THE FIRST HALF CENTURY OP THE INSTITUTE. 13 



quantity of unbound volumes. Of libraries in the United 

 States containing twice our number of bound volumes 

 there are but twelve. 



Aside from the great aggregations of Harvard Univer- 

 sity, and of the Boston Public Library, Massachusetts 

 has but four collections of bound volumes larger than 

 ours, and all New England has but six. Scarcely wall 

 space remains to hang the valuable pictures constantly 

 committed to our care, and shelf room for new accessions 

 of books is only made by boxing and storing those which 

 fill our alcoves now. These accumulations have been 

 piling up since 1820, but mostly within the later years. 

 Many of these deposits are of a value not to be described. 

 If we got rid of all our duplicates by exchange or sale, 

 and gave to the flames such elements of the great mass as 

 might fairly be thought to be of doubtful worth, there would 

 then remain to us a collection quite beyond our present 

 means to utilize or display, and which, if classified and 

 catalogued and arranged, w^ould prove to be, in its special 

 features, without a peer. No county in New England, — 

 no equal tract of densely peopled territory in America, 

 outside of the great cities, can make such an exhibit of 

 its historic past as this. Should we eliminate relentlessly 

 from our treasure-house all the costly and inestimable 

 art-works, and books of whatever value, helpful to gen-^ 

 eral culture, but not bearing exclusively upon Essex 

 County, we should then retain an exhibit of the local 

 history and tradition, the biography and natural history, 

 the genealogy and ancestral records, the literary, scien- 

 tific and artistic eminence of this county of ours which 

 would make it — I speak with a pretty thorough knowl- 

 edge of the subject, and a careful estimate of the value of 

 the words employed — which would make it the envy of 

 any equal population in the land. 



