sities of Heidelberg and of
Munich, 400,000 each; Ghent and Wuerzburg universities, 350,000 each;
Christiania, Norway, university, and Tuebingen, 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;
Koenigsberg, 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 S^r 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