ge 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 stati