have been rescued from vagrancy and brought into the schools. And the society has been steadily improving its own system, and learning from its own mistakes.

Women have not generally won the praise of men for judicial qualities; it has rather been held that their sympathies and sentiments would lead their judgment into easy captivity. But in Mr. Lecky's book there is a handsome and cordial recognition of the peculiar fitness which many a modern woman has shown for the high functions I have been describing. He says she has "illustrated with perfect accuracy" the principles of "enlightened charity," by "the simple force of common sense, and by a scrupulous and minute attention to the condition and character of those whom she serves." Exactly what we are seeking! This quickness of insight, which penetrates behind the disguises of both pretence and reserve, and reads the real situation of a miserable household, could hardly find a more admirable illustration than in the case of some of the "Visitors" of the Germantown Relief Society. But it is not merely a matter of original insight; it has been a matter of experience, close observation, reflection on facts, consultation with. the shrewd and faithful Superintendent, and much conference with the other Visitors at their monthly meeting. The ready faculty, which other judges gain by united study and practice, has been gained by these judges in our local Court of Charity. To see through a fool or a knave, give us the sharp eyes of a woman. But for the whole business of charitable administration, give us the joint and balanced discernment and practical faculty of women and men. Thus ought every Board of Guardians to be constituted; and when the laws shall provide for this, and shall also remove the appointment of Guardians from the influence of politics and parties, we shall need not one of all our benevolent societies to deal with the matter of general poverty. The State will create a true Court of Charity in every city: its higher officers will be named by the judiciary, or by some commission of citizens deserving the confidence of all parties and sects. Then, armed with the authority of the whole people, and guided by the lights of political economy and experience, charity will shield society by its wiser use of larger powers, while it ministers to helpless suffering in the spirit of our common humanity. So will be brought to pass the saying, which, if not written, deserves to be: an abrupt saying, indeed, which shall serve me for a period, instead of a peroration, viz.: "Charity is not a fool!" CHARLES G. AMES.

THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF

THE

PENNSYLVANIA.

HE interest expressed in a brief account of the Library of the University of Pennsylvania, contributed to the volume on Public Libraries, recently published by the Department of Education at Washington, has suggested the going over the same ground with somewhat more of detail. We do not intend, or rather we do not hope, to write anything that the disciple of Dibdin will care to read, for the simple reason that we know little or nothing of the technicalities of bibliography. It is our desire simply to tell of what interested us while we were arranging the books in their new home in West Philadelphia, in the hope that it may not be found uninteresting by others who know about as much of such matters as we do, but care for books, and like to read about them as well as to read them for themselves.

The Library of the University is more properly the Library of the two Faculties of Arts and of Science; the former being the original stem of the University's life, around which the two Faculties of Medicine, and the Faculties of Law and of Science, have grown by accretion rather than by development. From internal evidence, we judge that the Library is as old as the College of Philadelphia, if not as old as the Academy, out of which the College grew. The names of early donors are those of the first founders and patrons of the College itself, and more than one titlepage bears autographs which the student of our University history must regard with veneration and piety.

First of all these comes Benjamin Franklin, whom the University justly regards as, par excellence, the founder of her fortunes. The number of his gifts now in our possession is not very large, but it is probable that he gave many to the Library which are not now in its collections. His interest in the College was of the warmest. The oldest minute-books of the Board of Trustees testify to this. They are in his hand-writing and are not the brief and perfunctory records, which commonly fill such volumes. For instance, he gives quite a full account of an early commencement, describing the speeches of the graduates and other students, and expressing the very high gratification felt by the intelligent audi

ence on the occasion. On his return from England in 1775, he brought two gold medals to be given to students of the College as prizes for English essays. The first subject he proposed was The Motives to and Advantages of a Perpetual Union between England and Her Colonies. All of the five essays submitted, and not only the one which obtained the prize, were printed here and reprinted in England; but we have no copy of either edition. The works of his gift which bear his autograph, are chiefly on physical philosophy, but one is his Historical Review of the Government of Pennsylvania, which he published anonymously in 1759, in London.

The autograph of Richard Peters, Franklin's successor in the presidency of the Board of Trustees, is far more frequently met in our older title pages. He was an English clergyman, of good family, whose early life was a series of misfortunes. Entrapped into a marriage with an unprincipled adventuress, and learning of her death some time after his separation from her, he contracted a second marriage with a lady of the Stanley family. But very soon after this, his first wife reappeared, and attempted to extort blackmail from him. He at once adopted the manly and honorable course; he disclosed the entire situation to the relatives of his second wife, and declared that he would be bound by their decision. They promptly acquitted him of all dishonorable intent, but could see no course open to their sister except a separation from her husband, and Richard Peters came to Pennsylvania a sorely tried but still a young man. His history, of course, could not be kept concealed; probably he made no attempt to conceal it. Malice used it to wound him in this new world, as we know from a malicious satire which is still in existence. On his arrival in the colony he was regarded with no friendly eye by the clergyman, who was the Rector of Christ Church, and Franklin thought of securing his aid in his educational projects. "I therefore in 1743 drew up a proposal for establishing an Academy, and at that time thinking the Rev. Richard Peters, who was out of employ, a fit person to superintend such an institution, I communicated the project to him; but he, having more profitable views in the service of the Proprietors, which succeeded, declined the undertaking; and, not knowing another at that time suitable for such a trust, I let the scheme lie a while dormant." Mr. Peters became, in 1749, one of the first Board of Trustees, and preached a sermon at the opening of the

