The fourth considerable library founded in the United States was due in a large degree to the industry and zeal for knowledge of the illustrous Franklin. As unquestionably the first established proprietary library in America, the Library Company of Philadelphia merits especial notice. Let us reverently take a leaf out of the autobiography of the printer-statesman of Pennsylvania: "And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library. I drew up the proposals, got them put into form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and by the help of my friends in the Junto [the Junto was a club for mutual improvement, founded by Franklin] procured fifty subscribers at forty shillings each to begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our company was to continue. We afterwards obtained a charter, the company being increased to one hundred; this was the mother of all the North American subscription libraries now so numerous. It is become a great thing itself, and continually increasing. These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defence of their privileges." When this Philadelphia Library was founded, in 1731, not a single city or town in England possessed a subscription library. Even the library of the British Museum, since become the greatest collection of books in the world, save one, was not opened until 1759, more than a quarter of a century afterwards. Although not designed as a public library of circulation, save to its own subscribers, the Philadelphia Library has been kept free to all for reference and consultation. The record of the gradual increase of the first Philadelphia Library from its first few hundred volumes, when Franklin was but twenty-five years of age, to its present rank as the largest proprietary library in America, with 195,000 volumes of books, is highly interesting. Its history, in fact, is to a large extent the history of intellectual culture in Philadelphia, which remained, until the second decade in the present century, the foremost city of the Union in population, and, from 1791 to 1800, the seat of government of the United States.