USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 38
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1 This was on April 14, 1853. The other benefit of the Charlestown branch ; $4,000 from Mr. George Ticknor ; $5,000 from Hon. Henry L. Pierce ; $1,500 from Dr. Samuel A. Green ; and The Franklin Club. sum was received, after his death, April, 1861 ; and the two to-day constitute, after Mr. Bates's $50,000, the largest single fund of the library. and $1,000 each from Samuel Appleton, Esq. In addition to this fund Mr. Bates also spent $50,000 for books. See A Memorial to Joshua Bates from the City of Boston, 1865.
The other principal money gifts have been : $10,000 under Hon. Abbott Lawrence's will; $4,000 from Miss Mary P. Townsend's execu- tors ; $10,000 from Charlotte Harris for the
2 It had cost, with the land, $365,000. A volume was issued, giving the Proceedings of the Dedication, which includes a history of the move- ment and description of the building, together with the addresses by Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Everett, and Mayor Rice.
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LIBRARIES IN BOSTON.
·
.
CHARLES COFFIN JEWETT.1
while an act of the Legislature removed the limitations of expenditures which the previous act had fixed.
To fill the new office, choice was made of Charles Coffin Jewett, who thus became the first general executive of the library. Under his supervi-
1 This cut follows a photograph now in the library. Mr. Jewett was born in Lebanon, Maine, in 1816; graduated at Brown University in 1835 ; and pursued Oriental and theological studies at Andover with the intention of becoming a mis- sionary, but so narrow a chance as missing the sailing of a vessel changed the current of his life. He became librarian of Brown University in 1841, and subsequently, in the same institu- tion, a professor of modern languages and liter- ature, still keeping the librarianship, and visit- ing Europe for the purchase of books. In 1848 VOL. IV. - 37.
he resigned, to become assistant secretary and librarian of the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- ington. While here he published the earliest general survey of American libraries, - Notices of Public Libraries in the United States, - which reniained the only considerable account (supple- mented by another, by the present writer, in the Report of the Boston Public Library, in 1869) till the bureau of education issued their ency- clopedic volume in 1876. He also proposed a system of national cataloguing, through the agency of the Smithsonian Institution, in stereo-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
sion the library flourished for ten years. It received, - beyond the ordinary accessions from its funds and casual gifts, - first, in 1858, the library which had been formed by the late Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch,1 and which, since his death, had been maintained by his sons as a public library of reference ; then, in 1860, that of the Rev. Theodore Parker; 2 several special collec- tions, including ancient classics and books on Molière and in the Provençal literature, from Mr. Ticknor; the Prince Library, by deposit (a collection referred to earlier in this chapter) ; and the earnest and promise of the Patent Specifications of Great Britain, a donation still in progress. The library funds were also considerably increased.3
In the autumn and early winter of 1858 the reading-room and the lower- hall library of the new building were opened.4 The main collection of the upper hall was not made accessible till 1861.5 Mr. Jewett added to a care- ful bibliographical training an inventive mind and great industry ; and under his care the library developed a system suited to a large circulation, with all the attendant and necessary complexity of checks which could render that circulation safe while being free. It was not long before the library became the centre of experience the most valuable for all charged with similar duties, far and near.6
typing titles for distribution ; but it was never practically applied, except in an experimental way. In the diverse interpretations of Smith- son's will, Professor Jewett argued for a great library as the most efficient method for the dif- fusion of knowledge ; and Professor Henry, for exclusive devotion to science and publication of treatises. This led to a controversy, under these champions, between the literary and scien- tific classes of that day, acting through their representatives in the Board of Regents. It resulted in a numerical defeat of Mr. Jewett's side, and led to his resignation and that of Mr. Rufus Choate, who had urgently supported his views in the Board of Regents. The necessary sequel was the transfer of the library, which Mr. Jewett had gathered, to the library of Congress.
1 Largely mathematical, two thousand five hundred and fifty volumes ; and increased since 1877 by a yearly gift of $500 from Mr. J. Inger- soll Bowditch, a son of the original owner.
2 Numbering eleven thousand and sixty-one volumes, recently increased by her own books and a reserve kept by his widow during her lifetime.
