THE CINCINNATI LIBRARY. By W. H. Venable.

To the founders of Cincinnati belongs the credit of having instituted the first public library within the Northwestern Territory.

The Cincinnati Library went into operation March 6, 1802, thirteen years after the town was begun, and two years before the formation of the famous "Coon Skin" Library at Ames, Athens County, Ohio, for which priority of origin has been mistakenly claimed.

The Cincinnati Library grew out of a popular movement which, according to the New England method, took direction through the free action of a citizen's meeting, held at Mr. Yeatman's tavern, the usual place of assembly for public transactions. This was in February, 1802. A committee, consisting of Jacob Burnet, Martin Baum, and Lewis Kerr, was appointed to draw up and circulate a paper soliciting subscriptions for the purpose of establishing a library. The original copy of this paper is now in possession of Robert Clarke, esq., the well known publisher. The list of subscribers to the library fund comprised twenty-five names, representing thirty-four shares of stock valued at $10 each, or a total of $340-no inconsiderable sum to be raised in a frontier colony three-quarters of a century ago. It is interesting to note that the subscription list is headed by the name of the veteran Arthur St. Clair, first governor of the Northwestern Territory, and of Ohio. The Library went into operarion, with Lewis Kerr as librarian, but of its subsequent history no records have been found.

At the close of the war there was a general awakening of literary and education interest. To Cincinnati the period was one of transition from provincial to metropolitan conditions and methods. The city sprang forward and upward with a new impulse.

The library committee in 1866 issued a circular urging the pubiic to subscribe a fund, the income of which should support the library. In response to the appeal, and through the vigorous efforts of Mr. Freeman, the librarian, about $5,000 were raised. The fund was further increased by a bequest of $5,000 from Mrs. Sarah Lewis. But it was painfully evident that the library could not depend for a sufficient income upon the liberality of a few individuals. The chief hope of the library lay in the prospect of such legislation as would restore the old tax or its equivalent. Suen legislation was eventually secured, largely through the influence of Rev. J. M. Walden. A law was passed March 18, 1867, by which the city is empowered to assess, additional to the usual educational tax, one-tenth of a mill on the dollar for the maintenance of a Public Library. This important legislation at once gave the library an independent income of over, $13,000. The library at once began a vigorous growth, which has not since been checked. In 1868 over 4,000 volumes were added to the collection, embracing the private library of W. T. Coggeshall, and a good collection of German books. The library, at this date, contained only 350 novels in all.

In March, 1871, the school board opened the Publie library for Sunday use. The new catalogue, comprising 656 pages was issued. A room for illustrated works was fitted up, and proved to be very attractive. Excellent progress was made during the year 1871, 1872 and 1873. The library increased rapidly, and its popularity was proportional to its growth.

During the official year 1872-73, the trustees of the Cincinnati Hospital deposited their medical library in the Public Library, but this has since been withdrawn.

The main hall of the library building was completed February 25, 1874. The magnificent room was thrown open to the public, and addresses were made by Hon. George H. Pendleton and others. The library room now ready for the accumulating treasures of the reading public of Cincinnati, is one of the largest and finest single apartments of the kind in the world. It has a shelving capacity for 250,000 volumes.

The present splendid Public Library of Cincinnati may be not unreasonably regarded as the outgrowth of seeds planted as long ago as 1802. The spirit that inspired the founders of the old Cincinnati Library three-quarters of a century ago also animates the men who fostered and still foster the intellectual interests of the city to-day.

Special Report Public Libraries of the United States' Department of the Interior. Bureau of Education, Washington D. C.

THE BOOK HUNTER.

Man has been described as an animal that laughs; we have heard one of his species describe the aggregate as "sad dogs.” "A biped with a book," is as good a label as any: not that he confines himself, as a rule, to one book. The passion for the possession of volumes, old and new, is one of the uncloying and ever-strengthening desires. When once it fastens on an unlucky mortal, it knows no bounds except those of his purse's potentiality; it is the fury ever unappeased, the destiny that calls and lures him on.

