tion group of Thomas Ball with a portrait statue of
Lincoln; a fine equestrian statue, by the same sculptor, of Washington,
one of the best works in the country (1869); an army and navy monument
in the Common by Martin Millmore, in memory of the Civil War; another
(1888) recording the death of those who fell in the Boston Massacre of
1770; statues of Admiral D.G. Farragut (H.H. Kitson), Leif Ericson
(Anne Whitney), and Alexander Hamilton (W. Rimmer); and a magnificent
bronze bas-relief (1897) by Augustus St Gaudens commemorating the
departure from Boston of Colonel Robert G. Shaw with the first regiment
of negro soldiers enlisted in the Civil War. There is an art department
of the city government, under unpaid commissioners, appointed by the
mayor from candidates named by local art and literary institutions; and
without their approval no work of art can now become the property of the
city.

The public library, containing 922,348 volumes in January 1908, is the
second library of the country in size, and is the largest free
circulating library in the world (circulation 1907, 1,529,111 volumes).
There was a public municipal library in Boston before 1674--probably in
1653; but it was burned in 1747 and was apparently never replaced. The
present library (antedated by several circulating, social and
professional collections) may justly be said to have had its origin in
the efforts of the Parisian, Alexandre Vattemare (1796-1864), from 1830
on, to foster international exchanges. From 1847 to 1851 he arranged
gifts from France to American libraries aggregating 30,655 volumes, and
a gift of 50 volumes by the city of Paris in 1843 (reciprocated in 1849
with more than 1000 volumes contributed by private citizens) was the
nucleus of the Boston public library. Its legal foundation dates from
1848. Among the special collections are the George Ticknor library of
Spanish and Portuguese books (6393 vols.), very full sets of United
States and British public documents, the Bowditch mathematical library
(7090 vols.), the Galatea collection on the history of women (2193
vols.), the Barton library, including one of the finest existing
collections of Shakespeariana (3309 vols., beside many in the general
library), the A.A. Brown library of music (9886 vols.), a very full
collection on the anthropology and ethnology of Europe, and more than
100,000 volumes on the history, biography, geography and literature of
the United States. The library is