1 context. Like everything that once was Poland's-except Prussia's and Austria's pickings-the Libraries of Poland are now in the possession of Russia. The chief of these is still known, at least outside the dominions of the Czar, as the Zaluski Library, from its founder, a Polish bishop of princely birth and fortune, Joseph Kaluski, who lived through the first seventy years of the last century, and who, assisted by his brother Andrew, Bishop of Cracow, established and fitted up for public use at Warsaw the largest library ever formed at private expense. Just as the undertaking was completed, the Russian ambassador had the unfortunate bishop torn from his darling tomes, and sent into banishment. His Library, in the partition of Poland, was seized upon as the property of the state and transported bodily to St. Petersburg, to become the great Imperial Library of Russia, though at the time it contained only five Russian books. Much of it had been plundered before its removal, and much was lost on the way; yet, when what arrived was counted, it was found to amount to the enormous mass of 270,000 volumes. At the time of the good bishop's death, in 1774, this library, amassed by a private individual, was twice the extent of the Library of the British Museum at the same date, the national collection of England. When, however, the Emperor Alexander, visiting London after the occupation of Paris by the Allies in 1814, went over the Museum Library and remarked on its scantiness, the librarian, Planta, is said to have replied that, if small, it was at least honestly acquired. It is to be hoped that this rebuke was really administered, and not merely thought of while Planta was shaving next morning-as happens with a great many clever repartees. Nay, not only were the first foundations of the Russian Library thus laid in injustice, but its next and chief accession of 150,000 volumes is stated in the Official Guide itself to have been procured in 1834 by the Emperor Nicholas from the plunder (they do not use so rude a word) of several noblemen and public institutions of Poland, in particular from Prince Adam Czartoryski's castle at Pulawy and the Polish Society of Warsaw. While the Russian Bear is tranquilly pursuing his studies in the magnificent Library thus rifled from the country of Kosciusko, is he ever startled, I wonder, by any faint echoes of that shriek which Freedom* gave as Kosciusko fell? From Poland one's thoughts glide easily home to Ireland; and exceedingly curious also is the origin of the largest library in our Poland of the Western Sea. It was in this very season, one Christmas-time in those sad years when the bard of Red Hugh O'Donnell addressed his distracted country as the mistress of his heart in passionate, mystic strains, which can have lost little of their pathos even in being rendered into a colder tongue, when the translator is so true a poet as poor Clarence Mangan. "O my dark Rosaleen, Do not sigh, do not weep! And Spanish ale shall give you hope, My own Rosaleen Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, "Wo and pain, pain and wo, Are my lot night and noon, To see your bright face clouded so, But yet will I rear your throne 'Tis you shall reign and reign alone, My dark Rosaleen, My own Rosaleen!— 'Tis you shall have the golden throne, The "Spanish ale" which was to give health and hope to Erin was indeed forthcoming, but not of the quality or in the quantity expected. The O'Neill, with MacDonnell of Antrim, MacGennis of Down, and MacMahon of Monaghan, marched, against his will and better judgment, from the north where his party were strong, to the south where they were weak-marched to meet the Spaniards and that O'Donnell to whose bard we have just been listening. Again the leader of the Spaniards, Don Juan d'Aquilla, overruled the Irish general's more cautious policy, and the Battle of Kinsale was fought bravely but with disastrous results on Christmas Eve, 1601. Strangely enough in good sooth, it was on that bloody battle-field that Trinity College Library was founded. The English army, it seems, "resolved to do some worthy act that might be a memorial of the due respect they had for religion and learning;" and they raised amongst themselves (out of their honest earnings, of course) 1800 to furnish a Library for the University of Dublin, then recently established. Fifty years after, another English army, with the approval of the Lord Protector, supplemented the liberality of Queen Elizabeth's soldiers by presenting the vast collections of Archbishop Ussher to the same Library. At present it contains 102,000 volumes, and 1,500 precious manuscripts. But it might have prospered better, and done more real good for the mind and literature of the country, if it had not thus in its early days received the blessing of Oliver Cromwell. As Englishmen had thus much to do with the establishment of the principal Library in Ireland, on the other hand, the founder of the chief Library in England was of Irish birth. Sir Hans Sloane was born at Killeleagh in the county of Down, and died at Chelsea in 1753 at the age of ninety-two. At that time it would have been easy for the British Parliament to have made the Library which the old physician bequeathed to the nation an almost complete collection, especially of English literature; but the tide of Parliamentary liberality did not set in towards it until the opening of the present century, when that bibliomania had already begun to rage virulently among wealthy individuals and civilised nations, one of the effects of which is that literary treasures which before could have been readily procured by the public funds are now absorbed by private collectors or stray into the various Libraries of America and the Continent.