3 See an earlier note.
4 A catalogue of the Mason Street Library had been printed in 1854, and the original lower-hall catalogue was issued in 1858, on a plan since widely followed, which is the fruit of Mr. Jewett's discrimination.
5 It was opened with seventy-four thousand volumes, and, with the lower hall, the entire li- brary now held ninety-seven thousand three hun- dred and eighty-six volumes. The first volume
of what is now known as the Bates Hall Index (catalogue) was issued at this time ; and it was the most advanced specimen of library catalogu- ing which had then been produced in America. Before its Supplement was issued in 1866 Mr. Bates had died, Sept. 24, 1864, and the upper hall was then styled the Bates Hall. It was a just recognition of what he had done for the library, and happily fell short of the unwise proceeding, so common, in giving to an institu- tion the name of a prominent or even chief bene- factor. It usually happens that such prominence finds no one later anxious to dispute it. We are not without melancholy instances of such handi- capping among libraries in this country.
6 Among the more important of the devices which this library has bestowed upon others was. the displacement of the old traditional method of recording loans, on a ledger system, by a plan of slips, introduced by Mr. Jewett in 1866, but improved upon to insure much greater expedition, as experience grew. The card sys- tem for the catalogue was due rather to Mr. Folsom of the Athenæum, but under Mr. Jewett it became much better known, and is now widely adopted. It is not by any means certain, how- ever, that it will continue to be so highly es- teemed as it has been in the past. What has been called the " decimal system," in the arrange- ment of the books on the shelves, was due to one of the trustees, Dr. N. B. Shurtleff, who, however, failed to give it all the flexibility which belongs to it, and which renders it in other hands far better in adaptation than in the hands
291
LIBRARIES IN BOSTON.
Mr. Jewett died suddenly on Jan. 9, 1868. The shock was a severe one " to the library. The assistant superintendent, Professor William E. Jillson,1 was in confirmed ill health, and, declining advancement, soon died.
In the absence of any responsible executive the care of the institution devolved upon Mr. Justin Winsor, one of its trustees, who a few weeks later (February 25) was confirmed in the executive office by his late asso- ciates on the board.
Of Mr. Winsor's administration, which lasted for nearly ten years, his Annual Reports, and particularly his last, that for 1877, recapitulating the library's progress during his connection with it, must tell the story. The library increased from 144,000 volumes to 320,000. Its first branch was established at East Boston in 1871, and seven others were added.2 Its circulation grew from 209,000 to nearly 1,200,000; the daily average issues from 754 to 4,000. The loss of books from unfaithful borrowers, mean- while, had been so checked that while in 1867 it was more than one in a thousand, in 1877 it was one in ten thousand, delivered. The number of days on which the library was closed was reduced from eighty-six to the five legal holidays.3 The capacity of the central building was doubled by changes in the interior and by extensions. In the printed catalogues some new developments took place, calculated to assist the readers to a more intelligent choice of books.4
of its projector. See A Decimal System for the Arrangement and Administration of Libraries, by N. B. Shurtleff, Boston, privately printed, 1856.
1 Mr. Jillson was the head of the catalogue department, and was succeeded in this duty by Mr. William A. Wheeler, well known for his lexicographical labors, at whose death in Octo- ber, 1874, the library suffered another great loss. His assistant, Mr. James L. Whitney, was ad- vanced to the chief position, and has since held it.
2 These were at South Boston in 1872-73; at Roxbury in 1873-74, where a union was made with the Fellowes Athenaeum, and a new building erected; at Charlestown and Brighton, the same year, by assuming the charge of the libraries existing in those places before the annexation of them; at Dorchester in 1874-75; at the South End, where the Mercantile Library added their books, and at Jamaica Plain, in 1877-78. There was also a delivery at Dorchester Lower Mills, dependent on the Branch at Field's. Corner. Since this date a delivery has been established at Roslindale, and a secondary branch at West Roxbury, upon the basis of the privately sup- ported free library previously existing there.
