The growth of Harvard University library, from its second foundation a century ago, has been steady, though at no time rapid. Select and valuable in its principal contents, it has received numerous benefactions from the friends of learning, and promises to become the best, as it already is much the largest, among the university libraries of the country. Its present strength is about 500,000 volumes. The year 1700 witnessed the birth of the first New York library open to public use. The Rev. John Sharp, then chaplain of His Majesty's forces in that city (it was in the days of good King William of Orange), bequeathed his private collection of books to found a "public library" in New York. The library thus organized was placed in charge of the corporation of the city, but the first city library of New York languished with little or no increase until 1754, when a society of gentlemen undertook to found a public library by subscription, and succeeded so well that the city authorities turned over to them what remained of the Public City Library. This was the beginning of the New York Society Library, one of the largest of the proprietary libraries of the country. It was then, and for a long time afterwards, commonly known as "The City Library." The Continental Congress profited by its stores, there being no other library open to their use; and the First Congress under the Constitution, which met in New York in 1789, received the free use of the books it contained. The library is conducted on the share system, the payment of twenty-five dollars, and an annual assessment of six dollars, giving any one the privilege of membership. It now contains about 100,000 volumes. The same year, 1700, in which the New York Library was founded, ten Connecticut ministers met together at Lyme, each bringing a number of books, and saying, "I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony." Such was the foundation of Yale University, an institution that has done inestimable service to the cause of letters, having been fruitful of writers of books, as well as of living contributions to the ranks of every learned profession. Thirty years later, we find the good Bishop Berkeley pausing from the lofty speculations which absorbed him, to send over to Yale College what was called "the finest collection of books that ever came together at one time into America." For a century and a half the growth of this library was very slow, the college being oppressed with poverty. In 1869, the number of volumes had risen only to 50,000, but it is cheering to relate that the last thirty years have witnessed a growth so rapid that in 1899 Yale University Library had 285,000 volumes.