205 



LIBRARIES. 



LIBRARIES. 



206 



formation of at least one library of the largest possible extent, to 

 contain all printed books of value. 



This view may be supported by the authority of one who, when his 

 passions were not concerned, was perhaps the most clear-sighted man 

 of genius who ever dealt with practical subjects. In the report 

 presented in 1860 to the Emperor of the French on the state of .the 

 imperial library at Paris, reference is made to the opinion expressed by 

 his uncle, the first Napoleon, in a note dictated on the 10th of 

 February, 1805 " many ancient and modern works are wanting in 

 the great library," said Napoleon, " which are found in the other 

 libraries of Paris, and of the departments. A list should be made of 

 these books, and they should be taken from the minor establishments, 

 to which should be given in exchange works which they do not possess 

 of which the great library has duplicates. The result of this 

 operation would be, that when a book was not found in the imperial 

 library it would be known for certain that it did not exist in France." 



The notion of a central and universal library of this kind has the 

 advantage of being, not only philosophical, but popular. It has been 

 a prevalent belief in several countries that this ideal library actually 

 existed. The Vatican at Rome was long supposed to be such a 

 collection, and to contain an enormous quantity of volumes. The 

 Rev. Mr. Eustace, an English Catholic priest, who published a 

 ' Classical Tour in Italy,' in 1813, said, in speaking of the printed 

 books of the Vatican library, " Then- number has never been accu- 

 rately stated ; some confine it to 200,000, others raise it to 400,000, 

 and many swell it to a million the mean is probably the most 

 accurate." The most recent historian of the collection, Zanelli, in 1857, 

 speaks of it as " holding the first place among the libraries of the 

 world, both by its antiquity and the value and number of its volumes 

 and manuscripts." At Oxford, in the early part of the present century, 

 it was almost an article of faith with the under-graduates that the 

 Bodleian library was only second to the Vatican, and further, that it 

 contained every printed book. The number of volumes in it was 

 usually stated to visitors at half a million : a German statistician, 

 Schnabel, on the faith of the assertion in the ' Oxford Guide ' of its 

 near approach to the Vatican, raised the number in print to 700,000. 

 The same notion of its containing every printed book was current in 

 London at the same time respecting the British Museum. In all three 

 cases the belief was a most egregious error. 



Two German writers of reputation, Denis, in 1775, in his ' Introduc- 

 tion to Bibliography," and Blume, in 1824, in his ' Iter I tulicum ' reduce 

 the number of printed volumes in the Vatican to 30,000. Valery the 

 Frenchman, in 1826, speaks of it as 80,000. The marquis Melchiori 

 in his ' Guida Metodica,' printed at Rome in 1836, gives the number at 

 100,000 ; and as Zanelli twenty-one years after does not venture to 

 correct him and gives no number at all, it may be assumed that 

 Melchiori was near the mark. An official return of the Bodleian 

 librarians to the House of Commons in 1849 stated the number of 

 their volumes then, after all the increase of half a century, at 220,000 

 only; and the British Museum in 1820, contained less than 116,000, 

 while though it has now in 1860, attained to more than five times 

 that number, and more than doubles the Bodleian, it is still far 

 indeed from a state of even tolerable completeness. 



It is remarkable at how recent a date the period of really exten- 

 sive libraries commenced. Adriano Balbi, the Italian statistician, 

 who in his ingenious essay on the library of Vienna, published in 

 1835, furnished a large body of information on the subject critically 

 sifted, gives an estimate of the number of books in several of the great 

 libraries of Europe in 1789, at the commencement of the French 

 Revolution. The Imperial Library at Vienna was then in his judg- 

 ment the largest collection in Europe, and contained 196,000 volumes. 

 Three other libraries in Germany stand nearest to it in his estimate. 

 To the royal library at Dresden he assigns 190,000; to the royal 

 library at Berlin 160,000; to the university library at Gbttingen also 



volumes. To the Zaluaki library at Warsaw he gives 150,000 ; 

 to the royal library at Paris 149,000, only. The only English library he 

 mentions is the Bodleian, to which he assigns 135,000 volumes in 1789. 



At the time to which Balbi refers, the outbreak of the French Revo- 

 lution, the library of the king of France in Paris was currently believed 



me to amount to three hundred thousand, by others to five 

 hundred thousand volumes, and was considered by Frenchmen and 

 competent judges the noblest collection in Europe. The authority on 

 which Balbi assigns it so low a number as 149,000, is that of actual 

 counting the fatal test, the application of which has suddenly shrunk 



' :nensions of so many far-famed libraries. Van Praet the librarian, 



; .in>8elf accomplished the operation, tells us in the preface to his 

 'Catalogue de livres imprimis sur velin,' published in 1822, that 



nted one by one in 1791, the number of volumes only amounted 

 to 152,868 ; namely, 23,243 in folio, 41,373 in 4to., and 88,252 in 8vo. 

 and of lesser sizes." 



[<il by this positive information, Balbi is of course perfectly 

 justified in ^ivin^ tin; number he states. But he seems not to have 

 been a \\are that toe Zalunki library, which he only places immediately 

 above it, 1 also, and with a result which is startling. 