3 This was brought about by the introduction, in 1869, of a method of continuous examination of the library, instead of a periodic one, a pro- cess impracticable but for the slip system of registration of loans, and never before attempted in a large library, with the aim of keeping the
circulating work in progress at the same time. Its success here has led to its general adoption. 4 This system, which has earned the name of the Educational Catalogue, began first with an experiment of arranging the titles of historical fiction in their relation to chronological events, and by countries and persons. The first issue of the Chronological Index to Historical Fiction was made in 1871. A second enlarged edition appeared in 1875. It was subsequently embodied as notes to a Catalogue of English Prose Fiction, in 1877, in which were also given, as parallels, the books for the general reader, essential to give an historical narrative as an accompani- ment to the imaginative rendering. Before this an annotated Catalogue of History, Biography, and Travel had been largely illustrated with notes for the reader's guidance. These cata- logues, giving system and development to a plan barely indicated in any similar way before, had large effect upon the character of the reading in the popular departments of the library, and were copied and borrowed from throughout the coun- try. The same system was also applied to the catalogues of the branches, notably to that of the Roxbury Branch. Just before Mr. Jewett's death he had issued the first number of a Bul- letin of accessions, and this was afterward made the vehicle of bibliographical contributions per- taining to the higher as well as more popular literature. Notes of a more scholarly character, which were added in some degree to the Prince
292
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
It had soon become evident, after Mr. Bates's gift was assured, that the experiment of a free library was to be tried in Boston on a scale of consid- erable magnitude; but in the beginning no just conception of the possi- bilities of the scheme was entertained. When its building, calculated to hold less than a quarter of a million of volumes, was dedicated, the orator was thought to anticipate correctly when he proclaimed it to be sufficiently large for a century to come. In less than twenty years it was enlarged to hold twice its original complement. The library's success has proved the possibility of organizing, for very large free use, an extensive collection of books; and none of the free libraries of England, whose system is of even date of origin with the American, has wholly matched it in develop- ment. It soon became an anxious question how far its management could remain with safety in close connection with the city government. Some of its original friends and organizers very early saw signs of the coming evil, and thought the fatal issue was sure in due time to arrive. In 1877 it came. It was a period of general financial distress. The cost of main- taining the library was large, although its expenses had fallen far short of being commensurate with its increase of accessions and attendant business. In fact the cost of circulating its books, proportioned to the grand total of expenditure, was only two-fifths in 1877 of what it had been in 1867. It seemed to the best citizens, however, that the time had come to econo- mize. The library had a management which was ready to apportion its expenses to the exigencies which had arisen; but the city council assumed to regulate the details of a method of economy, and so encroached. upon the necessary functions of the management, and did it with such lack of knowledge, that confusion and injustice resulted. In this contingency Mr. Winsor resigned, and accepted the librarianship of Harvard University. The friends of the library rallied in its defence; and even the city council, on a sober second thought, did not oppose an application to the State Legislature for an act of incorporation for the library, which was in due time secured. This practically limited the interference of the city govern- ment to defining the gross limit of expenditures, so far as they were met from the city treasury.
During an interval of abeyance, one of its trustees, Dr. Samuel A. Green, at much personal sacrifice, filled its chief executive office until, in 1878, the Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, resigning his seat on the bench of the municipal court, was chosen its first librarian (as the officer was now called) under the new constitution.1
Catalogue, assumed much larger proportions in the Ticknor Catalogue. Arrangements for sim- ilar notes to the Shakespeare part of the Barton Catalogue, which had been made and tentatively exemplified during Mr. Winsor's term in his Monthly Reports, were abandoned with the change of administration in 1877.
1 Under his administration a plan of much promise has been inaugurated, by which the li-
brary and the public schools are to work in uni- son in fostering, under direction, an inclination for reading among the younger classes. Methods of assisting readers in selecting books, which had long been contemplated (see Report of 1873, p. 30), but which had been checked by the con- trol then exercised by the city council over the pay-roll, have been put in operation with suc- cess. In 1880, a petition asking for a grant of
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LIBRARIES IN BOSTON.
It is necessary now to trace briefly the progress of the general library system of the city during this development of its crowning institution.
