276 CHARLES AMMI CUTLER 



(twenty seven years before the first proprietary library was 

 established at Liverpool, England). By the end of the eigh- 

 teenth century there were 32 such libraries. There are many 

 more now, for they spread gradually throughout the country, 

 often under the name of atheneum in the cities, and of social 

 library in the country. But they are not flourishing as a class, 

 for the free public libraries are slowly ousting them. People 

 in general will not pay for reading when they can have it for 

 nothing. A few, either from old habit, or because they dislike 

 the rush and bustle of a public library, or because membership 

 is regarded as a social distinction, will frequent the proprietary 

 library and pay their yearly dues, but the receipts from this 

 source are too small for its whole support. With a large in- 

 vested fund it may survive ; without one it is doomed either to 

 be dissolved or to be absorbed by the free library. In those 

 states, to be sure, where the latter has not gained a foothold, 

 the proprietary library continues its good work, and new ones 

 may spring up. They are then very useful in showing the 

 people what libraries are and in preparing the way for the adop- 

 tion of permissive or compulsory library laws. Many were 

 founded in the decade before and the decade after the Civil 

 war; yet in 1896 only 57 were reported that had over 1,000 

 volumes apiece 



The libraries of 1801 were small in a degree hard to realize, 

 with our present ideas of necessary size. The oldest of them. 

 Harvard college, had in 1790 only 12,000 volumes; the largest, 

 the Philadelphia library company, after absorbing three 

 similar libraries, had in 1807 only 18,391; in 1793 the New 

 York society library had 5,000; in 1791 Yale college had only 

 2,700; in 1811 the Charleston society library had reached 7,000, 

 and in 1809 the Boston atheneum, founded only two years 

 earlier, could report 5,750. These were the giants; no other 

 library had 2,500; not half a dozen had 1,000; the average was 

 500. 



The character of the libraries was much more solid, or, 

 if one pleases, heavy, than now — necessarily so, for the books 

 of that day were in greater proportion serious. The college 

 libraries were of course designed to be learned, for the use of 

 the professors chiefly. In them theology naturally held the 



