Centre Democrat

The Largest Libraries.

A correspondent asks which are the largest three libraries in the world and which the largest three in this country. By far the largest in the world is the National library at Paris, which in 1874 contained 2,000,000 printed books and 150,000 manuscripts. Which the next largest is, it is difficult to say, for the British museum and the Imperial library of St. Petersburg both had in 1874 1,100,000 volumes. After them comes the Royal library of Munich, with its 900,000 books. The Vatican library at Rome is sometimes erroneously supposed to be among the largest, while in point of fact it is surpassed, so far as the number of volumes goes, by more than sixty European collections. It contains 105,000 printed books and 25,500 manuscripts. The National library at Paris is one of the very oldest in Europe, having been founded in 1480, while the British museum dates from 1753, or a trifle more than four hundred years later. In the United States the largest is the library of Congress, at Washington, which in 1874 contained 261,000 volumes. The Boston Public followed very closely after it with 260,500 volumes, and the Harvard university collection comes next, with 200,000. The Astor and Mercantile, of New York, are next, each having 148,000. Among the colleges, after Harvard's library comes Yale's, with 100,000. Dartmouth's is next with 50,000, and then came in order Cornell with 40,000; University of Virginia with 36,000; Bowdoin with 35,000; the University of South Carolina with 30,000; Ann Arbor, 30,000; Amherst, 29,000; Princeton, 28,000; Wesleyan, 25,500; and Columbia, 25,000.—New York Tribune.