Book hunting, in its essense, is a noble passion, but it is too often allowed to degenerate into a mania where judgment is overruled by frenzy. There is little dificulty in knowing the hunter when you see him. He is at the book stall as regularly as their shadows come to the street lamps with the morning sun; he pores intently on odd volumes, with the self-absorbed air of Mr. Brownlow when Oliver and "the Artful" cried havoc in his pockets without attracting his notice; his purse and his patience are both apparently endless; he will watch for an expected prize with the swift eye and unobtrusive air of a cat that has seen a mouse's tail; he scents his prize afar off, as the vulture does his; he reads where others cannot; the margin, tooling, height and flexibility of a volume speak to him in cryptogram; he is cunning in the free-masonry of printers' marks; there is a mystic catalogue in his heart of an airy library, ever drawing nearer, yet ever unattained; he is the slave of the book.

The book hunter is not unknown in America, but his ground is in Europe-particularly in England. He prowls through unfrequented places in crowded London, and the Latin quarter in Paris; he knows the book haunts and second-hand merchants of Edinburgh, and is familiar with the quays of Dublin. Generally, his person is not prepossessing; he is not the neatest of the neat; he is not much to look at; he may be a damaged looking clothes horse; but place him among books and he will soar to the stature of the broken giant. The sight of a book shelf brings to his mind and tongue the glories of Nineveh with his cuneiform stamped tablets and he

roic inscriptions, the countless rolls of Alexandria and the red obelisks of the Nile, the myriads of Cordova and Paris, of the British Museum and the Vatican, the Duke of Roxburghe's Boccaccio and the presses of Caxton and Aldus.

Burton, following a French author, has divided bibliomaniacs into three classes: the voracious, omnivorous collector; the hunter of certain authors and particular branches of literature; and the grabber who is attracted to books solely by their binding. But with the Bibliomaniac must not be confounded the real lover of books, the bibliophile, who reads his books and enjoys them intellectually; nor with the bibliographe who describes books; nor with the bibliognoste, who is well versed in the hisrory, etc., of books; nor yet with the bibliotaphe, who keeps his books locked up and buried. as it were, in cases.

Bookhunting is a noble sport-without being compared with the senseless slaughter of birds annually, which, in the British Isles, is known as "the season"--and easily elevates itself to a virtue. The mania of the bibliophile is the neucleus of some public institution; for nearly every library in Europe and America that claims a national or an international interest has risen from the original limited collection of some private book lover. The Roxburghe Club was founded in honor of the sale of the celebrated “Boccaccio." The facts of the contest for this volume are noted in the chapter of "Books" in Emerson's "Society and Solitude," Emerson was always prone to get into the wide seafield of general literature and books, where he could revel without restraint in the boundless ocean of bibliography; and literary men have shown the same disposition in all ages. To it we are indebted for some of the pleasantest chapters in all the range of letters, such as Washington Irving's "Mutability of Literature." It would amaze us indeed, did we know the percentage of books that are written about other books. The library, book case or shelf that a man possesses is usually a synopsis of his character. He is condensed and labelled in the gilt letters on the rows of backs; his fancies and desires, his power and accomplishments, his favorites and friends, are catalogued as well as the volumes; you will know whether he is a book lover or not by a passing glance at his possessions, as well as by his conversation; he has no mock volumes, treatises on farriery, or labelled chessboards among his rows of respectable looking tomes; none of his books are ragged or of doubtful ancestry-if he is one of the chosen people; at auctions his face is well known to the auctioneer and to brother hunters; his countenance is always sedate; he cannot be disturbed: mistakes do not put him out, for he bears apout with him the occult touchstone that discovers gold where others find out dross. He does not smile if an auctioneer asks "Who is this Addison?" Only when he is among his beloved volumes does his mirth expand, though it is apt to grow riotously exhaustive when he comes across directions to the book collector, in which one is advised to "never cut a book with your finger." This is a point that for him never looses zest. "Never cut a book with your finger!" "Do not sit on a book!"