* In 1768 Parliament granted only £1 16s. 8d. for the Library of the British Museum; in 1859 the grant was £22,000 for additions to the Library and Museum alone. The new Reading Room with all its appurtenances cost, before it was opened, £150,000. I suppose Dublin gets her proportionate share of the public treasure for such matters, due regard being of course had for the vested interests of the British Lion, whose share must needs be-a lion's. The number of books in this Library in the year 1858 was 550,000, and the annual increase is above 20,000.† The Times newspaper alone adds twelve huge folios every year; for it is well to remark, that the authorities in these institutions, aiming at universality, consent now-a-days to store up what they call "lumber" and "trash." By "trash" they understand third-rate novels, fourth-rate poems, and such like; while under the head of "lumber"-the gentlemen of the Press will excuse me-are chiefly included newspapers. Some of this lumber, however, is pretty valuable: it is said, for instance, that Melbourne Library is ready to give a thousand pounds for a complete set of the Times. On the whole, therefore, though in England itself the Bodleian is in some respects a finer Library, this splendidly lodged and splendidly dowered Institute in Great Russell-square, London, may fairly compete for the second and perhaps the first place among the great Libraries of the world. The exact rank and order of precedence are not easy to determine. For, as I have ventured to give figures, and am going to inflict on you a few more, it is right to warn you that these cannot be by any means implicitly trusted. Even when Libraries are counted accurately, the same system of counting * One famous instance of this diseased passion for rare books and rare editions may be mentioned. At the sale of the Duke of Roxburgh's Library, in 1812, the Marquis of Blandford gave for a Valdarfer Boccaccio the largest sum ever given for one volume, £2,260. The most curious part of this incident, in commemoration of which the Roxburgh Club was founded, is that the purchaser had at the time in his library a copy exactly similar without knowing or caring anything about it. When his death put the book again in the market--for people cannot bring Valdarfer Boccaccios with them into the other world, and, if they could, all the woful fascinations of the "Decameron" could not save it from a worse fate than the "Index Expurgatorius" the coveted tome went for less than half the sum that had been paid for it, and was still a very dear bargain. "The Library now contains, as shown by the laborious but trustworthy test of actual counting, no fewer than 1,100,000 volumes. The sum expended annually in purchases is £10,000; and the total number of volumes added yearly to the collection has increased to 42,000."-Edinburgh Review, January, 1874. and division of volumes is not always used. Some, for instance, treat each pamphlet as a volume, some reckon them up at the rate of ten to a volume. This great collection of Patents with which our young Library here has just been enriched is presented also to the Library of St. Petersburg. There, it seems, the 3,200 patents of a single year in separate pamphlets are called so many volumes, while in the British Museum the same are bound in 92 volumes. And even if the accuracy and uniformity of the numerical Census could be guaranteed, the real gradations of dignity in Libraries would not at all be decided. Having urged these mitigating circumstances, let me blurt out my last mouthful of bibliothecological statistics. Taking a year for which there are data for a loose approximation towards a comparison of national libraries, it appears that in 1860 Paris numbered about 860,000 volumes; St. Petersburg, 840,000; London, 600,000; Vienna, which was the greatest of all a hundred years ago, only 300,000, about equal to Dresden, and lower than Munich, Copenhagen, and Berlin, which contained 400,000, 450,000, and 500,000 volumes respectively. And, besides many other great Libraries that could be named, there are twenty-five Free Public Libraries in the United States, dividing amongst them more than a million of books. As our notion of what is conveyed by the words "a hundred thousand books," or "a million of books," is somewhat vague, I have looked about for some term of comparison; and, as I knew that the great Alma Mater of the Irish priesthood would not be