In 1850 Mr. George Livermore, in a timely article in the North American Review, had pointed out the deficiencies of our American libraries, and did much to draw attention to the subject. The period was a favorable one for forming libraries. The political disturbances in Europe had thrown vast collections of books upon the market; and Dr. Cogswell, who was at this time in Europe purchasing for the Astor Library, gave European collectors the first serious competition they had from America. Still prices ruled low. Although he was buying for a reference, rather than for a popular, library, he brought away from Europe sixty thousand volumes for sixty- three thousand dollars.
At this time (1850) the College Library at Cambridge, with its seventy- two thousand volumes, stood at the head of American libraries; and the census of this year gave Massachusetts seventy-eight libraries and about two hundred thousand volumes, - no other State approaching her.1
Boston was certainly at this time and in this respect the favored section of America; and in addition to her public collection, her private libraries were often put at the service of any accredited scholar.2 . Already a few years earlier, in 1845, the foundations had been laid of the collection which now makes the rooms of the New England Historic Genealogical Society one of the centres of antiquarian research. The Theological School, which subse- quently became a part of the Boston University, began its collection in 1847. At Roxbury, its Athenæum started in 1848, and is still at work; though its namesake, the Dorchester Athenæum, dating ten years later, has recently come to an end. The twin workers which early brought books to bear as a part of their appliances for good, the Young Men's Christian Association and
land on the corner of Dartmouth and Boylston streets, for the erection of a new central build- ing, was presented to the legislature. The friends of the measure, to secure its passage, consented to a provision which gave all inhabi- tants of the Commonwealth privileges in the library to be kept in this building equal to those enjoyed by the citizens of Boston. In this form the bill was passed; but by some oversight the bill which was presented to the governor for his approval was without this provision, and the city council promptly accepted the untrammelled offer. The grant of land not being large enough, it is now in contemplation to buy adjacent lots. A beginning of the building must be made within three years from the date of grant to secure the land.
1 The city of Paris at this time had half as many more volumes in her libraries as all the United States together ; and the city of Munich nearly as many. If we reckon the volumes in public libraries at so many per capita, the United States could hardly show more than four or five, while Great Britain showed fifty-three ; Prussia,
two hundred; and Saxony, - the highest, - four hundred and seventeen.
2 We have some means of forming an ap- proximate estimate of many of these private collections at that time, in Luther Farnham's Private Libraries of Boston, in Mr. Livermore's paper already referred to, and in an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra, January, 1850. A part of them were as follows : Charles Francis Adams (gen- eral, 18,000 volumes) ; George Ticknor (classics, modern literature, particularly Spanish and Portuguese, 13,000 volumes) ; Theodore Parker (general, 13,000 volumes) ; Abbott Lawrence (10,000) ; Edward Everett (7,500) ; Dr. John C. Warren (6,000) ; Francis C. Gray (4,000) ; Frank- lin Haven (4,000) ; David Sears (4,000) ; Richard Frothingham (in Charlestown, 4,000) ; George Livermore (in Cambridge, 2,000 to 3,000) ; Charles Deane (in Cambridge, 2,500) ; W. H. Prescott (6,000) ; Rufus Choate (6,500) ; E. A. Crowninshield (2,500) ; Jared Sparks (in Cam- bridge, 6,000) ; Thomas Dowse (in Cambridge, 5,000) ; Nathaniel Bowditch (2,500) ; Samuel G. Drake (6,000) ; etc.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
the Young Men's Christian Union, began their labors each in 1851. In 1853 the first collections were formed of the Congregational Library, which, under the assiduous care of its librarian, has become a place of resort for the student in our history. In 1860 the General Theological Library was begun; 1 and in 1875, what is destined to be a special collection of import- ance was established by the Boston Medical Library Association.2 Apart from collections which naturally grow up under the influence of literary or other special institutions, these are the latest libraries founded in Boston.
Justin Comment
1 What is now the considerable collection of Boston College (Catholic) was begun in 1864. 2 Beside the departinents of the Public Li- brary and the Athenæum devoted to this subject, there are the Treadwell and other collections at
the Massachusetts General Hospital, the libra- ries of the schools of medicine of Harvard and Boston Universities, and that of the City Hospital.
CHAPTER III.
PHILOSOPHIC THOUGHT IN BOSTON.
BY GEORGE RIPLEY, LL.D., AND GEORGE P. BRADFORD.
