, the $400,000 of Mr. Astor, half a century ago, appeared to be, and perhaps was, a larger sum relatively than four millions in New York of to-day. Yet it remains true that the bequest was but one-fiftieth part of the fortune of the donor, and that the growth and even the proper accommodation of the library must have stopped, but for the spontaneous supplementary gifts of the principal inheritors of his vast wealth.
The growth of the Astor library has been very slow, the annual income from what was left of Mr. Astor's $400,000 bequest, after defraying the cost of the library building, and the $100,000 expended for books at its foundation in 1848, having been so small as to necessitate a pinching economy, both in salaries of the library staff, and in the annual purchase of books. It was an example of a generous act performed in a niggardly way. But after the lapse of half a century, enlightened public policy, building upon the Astor foundation, and on the Lenox and Tilden bequests for founding public libraries in New York city, is about to equip that long neglected city with a library worthy of the name. There has already been gathered from these three united benefactions, a collection of no less than 450,000 volumes, making the New York Public Library take rank as the fourth, numerically, in the United States.
While no library in America has yet reached one million volumes, there are five libraries in Europe, which have passed the million mark. Some of these, it is true, are repositories of ancient and mediaeval literature, chiefly, with a considerable representation of the books of the last century, and but few accessions from the more modern press. Such, for the most part, are the numerous libraries of Italy, while others, like the Library of the British Museum, in London, and the National Library, at Paris, are about equally rich in ancient and modern literature. The one great advantage which European libraries possess over American consists in the stores of ancient literature which the accumulations of the past have given them. This advantage, so far as manuscripts and early printed books are concerned, can never be overcome. With one or two hundred thousand volumes as a basis, what but utter neglect can prevent a library from becoming a great and useful institution? The most moderate share of discrimination, applied to the selection of current literature, will keep up the character of the collection as a progressive one. But with nothing at all as a basis, as most of our large American libraries have started, it will take generations for us to overtake some of the vast collections of Europe—even numerically.
In the "American Almanac" for 1837 was published the earliest statistical account of American libraries which I have found. It is confined to a statement of the numerical contents of twenty public and university libraries, being all the American libraries which then (sixty years since) contained over 10,000 volumes each. The largest library in the United States at that date was that of the Philadelphia Library Company, which embraced 44,000 volumes. The first organized effort to collect the full statistics of libraries in the United States was made in 1849, by Professor C. C. Jewett, then librarian of the Smithsonian Institution, and the results were published in 1851, under the auspices of that institution, in a volume of 207 pages. It contains interesting notices of numerous libraries, only forty of which, however, contained as many as 10,000 volumes each. In 1859, Mr. W. J. Rhees, of the Smithsonian Institution, published "A Manual of Public Libraries, Institutions, and Societies in the United States," a large volume of 687 pages, filled with statistical information in great detail, and recording the number of volumes in 1338 libraries. This work was an expansion of that of Professor Jewett. The next publication of the statistics of American Libraries, of an official character, was published in "The National Almanac," Philadelphia, for the year 1864, pp. 58-62, and was prepared by the present writer. It gave the statistics of 104 libraries, each numbering 10,000 volumes or upwards, exhibiting a gratifying progress in all the larger collections, and commemorating the more advanced and vigorous of the new libraries which had sprung into life.
The work of collecting and publishing the statistics of American Libraries has for years past been admirably performed by the United States Bureau of Education. Begun in 1875, that institution has issued four tabular statements of all libraries responding to its circulars of inquiry, and having (as last reported in 1897) one thousand volumes or upwards. Besides these invaluable reports, costing much careful labor and great expense, the Bureau of Education published, in 1876, an extensive work wholly devoted to the subject of libraries, bearing the title "Special Report on Public Libraries in the United States." This publication (now wholly out of print) consisted of 1222 pages, replete with information upon the history, management, and condition of American Libraries, under the editorship of S. R. Warren and S. N. Clark, of the Bureau of Education. It embraced many original contributions upon topics connected with library science, by experienced librarians, viz.: Messrs. W. F. Poole, Justin Winsor, C. A. Cutter, J. S. Billings, Theo. Gill, Melvil Dewey, O. H. Robinson, W. I. Fletcher, F. B. Perkins, H. A. Homes, A. R. Spofford, and others.
I have prepared a table of the numerical contents of the thirty-four largest libraries in this country in 1897, being all those having 100,000 volumes each or upwards:
Public libraries endowed by private munificence form already a large class, and these are constantly increasing. Of the public libraries founded by individual bequest, some of the principal are the Public Library of New York, the Watkinson Library, at Hartford, the Peabody Institute Libraries, of Baltimore, and at Danvers and Peabody, Mass., the Newberry Library and the John Crerar Library at Chicago, the Sutro Library, San Francisco, the Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore, and the Carnegie Libraries at Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, Pa. Nearly all of them are the growth of the last quarter of a century. The more prominent, in point of well equipped buildings or collections of books, are here named, including all which number ten thousand volumes each, or upwards, among the public libraries associated with the founder's name.
