are content to enjoy their own acquisitions, without allowing their thoughts to extend far beyond the confines of their own particular associations.

The separate articles have all undergone a careful revision, while many have been entirely rewritten, and a few new ones added. As it now stands, the work may be considered as giving a tolerably fair account of most of the private collections in New York, and will be a sufficient guide to the student as to the sources from which he may hope to derive information, not to be found in the public libraries. This has been a prominent object in the preparation of these articles, and has operated in a no less degree with the collectors of the various libraries in frankly permitting an account of them to be given to the public.

FIFTH AVENUE, MURRAY HILL,

June, 1860.

THE LIBRARY OF JOHN ALLAN, ESQ.

THIS Collection, which numbers between three and four thousand volumes, is perhaps the most curious in character, and peculiar in selection, of any in the city. Its limited extent necessarily precludes all idea of a general library, which, indeed, has not so much been the purpose of its possessor, as the bringing together of those curiosities of literature which from being unique, rare, or associated with circumstances of literary note or importance, are endowed with more than ordinary interest. It thus happens that, within the limited space assigned by Mr. Allan for himself in the formation of his collection, he has managed to include a larger number of those literary curiosities so much admired by the lover of virtu, or those who are affected in the least degree with that singular yet fascinating characteristic termed bibliomania, or book-madness, than is usually found in the more extensive private collections.

Notwithstanding Bruyere's humorous account of

this class of persons, as those who are "fond of superb bindings alone," and who "nearly cause one to faint by the strong smell of morocco leather," or that of Peignot, who defines this to be "a passion for possessing books, not so much to be instructed by them, as to gratify the eye by looking on them," and is satisfied with dates and titles so far as the contents are concerned; yet the book of especial interest, first pointed out in every collection, either public or private, and chiefly remembered by the casual visitor, belongs exclusively to this class. Thus the British Museum possesses a number of books which owe their chief value to the circumstance of once having belonged to the library of Henry VII. A copy of Lord Bacon's Essays, published in 1798, in the library of the Earl of Spencer, is placed above all price, because it is one of five copies printed on royal folio. It is apprehended that no person would give one thousand dollars for a copy of the first folio edition of Shakspeare's works, or £56 14s. for a copy of a single play, scarce fifty leaves in thickness, as mentioned in the description of Mr. Barton's library, without the associations connected with them, which bestow on many of the curiosities in Mr. Allan's collection their chief value. In Lord Spencer's collection there is an octavo edition of Shakspeare, bequeathed to him by Mr.