T HE brief space allotted to the subject of the present chapter permits only a few rapid notices (mostly from personal recollections) of some of the eminent men who have exerted a marked influence on the tendency and development of thought in Boston during the nineteenth century, with- out any attempt at the profound discussion of philosophical principles, or the illustration of their character and influence. No powerful school of philosophy, with the qualities of unity and permanence, has sprung up among the people of Boston; but several individual, isolated essays have been made by her studious and thoughtful men to reach a higher sphere of intellectual life, which are perhaps entitled to a place in the modest records of speculative opinion.
In treating the subject of the following pages, I shall regard the Uni- versity of Cambridge and the city of Boston as so closely identified in all the relations of literature and cultivation, that no account can be given of the intellectual progress of one, without assigning a large and most con- spicuous place to the influence of the other. The prominent thinkers of Boston, with few exceptions, have been children of Harvard; most of them have been the pupils of her schools; many of them teachers in her halls, and the ministers of her discipline. With the widest differences of mental habit and achievement, wearing their opinions like the Hebrew garment of many colors, forming no sect for winning proselytes, no clan for urging conquests, they have met only on the common ground of love of learning, interest in the pursuit of truth, and affectionate devotion to the fair and venerable " mother of their minds."
Soon after the beginning of the present century an intellectual move- ment arose in Massachusetts which has been not unhappily compared to the Renaissance.in Italy, that succeeded the dreary monotony of the Middle Ages. Art, letters, poetry, philosophy, social intercourse, domestic culture, public education, alike felt the genial impulse. The cradle and centre of this movement was Harvard College. Without precisely defining the date,
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
the accession of John Thornton Kirkland to the presidency of the college, in 1810, may be said to mark the beginning of the era which has been so prolific in its results and so auspicious in its influence.
President Kirkland, indeed, made no pretensions to the character of a pioneer or a discoverer in the sphere of philosophy. His admirably bal- anced mind was not speculative, much less controversial. He had little genius, and no taste for the discussion of purely abstract questions; nor was he profoundly versed in the history of opinions: but the transparent clearness of his mental perceptions, the fine and subtile delicacy of his ethical instincts, his sympathy with whatever was rare and beautiful in literature, and the sagacity and firmness of his common-sense created around him an atmosphere in the highest degree favorable to the cultiva- tion of thought, freedom of research, and frankness of expression. His personal aversion to the toil of composition has prevented him from leaving any adequate memorial of his affluent mind; but the magnetic charm of his conversation, the sweet amenity of his manner, and the quaint and fertile suggestions of his original imagination, must always be noted among the influences which led to the revival of a sound literature and an ideal philosophy among the descendants of the Puritans.
Seven years after the entrance of Dr. Kirkland upon the presidency, the chair of Moral Philosophy was filled by the appointment of Professor Levi Frisbie (1817), a graduate of the celebrated class of 1802, who held the office until his death, in 1822. During the brief period of five years he gave an impulse to the study of philsophy, and a direction to its subsequent development, which form an important feature in the history of modern thought in the vicinity of Boston. Professor Frisbie was a man of a peculiar and remarkable nature. His influence was founded on his per- sonal character rather than on his writings. A chronic infirmity of sight prevented his free use of the pen, and his stores of learning and specula- tion were illustrated by his oral teachings in the class-room, and not by the composition of books. His presence afforded a lucid example of the ideal beauty of human character, or, to use the words of Professor Norton, his friend and biographer, of " the holy charm of moral loveliness," while the sweetness and dignity of his discourse inspired the fancy that the classical bees of Plato had once more settled on modern lips. A devotee of ancient literature, especially of the Latin classics, he was deeply interested in the whole range of elegant letters in the English language. He was a fervent admirer of the terse vigor and ethical severity of Tacitus, while his æsthetic tastes inspired him with a profound sympathy with the graceful ease and masculine sense of the writings of Maria Edgeworth. He was equally addicted to the cultivation of poetry and the study of philosophy. His rare speculative insight was united with singular critical acuteness, a lively and delicate fancy, and an unerring taste in literary composition. The in- fluence of Professor Frisbie was not lost on the plastic minds that waited reverently on his words, and has been reproduced more or less directly
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