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Charles the Fifth of France amassed a fine library, afterwards sold to an English nobleman. Lorenzo de Medici, of Hungary, and Frederic Duke of Urbino, each gathered in the 15th century a magnificent collection of books. All of these became widely dispersed in later years, though the manuscripts of the Duke of Urbino's collection are preserved in the library of the Vatican.
I may here note a very few of the most extensive library collections now existing in Europe and America.
1. Of the great public libraries of Europe, which owe much of their riches to the government privilege of the copy-tax, the national library of France is the oldest and the largest, now numbering two million six hundred thousand volumes. Founded in the 15th century, it has had four hundred years of opportunity for steady and large increase. Paris abounds in other public libraries also, in which respect it is far superior to London.
2. Next to the Bibliotheque nationale of France, comes the Library of the British Museum, with 2,000,000 volumes, very rich both in manuscripts and in printed books in all languages. A liberal Parliamentary grant of $60,000 a year for purchase of books and manuscripts keeps this great collection well up to date as to all important new works, besides enabling it constantly to fill up deficiencies in the literature of the past. Following this, among the great libraries having over half a million books, come in numerical order
Volumes.
3. Russian Imperial Library, St. Petersburg…………….. ….1,200,000
4. Royal Library of Prussia, Berlin………………………. …..1,000,000
5. Royal Library of Bavaria, Munich . . . . . . …………………..980,000
6. Library of Congress, Washington City. . …………………... 840,000
7. Boston Public Library…………………………….. …… 734,000
8. University Library, Strasburg, Germany …………………….700,000
9. Imperial Public Library, Vienna ………………………………575,000
10. Bodleian Library, Oxford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ………………..530,000
It is a notable fact that among the richest monuments of learning that have been gathered by mankind, the University libraries hold a very high rank. Reckoned in number of volumes, there are many of them which far outrank the government libraries, except in six instances. Out of 174 libraries, all exceeding 100,000 volumes, as reported in the annual Minerva, in October, 1898, no less than 72 are the libraries of universities. Strasburg heads the list, with a noble collection of 700,000 volumes; then Oxford university, whose Bodleian library numbers 530,000; Leipzig university, 504,000; Cambridge university, England, Gottingen university, and Harvard university, 500,000 each; the university of Vienna, 475,000; the universities of Heidelberg and of Munich, 400,000 each; Ghent and Wurzburg universities, 350,000 each; Christiania, Norway, university, and Tubingen, each 340,000; University of Chicago, 330,000; Copenhagen university, 305,000; Breslau, Cracow, Rostock and Upsala, 300,000 each; Yale university, New Haven, 280,000; St. Petersburg, 257,000; Bologna, 255,000 ; Freiburg and Bonn universities, 250,000 each; Prague, 245,000; Trinity, Dublin, 232,000; Konigsberg, 231,000; Kiel, 229,000 ; Naples, 224,000; and Budapest, 210,000. I need not detain you by enumerating those that fall below 200,000 volumes, but will say than the whole number of volumes in the 72 university libraries embraced in my table is more than fifteen millions, which would be much enlarged if smaller libraries were included. A noble exhibit is this, which the institutions of the highest education hold up before us.
We may now consider, somewhat more in detail as to particulars, the origin and growth of the libraries of the United States. The record will show an amazingly rapid development, chiefly accomplished during the last quarter of a century, contrasted with the lamentably slow growth of earlier years.
Thirty years ago the present year, I was invited to give to the American Social Science Association, then meeting at New York, a discourse upon Public Libraries in the United States. On recurring to this address, I have been agreeably surprised to find how completely its facts and figures belong to the domain of ancient history. For, while it may excite a smile to allude to anything belonging to a period only thirty years back as ancient history, yet, so rapid has been the accumulation, not only of books, but of libraries themselves in that brief period of three decades, as almost to justify the term employed.
Antiquarians must ever regard with interest the first efforts for the establishment of public libraries in the New World. The first record of books dedicated to a public purpose in that part of this country now occupied by the English-speaking race is, I believe, to be found in the following entry in the Records of the Virginia Company of London:

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