Besides the preceding list, purposely confined to free libraries chiefly founded by individuals, which have reached the ten thousand volume mark, there are a multitude of others, too numerous to be named, having a less number of volumes. In fact, the public spirit which gives freely of private wealth to enlarge the intelligence of the community may be said to grow by emulation. Many men who have made fortunes have endowed their native places with libraries. It is yearly becoming more and more widely recognized that a man can build no monument to himself so honorable or so lasting as a free public library. Its influence is well nigh universal, and its benefits are perennial.
We now come to consider the city or town libraries, created or maintained by voluntary taxation. These, like the class of libraries founded by private munificence, are purely a modern growth. While the earliest movement in this direction in Great Britain dates back only to 1850, New Hampshire has the honor of adopting the first free public library law, in America, in the year 1849. Massachusetts followed in 1851, and the example was emulated by other States at various intervals, until there now remain but fifteen out of our forty-five States which have no public library law. The general provisions of these laws authorize any town or city to collect taxes by vote of the citizens for maintaining a public library, to be managed by trustees elected or appointed for the purpose.
But a more far-reaching provision for supplying the people with public libraries was adopted by New Hampshire (again the pioneer State), in 1895. This was nothing less than the passage of a State law making it compulsory on every town in New Hampshire to assess annually the sum of thirty dollars for every dollar of public taxes apportioned to such town, the amount to be appropriated to establish and maintain a free public library. Library trustees are to be elected, and in towns where no public library exists, the money is to be held by them, and to accumulate until the town is ready to establish a library.
This New Hampshire statute, making obligatory the supply of public information through books and periodicals in free libraries in every town, may fairly be termed the high-water mark of modern means for the diffusion of knowledge. This system of creating libraries proceeds upon the principle that intellectual enlightenment is as much a concern of the local government as sanitary regulations or public morality. Society has an interest that is common to all classes in the means that are provided for the education of the people. Among these means free town or city libraries are one of the most potent and useful. New Hampshire and Massachusetts, in nearly all of their towns and cities, have recognized the principle that public books are just as important to the general welfare as public lamps. What are everywhere needed are libraries open to the people as a matter of right, and not as a matter of favor.
The largest library in the country, save one (that at Washington), owes its origin and success to this principle, combined with some private munificence. The Boston Public Library is unquestionably one of the most widely useful collections of books open to the public in this country. Of all the greater collections, it is the only one which lends out books free of charge to all citizens. Instituted in 1852, its career has been one of rapid progress and ever widening usefulness. I shall not dwell upon it at length, as the facts regarding it have been more widely published than those relating to any other library.
Under the permissive library laws of thirty States, there had been formed up to 1896, when the last comprehensive statistics were gathered, about 1,200 free public libraries, supported by taxation, in the United States.
A still more widely successful means of securing a library foundation that shall be permanent is found in uniting private benefactions with public money to found or to maintain a library. Many public-spirited citizens, fortunately endowed with large means, have offered to erect library buildings in certain places, on condition that the local authorities would provide the books, and the means of maintaining a free library. Such generous offers, whether coupled with the condition of perpetuating the donor's name with that of the library, or leaving the gift unhampered, so that the library may bear the name of the town or city of its location, have generally been accepted by municipal bodies, or by popular vote. This secures, in most cases, a good working library of choice reading, as well as its steady annual growth and management, free of the heavy expense of building, of which the tax-payers are relieved. The many munificent gifts of library buildings by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, to American towns and cities, and to some in his native Scotland, are worthy of special note. And the reader will see from the long list heretofore given of the more considerable public libraries to be credited wholly or in part to private munificence, that American men of wealth have not been wanting as public benefactors.
In some cases, whole libraries have been given to a town or village where a public library already existed, or liberal gifts or bequests of money, to be expended in the enrichment of such libraries, have been bestowed. Very interesting lists of benefactions for the benefit of libraries may be found in the volumes of the Library Journal, New York. It is with regret that candor requires me to add, that several proffers of fine library buildings to certain places, coupled with the condition that the municipal authorities would establish and maintain a free library, have remained without acceptance, thus forfeiting a liberal endowment. Where public education has been so neglected as to render possible such a niggardly, penny-wise and pound-foolish policy, there is manifestly signal need of every means of enlightenment.
We now come to the various State libraries founded at the public charge, and designed primarily for the use of the respective legislatures of the States. The earliest of these is the New Hampshire State Library, established in 1790, and the largest is the New York State Library, at Albany, founded in 1818, now embracing 325,000 volumes, and distinguished alike by the value of its stores and the liberality of its management. The reason for being of a State library is obviously and primarily to furnish the legislative body and State courts with such ample books of reference in jurisprudence, history, science, etc., as will aid them in the intelligent discharge of their duties as law-makers and judges of the law. The library thus existing at each State capital may well be opened to the public for reading and reference, thus greatly enlarging its usefulness.