1 by the Russian* in 1795 and transported to St. Petersburg, 

 where it now forms the basis of the Imperial library, the volumes 

 were counted "n their arrival, ami were officially stated to amount to 



Qormous number of 262,640. The enumeration which was sup- 



plied by the Russian government, and is given with various particulars 

 in the Report of a Committee of the House of Commons on the 

 Museum library in 1836, is not very clear in some respects, for in one 

 portion of it, 43,000 pamphlets are inserted as so many volumes, and 

 in another, 120,000 pamphlets which are mentioned are not added 

 into the total sum. But estimating these 163,000 pamphlets as 16,300 

 volumes, of ten to a volume, according to a convenient rule adopted 

 by Balbi, the number of volumes transported to St. Petersburg will 

 be in round numbers upwards of 235,000. It should not be forgotten 

 that there is undeniable evidence that the library had been seriously 

 pillaged while still at Warsaw. If this number be correct, and it is 

 as well vouched for as the census of most libraries, it will not only 

 follow that the collection of books made in his lifetime by one Polish 

 bishop with the assistance of another, was the largest collection ever 

 made at private expense, but that it actually surpassed in numbers 

 the magnificent library of the kings of France, and was at the head 

 in that point of all the collections in Europe, some of which had been 

 gathering together for centuries at the expense of nations. 



In the wars which followed the French revolution, many a revolu- 

 tion took place in the affairs of libraries. The royal library of France 

 was augmented enormously both in extent and value by the absorption 

 of the libraries of the suppressed religious houses, and the contributions 

 levied on conquered foreign states. The latter treasures were restored 

 at the restoration of peace, but the French library remained in 1815 

 what it still continues, the largest and most celebrated library in 

 Europe. Van Praet in 1822 spoke of it as having increased two- 

 thirds from the time when he counted it in 1791, and as containing 

 450,000 volumes, not including as many pamphlets and pieces bound in 

 volumes or kept in portfolios, and it was then augmenting at the rate 

 of 7000 volumes a year, and 3000 fugitive pieces. In the year 1850 

 the number of volumes in the library, according to an official return 

 procured by the British ambassador, was 750,000, of which 50,000 

 were volumes of tracts or pamphlets containing about ten tracts each, 

 and therefore in all 500,000. In 1855, in the preface to the new 

 classed catalogue now in course of publication, it was stated that the 

 collection comprised 1,500,000 volumes and pamphlets, without drawing 

 a distinction between the two. 



If we adopt Van Praet's estimate of the number of volumes and 

 tracts being equal, there will then be 735,000 volumes and 735,000 

 tracts ; and counting the tracts according to Balbi's method at ten to a 

 volume, the number of volumes in 1855 'will be 808,500, to which if 

 we add augmentations at the rate of 11,000 volumes a year, the total 

 will in 1860 be 863,000. 



The Zaluski library, removed to St. Petersburg, was for some time 

 left there in a state of such neglect that, when again counted in 1803, 

 it was found to have diminished by decay and theft to 238,633 volumes 

 a number still remarkably high. It was again injured by its 

 sudden removal, on Napoleon's invasion of Russia, from St. Petersburg 

 to a remote village, to keep it out of the way of the invaders, who, in 

 this case, as there were Poles among them, would only have been 

 recovering their own property. In 1833 and 1834 it was augmented, 

 as we learn from the Official Guide to the library, by more than 125,000 

 volumes, procured by the Emperor Nicolas from the spoils of several 

 Polish magnates and public institutions, in particular from those of 

 Prince Czartoryski's country seat at Pulawy and the library of the society 

 called the " Friends of Knowledge " (the Polish Royal Society) at War- 

 saw. Finally, the more ordinary and creditable mode of augmenting the 

 library by purchases and donations came into operation ; and in the 

 Official Guide for 1850 we are told that the library then contained 

 upwards of 600,000 volumes of printed books, together with collections 

 of manuscripts, engravings, &c. In the annual report of the librarian 

 for 1858, the last we have seen, the number of printed volumes, 

 pamphlets, and pieces added in that year is given as 38,136; and in 

 the same year the officials of the library issued a detailed comparison 

 of 'its state in 1850 and 1858, from which the following items are 

 taken. 



In 1850. In 185S. 



Of printed books, volumes . . . 640,000 . 802,717 

 Of manuscripts and collections of auto- 

 graphs, volumes .... 21,415 . 28,536 

 Of engravings, pieces .... 39,815 . 68,503 



In the ' Guide to the Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg,' 

 published in 1860, the numbers given are 840,853 printed volumes, 

 29,045 manuscripts, and 66,162 engravings. 



It would appear from these numbers that the library of St. Peters- 

 burg is now the second library of the world, and increasing with more 

 rapidity than any other. This impression, however, must not be too 

 hastily adopted. There is a collection now publishing by the English 

 Patent Office, of all the descriptions of patents of inventions that have 

 been enrolled there from the institution of patents in the time of 

 James I. up to the present year. This voluminous and costly collection, 

 which is printed at the expense of patentees, is presented by the 

 Patent Office to a great number of foreign libraries, and among 

 others to the imperial library at St. Petersburg. The number of 

 patents for the year 1857 is no less than 3200, published in as 

 many separate pamphlets, which are bound in the set at the British 

 Museum in 96 thickish volumes. In counting the volumes at the 