unrepresented here to-night, I bethought myself at the last moment of ascertaining the extent of the Library of Maynooth College. The reply has just come in time to tell us that the number is 35,000. Anyone who remembers the noble room which the elder Pugin devoted to this purpose in his designs for the new college buildings, and has seen from the entrance to the library the vista of long and heavily laden shelves rising tier above tier so high, and stretching away rank after rank so far, will be helped to attain to the proper reverence for one of those monster Libraries of which we have spoken, of which the Library of St. Patrick's College is but an insignificant fraction. I will read the other words which follow on the post-card which has given us this last bit of information, because they refer to the source to which I am indebted for most of the facts I have set before you, and I am glad to seize this opportunity of confessing that, if quotations could thus be marked in the spoken word, inverted commas would during this lecture have frequently wreathed the speaker's lips. "You could not have a better or more exhaustive account than that in the English Cyclopedia'--it is by the late Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum."† * Dr. O'Hanlon's valuable collection and other additions have increased it since. In writing out these notes almost exactly as they were jotted down in December, 1870, I have not been able to sprinkle these quotation-marks plentifully enough over the text. Nor have I thought it well to pad out my thin-chested lecture with the fuller and more accurate details furnished just four years later by an Edinburgh Reviewer. From this latest and most complete account of the subject I have taken a few corrections and additions in my notes to the preceding pages. I should have wished to borrow from this high authority many other interesting particulars su as But ah! that word "exhaustive"-word of evil omen, like the "forlorn" of Keats' "Nightingale," "The very sound is like a bell That tolls me back from you to my sole self;" for it reminds me that the first thing an exhaustive lecture is likely to exhaust is the patience of the audience. Of course you are bound as Christians to interrupt me with an indignant No; but yes, yes! for, while even your patience can be exhausted, the subject itself is inexhaustible. Not only are there exhaustive articles and sketches without number in magazines, cyclopedias, and reviews, not only have large tomes been compiled, treating of the history and management of Libraries in general and separate biographies (so to speak) published of nearly all the great Libraries; but one of those indefatigable Germans has carried on for thirty years a periodical devoted exclusively to matters connected with this science of Libraries, this bibliothekwissenchaft or bibliothecology. From the earliest and greatest Libraries we have come too slowly to this least and latest of its race. And now, to go back for a moment to the thought we began with-standing by its cradle, shall we forecast its destiny? What shalt thou be hereafter ?" "Twenty golden years ago" and more, I knew a little fair-haired peasant-boy, who did not seem likely ever to be much taller than any of his neighbours; but though he died* some ten or twelve years ago, he had lived to be over thirty stone in weight and I forget how near to nine feet in height-near enough to be the hero of innumerable newspaper paragraphs about Murphy the Irish giant, and (more solid even than such fame!) to amass some thousands of pounds by being exhibited in all countries of Europe except Ireland-for he never would consent to make a show of himself amongst his own people. It is more than probable that the present promising bairn, whose birthday feast we are celebrating, will never surprise us in like manner by shooting up into one of those giants of its race, such as we have spoken of. But still the inauguration in which we are taking part will be of no mean importance if it help to fix in us, according to our various circumstances and opportunities, the wish and purpose of using, and aiding others to use, the advantages offered by such institutions as this. It would be, in the first place, discreditable to our fine old city to remain longer without some such establishment. To put it on the lowest ground, a Public Library is an ornament and a cheap ornament. As was said in recommendation of the planting of trees, "it will grow when you are sleeping." Or,-to change the figure abruptly,-if the stones had been cleared away and the spring allowed to gush forth earlier, already the stream might long have gone on its course, refreshing and fertilising, receiving accessions from the right hand and this circumstance which gives such a wonderful idea of the British Museum Library -that its catalogue now forms one continuous alphabetical series of 1,522 volumes, with twenty-one volumes of indexes. * At Marseilles, but his body was brought home all the way to be buried in the old Kilbroney graveyard, near Rostrevor. His height was 8 feet 4 inches. |