The conservatory possesses one of the best working musical libraries in the country, a unique feature being the choral library of the Boylston Club (founded 1872) and its successor, the Boston Singers, which contains many copies of manuscript treasures in European collections. This library was a gift to the conservatory by George L. Osgood. The Boston Public Library nearby contains the Allen A. Brown collection of musical books and manuscripts, which is excelled in America only by the Congressional Library at Washington. Accordingly, the pupils of the conservatory have at hand every facility for acquiring a musical education which the most ardent student could desire. It is not surprising that among its three thousand and more students every one of the forty-eight states of the Union is represented, as well as a dozen foreign countries, even distant Russia and Turkey. The curriculum of the conservatory has been generally described by Frederick W. Colburn in 'The Musical Observer' for July, 1913. Mr. Colburn, after mentioning special features, such as the conservatory orchestra of seventy-five members, affording the training and routine indispensable to professional performers whose ranks it is annually supplying, says: 'While the new is studied, the fundamentals are not lost sight of. All the courses have been planned to avoid turning out narrow and one-sided specialists. The management realizes that the professional musician has need of very broad and very correct culture. The students listen to lectures on the history and theory of music from such authorities as Louis C. Elson and Wallace Goodrich. The modern languages and English diction are taught by experts, several of whom are authors of their own text-books. The pianoforte instruction follows approved methods; it shows much of the influence of the late Carl Baermann, one of the most eminent of the German musicians who have settled in this country. The vocal instruction is along the lines of the old Italian method which has formed the voices of most of the world's great singers. The teaching of the organ accords with the practice of the best German and French organists. In all departments there is present the idea of thoroughly grounding the student in the essentials of musical art and of avoiding easy, ready-made and get-culture-quick methods.' The Boston Conservatory, second in the list of five founded in 1867, was organized by Julius Eichberg, a distinguished German violinist and composer, who had been, since 1859, director of the orchestra at the Boston Museum. This speedily won and long maintained a high reputation, particularly for instruction in the violin, on which subject Eichberg prepared a number of valuable text-books.