In Europe he dreads an American almost as deeply as he does the grabber, for the denizen of Transatlantica has come with a bottomless purse and much determination to gain for his libraries the best treas

Among the new works of special interest, prepar ing for publication by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, we note the following: "Arminius Vambery," his life and adventures; written by himself, and including the story of his boyhood's struggles, a consecutive narration of his Eastern travels, his interviews with statesmen and diplomatists and the part he has taken in Eastern questions, the whole brought down to the period of publication and embracing much information never before published. A two-volume novel entitled "Glady's Fane," a story of Two Lives, by T. Wemyrs Reid, the editor of the "Leeds Murcury," in which the characters and scenes are drawn from actual life, political and sociai. A new work by the Queen of Roumania. better known by her penname "Carmen Sylva," is entitled "Pilgrims Sorrow:" It is an exquisitely written cycle of prose poems of a symbolical character, which has already appeared in Germany. The English translation has been entrusted to Miss Helen Zimmem whose rendering of Firdusi's epic into English will be remembered as one of the most notable books of last season. The volume will have for frontispiece a finely etched portrait of the authoress by Lalanze. Professor Gibb has translated and edited for Mr. Unwin a new selection from the celebrated "Table Talk of Dr. Martin Luther," which will form a capital souvenir of the fourth century, now being held. Mr. Robert Young, whose popular work on "Modern Missions" has now reached a third edition, has ready for the same house a second series of that work, to be issued under the title of "Light in Lands of Dark ness. It will have an introduction by Lord Shaftesbury. What will doubtless prove one of the favor. ite gift-books of the coming season is Mr. Unwin's reprint of "Robinson Crusoe;" a foolscap 4to edition, illustrated with twenty-five drawings by Kauffman, which have been successfully produced in col ors by Messrs. Unwin Bros.

"The Greek Testament as published in America," being an account and general description of more than 250 editions of the "Greek Testament as printed in America," with bibliographical notes, etc., pages 92, 8vo, cloth. Philadelphia, Pickwick & Company.

New Guide to Philadelphia, with the principal places of interest, buildings, etc., etc., to be found in the city. An excellent work for the stranger, 16 mo, cloth, pages 120. Pickwick & Company.

THE BOOKMART.

OCTOBER 20 1883.

Second-Hand Book Dealers are invited to send communications that may be of interest to the Trade or Public. Any matter of information pertaining to the line of the BOOKMART will be welcomed.

The BOOKMART is being mailed throughout the States and Territories, and in Great Britain, to Dealers in Books, both new and old and to Colleges and Universities, to Public Libraries, to Superintendents and Principals of Public Schools, to Ministers and many private individuals. We would be gratified to receive expressions from the Trade and others receiving a copy, together with the substantial aid of subscriptions and advertisements. The subscription price of the Bookmart will often be saved in the purchase of a single book.

The Trade and others receiving a sample copy of the BOOKMART will confer a favor on the publishers by sending the names of any whom they know are in terested in purchaseing books.

Publishers and dealers in Second-Hand books, both at home and abroad, will be pleased to send their catalogues to persons interested in books. Any who desire catalogues by sending their address to such publishers and dealers will receive them promptly, but as this may be quite expensive, especially in sending for foreign catalogues, letter postage being five cents, we offer to all who want catalogues the use of the Catalogue Department. Here are published their addresses, and their desire to get catalogues is indicated. Addresses in this department fifteen cents per line each insertion.

Dealers in Second-Hand Books will please favor us with their catalogues when issued. All catalogues received will be duly mentioned.

Please mention THE BOOKMART in answering advertisements.

SPECIAL NOTES.

We give notice to advertisers that we desire to have them forward advertising for November issue by the 15th as we shall go to press on the 18th, prompt, and for December issue send by the 12th as we shall go to press on the 14th to give advertisers of Christmas books all the benefit we can. Let us have your advertisements

We are now in the height of the book auction season and we give in this issue considerable space to bring prominently before our readers the different sales. The sale of books this season is greater than usual, and the line of books to be sold is exceptionally fine including many rare tomes seldom coming to sale. Now is the time to send in your subscription for the BOOKMART and keep posted on these sales, we have special facilities for gathering information that will be valuable to those on the watch for bargains in books.

