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N obvious gauge of the culture of any community is supplied by an account of the number and extent of its libraries.

No other source of intellectual refinement is there more potent than the companionship of good books.

When Leif, son of Eric the Red, sailed with his Northmen, according to tradition, into Narragansett Bay, about the year of Grace 1001, in view of its, to him, unexampled profusion of wild grape vines, he straightway named the region Vineland.

So I could imagine some Twentieth Century adventurer, landing upon the, so far as he were concerned, unexplored coast of Rhode Island and discovering the vast stores of books gathered in the capital of the State, as well as the smaller but still very valuable collections in the lesser cities and small towns, impelled to give to the territory the most honorable appellation of Library-land, as constituting a kind of harbinger of this happy later development and, to a certain extent, its origin, I have chosen for a topic upon which to address you, this evening, fellow members of the Rhode Island Historical Society,* some early libraries of the Commonwealth, the little acorns from which these tall oaks have grown.

As seems most fitting, the first white settler of this territory, destined to become so illustrious for its devotion to the printed page, brought with him like an unconscious prophet, a notable library. The cornerstone of the colony was thus laid in books.

In the spring of the year 1635, a twelve-month before sturdy Roger Williams set his foot on Slate Rock, William Blackstone transported, doubtless on the backs of cattle, from Boston to what is now Cumberland, Rhode Island, beside his other scanty personal effects, near two hundred volumes of the best literature of the time. Forests, undisturbed by the axe, covered the intervening country. In their depths lurked the serpent, the fox, the wolf, the panther and the bear, all in*This was an address before the Society.

terested, in their own fashion, in the progress of the adventurous caravan. No easy jaunt of a single hour was it then, as it has become to-day, from Shawmut peninsula to Nipmuck river, but rather a matter of days.

Of the volumes thus arduously conveyed, some were of ordinary size, but not a few ample quartos and stately folios lent their weight to the burden of the patient oxen. Rightly did their scholarly proprietor call, by the name of Study Hill, the little elevation near the present village of Lonsdale and on the east side of the Blackstone, where he built the homely cottage to contain them. There, for the subsequent forty years, was he to be beheld, during spring and summer, strolling, book in hand, under the primeval oaks, as well as the blooming apple trees he himself had planted, or, in autumn and winter, sitting inside the cabin, by his cheery fire, poring over the great tomes of now long forgotten lore. But, when their paper had grown yellow with age and when the golden lettering on their russet backs had gotten sadly tarnished, then, like a transformation scene of a single hour, the aged student sank into his last slumber and his treasured books turned to ashes in the flames lighted by the maddened savages, in the Indian war of 1675, "leaving not a rack behind." But, none the less, may it be recorded with truth, as has been already said, that the foundations of Rhode Island were laid in a library.

About a quarter of a century after the death of Blackstone and the destruction of his books, a notable step in the bibliothecal field was taken in Newport, then the metropolis of the Colony, by the establishment, on a very small scale, of course, of what is justly styled the first public lending library of the Commonwealth.

Within only the last year or two, it fell to my lot to receive from a lawyer of New York, a rubbing of the inscription on the cover of an antique volume, which he had found among the effects of an estate he was settling, and which he desired aid in restoring to its original ownership, the rubbing reading: "Belonging to ye Library in Rhode Island [of A. B. K.]." The book was, indeed, a waif and stray, which had been wandering, for, perhaps, a hundred years, away from the Parochial Library of Trinity Church, Newport, founded in 1700, and was, I believe, as a result of this inquiry, promptly sent back thither.

The Rev. Thomas Bray, appointed in 1696, commissary in America of the Bishop of London, "for the regulation and increase of religion," interested himself in the promotion of parochial libraries. The nucleus of such a library he, soon after his appointment, procured for Trinity Church, many of the volumes of which Mr. Mason, in his Annals, reports as still in a fair state of preservation. A vote of a vestry-meeting, held in 1709, provides: "That ye Books belonging to ye Library of ye Church, which have been lent out, be all called in and Public notice of this be given By Placards affixed to the Church Dores (D-o-r-e-s) and, when they are come in, a Survey be made of ye said Library." It thus appears that there were, even as now, delinquent borrowers of library books, two hundred years ago, "In the good old Colony days."

