THE

JOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY.

The biography of a nation embraces all its works. No trifle is to be neglected.

ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT.

Sir Archibald Alison, in referring to America and the Americans in his History of Europe, says, "so wholly are they regardless of historical records or monuments, that half a century hence, its history, even of these times, could only be written from the archives of other States." A refutation, in some measure at least, of this broad statement, seems to be furnished by the manner in which later English historians have resorted for material to a single private library in a New England city of but a hundred thousand inhabitants. Sir Arthur Helps, in a foot note to the third volume of his Spanish Conquest in America, writes, "Puga's Collection of Ordinances, printed in Mexico in 1563, in folio, is the earliest summary of Spanish Colonial

law, relating to the New World. It is a work of the highest rarity: there is not a copy known to exist in England. The one which I have made use of belongs to John Carter Brown, Esq., of Providence, Rhode Island, in America, who kindly sent it over to his friend, Mr. Henry Stevens, in order that I might be permitted to consult it."

Mr. Richard Henry Major, in his "Life of Prince Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator,” says,"Galvao's Treatise on the Discoveries of the World,' written about the year 1555, had become so

extremely scarce in the course of half a century that Hakluyt, who possessed an anonymous translation of it made by some 'honest English merchant,' strove for twelve years to find a copy of the original, sending to Lisbon for it, but in vain." Mr. Major adds in a foot-note,—“What Hakluyt failed to do I had the good fortune to succeed in for the benefit of the Society which bears his name. Mr. John Carter Brown of Providence, Rhode Island, lent me a copy which was edited for the Hakluyt Society in 1862 by Admiral Drinkwater Bethune."

The catalogue of the Brown Library is in such demand in Europe, on account of its wealth of material relating to America, that two volumes of it, a mere fragment, brought twenty-six pounds at the Sobolewski sale at Leipsic a few years ago.

The library room in the Brown mansion, having been built expressly for the purpose, is practically fire-proof. Most of the light comes from above, for a single door and two windows alone break the walls, which are lined with heavily laden book shelves. Turkish rugs are spread upon the tessellated floor, and four or five marble busts and figures upon pedestals lend elegance to the literary appearance of the room. All of the books are exposed to an unobstructed view, save those in a single case which are covered with glass.

America is the specialty of this collection; and so numerous are the works relating to it, that those published since the year 1800, being easily attainable, have for the most part been excluded from the library. No portion of the Western Hemisphere has been overlooked or neglected. Both its continents and all its islands, whether they be lands of tropical sun, or lands of polar snow, have here their historical records. Maps, geographies, and cosmologies, chronicles, narratives, and histories, letters, memoirs, and biographies, grammars, vocabularies, and dictionariesan immense mass of literature illustrating the discovery and development of the new world-have here been garnered up with a a lavish hand regardless alike of trouble and

expense.

Delineations of the earth's surface, prior to the dis