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