In this quite limited collection, there existed two sections, one made up of volumes to be taken out by the clergy alone, the lay-people being permitted only to consult them, and the other to be devoted to general circulation. Professor Jameson, formerly of the History Department of Brown University, discovered among Dr. Bray's manuscripts, preserved in the library of Sion college, London, several lists of books sent over, by the Doctor, to Rhode Island. I was told, sometime since, of a sprightly young girl recounting the fruits she had gathered from a recent Christmas tree, and declaring that, among the rest of her gifts, there were seven volumes-four improving books and three to read. Had this little miss chanced to be a Newport maiden of a couple of centuries since, I fear, from a glance at these lists, that she would not have found in Trinity library many "books to read." Nor am I very sure, either, that, had she, for lack of anything else to read, perused these rather forbidding volumes generally, they would have turned out even especially "improving" to her. youthful mind. Among other standard works on theology, here are The Book of Homilies, Usher's Body of Divinity, Satan Disrobed, The Snake in the Grass, A Defence of the Snake, Five Discourses by the Author of the Snake in the Grass, Apocalyptical Discourses, five volumes quarto, and Mr. Allen's History of Iniquity Unfolded. It is almost a relief to come at last upon such homely themes as The Compleat Gardiner and The New Book of Geography. But little winning, as ap

pear to us now, many of the titles of those russet volumes, they must, still, have proved a real boon in that almost bookless community.

Passing on, now, for a half century more, let us cross over to Narragansett and visit two or three of its excellent private libraries. In the more than a hundred years since Richard Smith settled the region, in about 1637, at Wickford, raising his house in the midst of the Indians, the Narragansett country has become the home of a prosperous and wealthy community. Great houses, surrounded by vast smiling plantations, now cover the land, it being the middle of the eighteenth century, and a high degree of mental cultivation has come to prevail. No wonder that it has been sought to add the charm of books to the other attractions of this generous life. In In traveling southward, at the present day, on the New Haven railway, you may have observed, soon after leaving Kingston Station, a little to the right of the line, a melancholy-looking stone chimney stack rising from a group of ornamental shade trees. To-day the object speaks of nothing but desolation. But at the period, when we are supposing ourselves to be making our Narragansett tour, there stood here a new and pleasant house, called "Hopewell," surrounded by an ample estate of rich farming land. Hither there has just removed from Newport,-it is now 1750,-Matthew Robinson, Esq., one of the most learned young lawyers of the Colony. Mrs. Robinson, as well, is the mistress of remarkable literary attainments, having come of distinguished lineage. She is a daughter of Augustus Lucas, one of the most cultured of the Huguenots, who fled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Mr. Lucas settled at Newport as early as 1698, bringing with him many books, in five or six different languages. Before being, as she now is, the wife of the Narragansett lawyer, Mrs. Robinson has been married to George Johnston and has become the mother of Augustus Johnston, destined to be an attorney-general of Rhode Island and to give his name to the town of Johnston, adjoining Providence. On her mother's side, she is a great grand-daughter of that sterling scholarly Puritan, John Eliot, the "Apostle of the Indians" and the translator of the famous Indian Bible. With such a hostess, as well as such a host, to extend a genuine welcome to "Hopewell," it is no marvel that the guests there are both numerous and choice. Here are wont to gather, along with the ac

complished ladies of their households, the most brilliant and genial gentlemen of the region,-Dr. Joshua Babcock, of Westerly; Col. Stanton and Col. Champlin, of Charlestown; the two Governor Hazards, Governor William Robinson, Col. Potter, Judge Potter, the Gardiners, Judge Helme, Col. Brown and Dr. MacSparran, all of South Kingstown, as well as Col. Francis Willett, the Coles and Col. Daniel Updike, of North Kingstown,-while Judge Lightfoot, Col. Coddington, Judge Marchant, the Brentons and Dr. Sylvester Gardiner frequently repair to the spot from Newport and Boston. Nor can such visitors as these fail to constitute a bright and fascinating intellectual society. What wonder that here a kind of old world sociability reigns supreme?

While all the apartments, where the company is to-day assembled, are attractive, having been adorned with rhododendrons from Kingstown woods and pink sabbatia flowers from Worden's pond, it is yet the delightful library into which the guests almost instinctively gravitate. Here, in the middle of the room, stands the great study-table with its cheerful litter of papers and pamphlets and its Delft inkstand, in the center, decorated with quaint figures in purplish brown. Around the walls is arranged a perfect wilderness of books, the crowning glory of the house, reputed to be the largest collection possessed by any individual in the Colony. Here are Coke Upon Littleton and numberless other volumes of law, history and poetry. Here is gathered a body of classical literature as well as English. Here are books in French and three or four other tongues beside the vernacular, many of them,— among others a Huguenot Bible,-having formed a portion of Mr. Lucas's library, brought from the old world. To all these is added a unique assemblage of pamphlets, magazines and other comparatively transient productions of the times, valuable for antiquarian research and preserved with singular solicitude; for their owner is a zealous antiquarian and prides himself on his knowledge of history, both English and American.

Probably the greatest treasure, in this fine collection, is a copy of that most rare of rare volumes, perhaps the only copy, at this period, in America, The Eikon Basilike, said to have been composed by King Charles I, oddly enough embodying, within its covers, the celebrated