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