in his pocket, and showed himself a
judicious, active, and formidable sportsman in the book-hunting world.
Whenever, from private collections, or the breaking-up of public
institutions, rarities got abroad into the open market, the collectors
of the old country found that they had a resolute competitor to deal
with--almost, it might be said, a desperate one--since he was in a
manner the representative of a nation using powerful efforts to get
possession of a share of the literary treasures of the Old World.

In the case of a book, for instance, of which half-a-dozen copies might
be known to exist, the combatants before the auctioneer would be, on the
one side, many an ambitious collector desiring to belong to the
fortunate circle already in possession of such a treasure; but on the
other side was one on whose exertions depended the question, whether the
book should henceforth be part of the intellectual wealth of a great
empire, and should be accessible for consultation by American scholars
and authors without their requiring to cross the Atlantic. Let us see
how far, by a brief comparison, money has enabled them to triumph over
the difficulties of their position.

It is difficult to know exactly the numerical contents of a library, as
some people count by volumes, and others by the separate works, small or
great; and even if all should consent to count by volumes, the estimate
would not be precise, for in some libraries bundles of tracts and other
small works are massed in plethoric volumes for economy, while in
affluent institutions every collection of leaves put under the command
of a separate title-page is separately bound in cloth, calf, or morocco,
according to its rank. The Imperial Library at Paris is computed to
contain above eight hundred thousand volumes; the Astorian boasts of
approaching a hundred thousand: the next libraries in size in America
are the Harvard, with from eighty thousand to ninety thousand; the
Library of Congress, which has from sixty thousand to seventy thousand;
and the Boston Athenaeum, which has about sixty thousand.

There are many of smaller size. In fact, there is probably no country so
well stocked as the States with libraries of from ten thousand to twenty
thousand volumes,--the evidence that they have bought what was to be
bought, and have done all that a new people can to participate in the
long-hoarded treasures of literature which it is the privilege of the
Old World to poss