We print elsewhere in this issue a communication defending the trade sales against uncalled for attacks from a New York gentleman from whom we have never before received any communications but whom we hope to hear from often in the future if this vigorous defense should not settle the question to the satisfaction of our readers. If any one therefore desires to keep up or renew the attack we shall be glad to have them make use of our columns. For ourselves personally we hold no ill will toward any one either because

he may or may not think it best to buy or sell books at auction. We believe it to be largely a matter of taste, and, to confess the truth, we must acknowledge that our taste runs decidedly towardes and in favor of the book auctions. But we do not insist on your thinking the same if you really do not want to. We want to see every avenue kept open that will afford the pubiic opportunity to get books at low prices.

When bids are sent to Book Auction Sales, where personal attendance is inconvenient, the manner in which firms execute them is not known to us, but we know whereof we speak when we allude to the manner in which the well known house of C. F. Libbie & Co., Boston, Mass., fulfill such orders. At the opening of a sale Mr. Libbie takes a place among the bidders with a memoranda of the list received, and without the auctioneer having any knowlodge of such bids or indeed that any bids are on the books he has to sell. Realizing that such bids are the limits of his customer's offers, Mr. Libbie aims to get the books as much cheaper as possible and often succeeds in getting a bargain for them. It is our convicton that a much larger amount of such outside bidding can be secured by all the established reliable book auction firms, if book buyers throughout the country understood that their interest would be studied when sending bids on some of the treasures they long for.

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GENERAL NOTES.

A COMPREHENSIVE biography of Turgenieff, from the pen of a clever German, Herr Zabel, will be published during the holidays.

R. WORTHINGTON announces that the price of Watts' "Dictionary of Chemistry" has been reduced to the even sum of $100 for the nine volumes.

SHERIFF NICOLSON is preparing a biography of unusual interest in the life of Adam Black, the founder of the great publishing house of Messrs. A. & C. Black, of Edinburgh.

FORDS, HOWARD & HULBERT have published this week in The Cincinnati Library "A Sylvan City," an illustrated book devoted to quaint and picturesque corners of Philadelphia-new and old.

VICTOR HUGO has written, under the title of "L'Archipel de la Manche," a description of the life and manners of the inhabitants of the Channel Islands. It will be brought out serially in a periodical.

JOHN MURPHY & Co., Baltimore, have just ready "The Law of Heredity, a study of the cause of variation, and the origin of living organism," by W. K. Brooks, associate in Biology of John Hopkins University.

PROF. JAMES BALDWIN, of Huntington, Ind., who has written "The Story of Roland" for CharlesScribner's Sons, is the author of the admirable work on "English Literature," published by John E. Porter & Co., of Philadelphia.

MR. JOHN S. CLARKE is said to be preparing for publication a little volume descriptive of his sixteen years' experience on the London stage. The book will make mention of many distinguished authors, actors, critics, and artists.

HAMILTON, ADAMS & Co., London, will publish at once a volume entitled "Curious Epitaphs," collected from the graveyards of Great Britain and Ireand, with Biographical, genealogical, and historical.

notes, by Mr. William Andrews, of Hull. An important feature of the book will be "A Biography of Epitaphs" extending over 20 pages.

MRS. J. R. GREEN, the widow of the historian, has herself been completely revising her husband's "Conquest of England," according to his last instructions. The book carries on the story of England up to the period of the Norman Conquest.

MR. REDWAY, we learn from the "London Academy," will issue very shortly a verbatim reprint of the article on George Cruikshank written by Thackeray in 1840, and first published in the "Westminster Review." There will be added a new portrait of Cruikshank etched by Mr. Pailthorpe, and a prefatory note by the editor, Mr. W. E. Church, on Thackeray as an artist and critic."

W. B. CLARKE & CARRUTH, Boston, have just published "Marplot Cupid." a bright and entertaining story of New England country life, by a lady well known in Boston society, who conceals her identity under the non de plume of "Van Saxon." This firm announces that they have sold 4000 copies of 'Mr. Jacobs," which (we believe it is now an open secret) was written by Mr. Arlo Bates, of the Boston Courier.

