al 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