Every State in the Union has now at least a legislative library, although the most of them consist chiefly of laws and legislative documents, with a few works of reference superadded; and their direct usefulness to the public is therefore very circumscribed. The New York State Library is a model of what a great public library should be in the capital of a State. In it are gathered a great proportion of the best books in each department of literature and science, while indefatigable efforts have been made to enrich it in whatever relates to American history and polity. Its reading-room is freely opened to the public during many hours daily. But a State library should never be made a library of circulation, since its utility as a reference library, having its books always in for those who seek them, would thereby be destroyed. Even under the existing system, with the privilege of drawing books out confined to the Legislature, some of the State libraries have been depleted and despoiled of many of their most valuable books, through loaning them freely on the orders of members. The sense of responsibility is far less in the case of borrowed books which are government property, than in other cases. The only safe rule for keeping a government library from being scattered, is strict refusal of orders for loaning to any one not legally entitled to draw books, and short terms of withdrawal to legislators, with enforcement of a rule of replacement, at their expense, as to all books not returned at the end of each session.
There is one class of libraries not yet touched upon, namely, school district libraries. These originated for the first time in a legally organized system, through an act of the New York State Legislature in 1835, authorizing the voters in each school district to levy a tax of twenty dollars with which to start a library, and ten dollars a year for adding to the same. These were not to be for the schools alone, but for all the people living in the district where the school was located. This was supplemented in 1838 by a State appropriation of $55,000 a year, from New York's share of the surplus revenue fund distributed by Congress to the States in 1837, and the income of which was devoted by New York to enlarging the school district libraries. After spending nearly two millions of dollars on these libraries in forty years, the system was found to have been so far a failure that the volumes in the libraries had decreased from 1,600,000 to 700,000 volumes.
This extraordinary and deplorable result was attributed to several distinct causes. 1st. No proper responsibility as to the use and return of books was enforced. 2d. The insignificance of the sum raised by taxation in each district prevented any considerable supply of books from being acquired. 3d. The funds were largely devoted to buying the same books in each school district, instead of being expended in building up a large and varied collection. Thus the system produced innumerable petty libraries of duplicates, enriching publishers and booksellers, while impoverishing the community. The school district library system, in short, while promising much in theory, in the way of public intelligence, broke down completely in practice. The people quickly lost interest in libraries which gave them so little variety in books, either of instruction or of recreation.
Although widely introduced in other States besides New York, from 1837 to 1877, it proved an admitted failure in all. Much public money, raised by taxation of the people, was squandered upon sets of books, selected by State authority, and often of inferior interest and utility. Finally, it was recognized that school district libraries were an evanescent dream, and that town libraries must take their place. This instructive chapter in Library history shows an experience by which much was learned, though the lesson was a costly one.
The Historical libraries of the country are numerous, and some of the larger ones are rich in printed Americana, and in historical manuscripts. The oldest is that of the Massachusetts Historical Society, founded in 1791, and among the most extensive are those of the New York Historical Society, American Antiquarian Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the New England Historic-genealogical Society, and the Wisconsin State Historical Society. There are no less than 230 historical societies in the U. S., some forty of which are State associations.
The Mercantile libraries are properly a branch of the proprietary, though depending mostly upon annual subscriptions. The earliest of these was the Boston Mercantile Library, founded in 1820, and followed closely by the New York Mercantile the same year, the Philadelphia in 1821, and the Cincinnati Mercantile in 1835.
Next we have the professional libraries, law, medical, scientific, and, in several cities, theological. These supply a want of each of these professions seldom met by the public collections, and are proportionately valuable.
The most recent plan for the wide diffusion of popular books is the travelling library. This originated in New York in 1893, when the Legislature empowered the Regents of the State University (a body of trustees having charge of all library interests in that State) to send out selections of books to any community without a library, on request of 25 resident taxpayers. The results were most beneficial, the sole expense being five dollars for each library.
Travelling libraries, (mostly of fifty volumes each) have been set on foot in Massachusetts, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and other States, and, as the system appears capable of indefinite expansion, great results are anticipated in the direction of the public intelligence. It is pointed out that while the State, by its free school system, trains all the people to read, it should not leave the quality of their reading to chance or to utter neglect, when a few cents per capita annually would help them to an education of inestimable value in after life.
Some objections, on the other hand, have been urged to the system, as introducing features of paternalism into State government, and taking out of the hands of individual generosity and local effort and enterprise what belongs properly to such agencies. The vexed question of the proper function and limitations of State control in the domain of education cannot here be entered upon.
In the volume last published of statistics of American libraries, that of 1897, great progress was shown in the five years since 1891. The record of libraries reported in 1896 embraced 4,026 collections, being all which contained over 1,000 volumes each. The increase in volumes in the five years was a little over seven millions, the aggregate of the 4,026 libraries being 33,051,872 volumes. This increase was over 27 per cent. in only five years.
If the good work so splendidly begun, in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and some of the Western States, in establishing libraries through public taxation and private munificence, can only be extended in the Southern and Middle States, the century now about to dawn will witness an advance quite as remarkable as we have seen in the latter years of the century about to close.
Footnotes:
[1] MS. Records of the Virginia Company, in the Library of Congress.