ARTHUR B. TURNEURE, having returned from his investigation tour full of information on the processes used by the famous book-makers of Europe, has, with the October Number, resumed the regular issue of the Art Age. This contains, in faultless typography, an interesting article on the typography of "Book Titles," in which it is said that the late Joel Munsell, of Albany, was one of the best title-makers and that Houghton, of Boston, has probably arranged more good titles than any living American publisher; but in which is also questioned the modern display line regulation title-"this balancing of long lines with short lines," etc. Besides this article are given descriptive notes on "Notable Publications," mostly recent art books or editions de luxe; "Notes on [typographical] Practice," etc. Should this publication meet with the encouragement it deserves, it cannot but exercise a refining influence on the art of book-making in this country. For the November number is promised an article on current book-cover designs, a subject that sadly needs elucidation by warning as well as by good example.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE FALL BOOK TRADE SALE VIGOROUSLY DEFENDED.

For nearly sixty years the American book trade has believed in the potency and efficacy of book trade sales. I have now lying before me the catalogues of book trade sales respectively dated 1825, 1826 and 1833. The youngest is a half century old and seems to me, in view of the fact that the almost "time immemorial" trade sales are continued, an earnest protest against any attempt to remove the ancient landmarks of the book trade. Yet there is one man who insists ɔn kicking against the pricks and braying out in the most asinine manner against an institution with which he has never been permitted to have aught to do. He is not a book publisher.

He is not a book anctioneer.

He is not a book buyer.

He is not a bookseller.

He is simply himself-a one-horse proprietor of an interloping and impudent advertising circular, who

has not the sense to see that the field he tries to poach on is already occupied by responsible newspapers of age, merit, respectability and sufficiency.

He is a man, who, trying to win his bread from the book trade, abuses the hands which have ministered to his wants and doled out the necessary pittances from which he has eked out his existence.

As an old attendant at the book trade sales and a careful observer of the procedure at them and also having talked over the matter with the auctioneers, I protest against the insolent and outrageous attacks of this Pseudo-Editor of this would-be book trade organ on the time-honored book trade sales. What is his object?

It surely cannot be for the good of the publishers, for he underrates their publications; it is positively not for the benefit of retail dealers, for he depreciates the stock they buy, and it is most assuredly not for the advantage of the book auctioneers, for he abuses them in the language of a Billingsgate fish wife, What then is his object?

It seems to me so apparent and transparent that it is really foolish to ask it, yet having asked it I answer— it is solely for his own benefit at the expense of everybody's else. It is to force out of the publishers the ad. vertisements they do not desire he shall have with the recognized newspapers, and it is also to throttle the book auctioneer and to club him into the ranks of the advertisers.

It is absurd and idle for him to pose as a great moral book trade reformer, for to this bogus reformer there can be but one piece of advice necessary, and that is, Reformer, reform thyself and take up thy circular and walk into the eternal forgetfulness of limbo.

Yet advice to him, like jewels before swine, is needless, for whatever may be said to him or done for him, I fear we shall hear the everlasting rub-a-dub-dub, ruba-dub-dub of his hollow newspaper drum for half a century of trade book sales to come, unless we are spared the annoyance by the goodness of the Almighty, and then heaven forbid that his " wagon" should go rolling on.

I was present at the last book trade sale at Clinton Hall, and which began September 18. It was a great success. Book publishers and book-sellers alike seemed happy and contented. Books brought good prices, including even those long and well known in the market, and of which the remainders were offered for sale. The latest books published in America were not slaughtered in a single instance, and the important publications brought exceptionally high prices, With such contributors, Scribner, Lippincott & Co., Lee & Shepard, Worthington, Claxton, and Potter, representing American publishers, and Southeran, Cameron & Ferguson, Grant and Reeve, representing European, the sale was as successful as the most anxious could desire. The catalogue of sale a goodly volume of over 320 pages was most assuredly in marked contrast with the thin sixteen page one of 1825, which was sold by Wiggins & Pearson, Auctioneers, No. 68 William street, New York.

As to the preposterous assertion that the audience was a slim one it is not true. The book buyers present were fully equal in numbers to the average and the same amount of orders as in former years were taken care of by agents some of whom represented as many as twenty different houses, to say nothing of the orders filled by the auctioneers for over one hundred and fifty distant firms.

A point endeavored to be made by the "lone inter. loper" is that “dead stock reprints and old books under new titles" were offered for sale. Suppose they were whose affair is it but the buyers and sellers?

And here it is well to be said that the book trade sale is the only vehicle of communication in the trade that enables publishers to dispose of such stock in