Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by JAMES WYNNE, M. D., In the Clerk's office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THE greater part of the sketches of Private Libraries to be found in this volume, were prepared for and published in the EVENING POST, about two years since. Their origin is due to a request on the part of Mr. Bigelow, one of the Editors of the POST, to the writer, to examine and sketch the more prominent private collections of books in New York. As the writer had but recently changed his residence from Baltimore to New York, and was quietly awaiting such favors as the public were willing to award him as a practitioner of Medicine, he was entirely unacquainted with the extent or value of the private collections, and hesitated about undertaking a duty so congenial to his feelings, under the was apprehension that the articles would be too meagre to repay perusal. After an urgent solicitation he was finally induced to visit the library of the Rev. Dr. Williams, the first described in the newspaper series, and charmed with the collection, and the urbanity and learning of its possessor, that its description was an almost spontaneous result. This was followed by a second and a third, until the series had attained the number of twenty-six. The work once commenced was continued as a labor of love, and furnished the writer, who confesses to the weakness of an ardent admiration for good books, a sufficient reward in the pleasure derived from its prosecution. The accounts make no pretensions to nice bibliographical knowledge, but present the reflections which a scholar, who has given a somewhat wide range to his studies, has derived from an examination of the numerous excellent works in these varied collections. Nor are they presented in any spirit of boastfulness, or with a belief of the completeness of the collections. described. The writer, in common with the possessors of these libraries, is too well aware of the difficulties to be met with in making a complete collection upon any subject, and has too often found himself at fault for want of authorities, even in the largest public libraries in the United States, to entertain any other than the most diffident opinion in regard to the collections described. As the labors of private individuals they are creditable beyond this, praise would be worse than useless. One circumstance, which at the time excited the surprise of the writer, in common with most others, and probably more than their literary merit attracted attention to the articles as they appeared in the Post, was the comparatively little knowledge possessed of the contents and value of the separate collections. This was often as much a matter of surprise to the owners of other libraries as to the community at large, and is probably to be accounted for on the ground that the collectors are for the most part studious men, who |