Academy in its new quarters on Fourth street in 1751. He was President of the Board by annual reëlection from 1756 till 1764, and was succeeded by the Governor of the Province. After his rejection of Franklin's overtures in 1743, he became Secretary of the Colony, acquired considerable wealth, and won the regard of his fellow citizens in no ordinary degree. When set free from the entanglements of his first marriage by the death of his wife, and by the second marriage of Miss Stanley, he married again, and the celebrated and witty Judge Richard Peters († 1822) was his son. It was not until his old age that he began to turn his attention again to the ministry, and in his sixtieth year he became the Rector of Christ Church, and soon afterwards received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Oxford. Though greatly valued for his personal excellence and his brilliance in social converse, he was not esteemed as a preacher, for he had become imbued with the theosophy of Jakob Böhme through the writings of William Law, and he was wont to fire rather over than unto the understandings of his hearers. His assistant, Rev. Jacob Duché, became his convert to theosophy, and preached in the same style.2

The gifts of Dr. Peters to the Library were both numerous and of standard worth. From the number of Tory historians (Carte Heylin, Echard, Basil Kennet, Speed, Barnes, Clarendon, Howell,) and of old Anglican divines (Leighton, Hooker, Pearson, Chillingworth, Sherlock, Kettlewell, Bray, Allen,) we might suppose that he, like his master Law, had been in sympathy with the non-jurors and Jacobites. But the presence of Seneca, George Buchanan, Descartes, Montaigne, and of Sewell's Dutch Dictionary, testifies to the wide range of his reading. If he gave us any of his mystical authors, they are not now to be found.

Another benefactor in those early times was the London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends. The old and massive editions of Isaac Pennington's Works, Fox's Journal, Beste's Sufferings,

1 See The History of the University of Pennsylvania from its Origin to the year 1827, by George B. Wood, M. D. [Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Vol. III.] Philadelphia, 1834.

2 Duché was a member of the first class which graduated from the College, and served for a time as chaplain to the Continental Congress, but finally withdrew to England. He renounced theosophy after some years, and even refused to lend Law's works to Mr. (afterwards Bishop) William White, on the ground that they had done himself no small mischief. But his published sermons have a mystical tinge, and it is said that he became a convert to Swedenborg's views after his arrival in England.

came from them; and Jas. Logan, who was a Trustee, besides offering a site for the new Academy, spared from his own library a few to that of the College. A copy of the splendid Baskerville edition of Barclay's Apology has an inscription in the handwriting of Provost Smith, stating that it was the gift of the author's son, Mr. David Barclay, a merchant of London. These gifts have been supplemented in our own time a collection of more recent Quakerly literature, the gift of the venerable Deborah Fisher Wharton.

The Baskerville Barclay is but one of several mementos of Provost Smith's visit to Europe to prosecute the plan for the endowment of the College. Several contemporary authors, chiefly clergymen, sharing in the enthusiasm he excited, presented him with copies of their works. More important were the gifts received from Thomas Penn, the Proprietor, including with other works the Baskerville editions of Virgil and Milton. We also have Milton in the sixth edition, a folio of 1695, with glaring illustrations, nearly as coarse and vulgar as those of Dore. The donor, Lewis Evans, added a copy of Cowley's Works in folio. The works of Bishop Thomas Wilson, author of Matthew Arnold's pet phrase "sweetness and light," were presented by his son, the Prebend of Westminster, in the handsome folio edition of 1782. He was also a favorite with Washington.

To this period we owe many works, whose donors we cannot trace. Such are old editions of the Greek and Latin classics-the Tacitus of Justus Lipsius, the Livy of Gruter, the Cicero of Verburgius (Wetstein), the Scriptores Rei Rustica of Gesner, the Pliny of Gelenius, the Lexicon Antiquitatum of Pitiscus, Hooke's Roman History and Blair's Chronology, Gale's Herodotus and his Iamblichus, the Xenophon of Leunclavius, the Isocrates of Jerome Wolf, the Dionysius Halicarnensis of Sylburgius, Mill's Critical Greek New Testament, the Homer of Barnes, who "knew Greek like an Athenian blacksmith," the Josephus of Ittig, the Plutarch and the Pausanias of Xylander (Wilhelm Holtzemann), the Patres Apostolici of Le Clerc, the Julian of Spanheim, the Libanius and the Theophylact of Morell, and Sir Henry Saville's Eton edition of Chrysostom, in eight folios (1612). Such, too, are venerable and solid pieces of divinity, such as the Chemnitz-Leyser-Gerardian Harmony of

See A Memoir of William Smith, D. D., Provost of the College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia. By Charles J. Stillé, LL. D., Provost of the University. Philadelphia, 1869.