the widow's cow, protected the fatherless, and annually supplemented his minister-tax with one load of hay and two bushels of white beans. He was a collector and reader of newspapers, a hoarder of pamphlets, and a gatherer of the unconsidered trifles of the day. He lectured on Temperance, Agriculture, and Education, and contended that Vermont should be manured all over with school-houses. He was a strong advocate of internal improvements and domestic manufactures. Through life he was a wool-grower and a protectionist, and his clothes were homespun. In knowledge of the statistics of his county few were his equals, and none was his superior in the history of his own State and the early Green Mountain Boys. He was a confidential agent of the Secretary of the Treasury at Washington, for collecting information respecting the New England manufactures, and the State of Vermont owes to him the collection and arrangement of her Historical Papers.

Many of his books and historical pamphlets like those from Washington's library, found their way through the writer into the library of the British Museum. In February, 1857, some 2000 volumes of Vermont newspapers, 3000 tracts, and many of his valuable historical manuscripts were burnt with the State House at Montpelier, an irreparable loss to himself and to posterity. His widow now possesses about 250 large quarto and folio volumes of historical manuscripts relating to the New Hampshire Grants, to Vermont, and to the Controversy with New York, among which are the Ethan and Ira Allen papers, the papers of the first three Surveyors-general, miscellaneous correspondence, etc. All the rest of his library not otherwise appropriated is included in this Catalogue. In many volumes, will be found his book-plate, comprising the arms of Vermont over his name and address, and these lines:

Legislature. He was no speaker, but generally managed to carry his point by force of native talent and ingenious surprise. At one time the Legislature was at a dead-lock in the appointment of some officer and neither party would yield. The opposition contended that the candidate was not equal to the place. The gentleman from Barnet gained the floor. "Mr Speaker," said he, "may I ask if this candidate is the man who unarmed recently hugged a bear to death." "He is." "Then, sir, I think he is not the man to flinch under any circumstances, he shall have my vote," and amid roars of laughter the candidate was unanimously elected. Years after he generally attended the Legislature, a self-elected member of the Third House. For several years the Third House was regularly organized and held its daily sessions like the other two branches. The printed journals and proceeding are full of wit and humor. Mr Stevens was annually elected chairman of the Committee on Useless Information and Antiquarian Lower. With a mind well stored with wise saws and modern instances he frequently brought down the House by a knack Samson never dreamed of. His occasional reports are said to have drawn crowds and applause. In his historical mousings in garrets, among sequestered hen-coops and old barrels, he chanced to light upon about a bushel of old Continental and State money, redeemed but never properly cancelled. This he called his " Antiquarian Currency," and with it bought in his travels through the country vast numbers of old books, papers, tracts, etc. Educated in the good old school of unswerving integrity and no trowsers-pockets, he could not bear to see the rising generation standing around the stores, the taverns, and the railway stations, wearing whiskers, chewing tobacco, with hands in their breeches. The less hopeless of these youths he delighted to rescue. his pocket-book the writer found the following:

In

$20. BURLINGTON, June 2d, A. D. 1860. In consideration of Twenty Dollars of Antiquarian Money received of my friend Henry Stevens, I promise upon honor to keep my hands out of my trowsers-pockets for the space of two months, except in case of necessity. W. B. RICH.

To the remnants of the library of such a man are added the remainders of the gatherings of years, from all parts of Europe and America, of one of his sons; the whole forming the unique collection brought together and described in this Catalogue. It is hardly fair, however, to call this compound a Library, since it is too miscellaneous, too disintegrated, and too incoherent. But it is just the collection by its dispersion to help fill important gaps in public and private libraries. It is in many respects unlike any other collection ever brought together in this country. The first impulse of a librarian or bibliographer reading the Catalogue, will most likely be to ask, if all this remain, what must have been the library before it was picked? There is scarcely a book herein described that is not deserving of a place in any of our large public libraries; and yet most of the good standard every-day works, such as no library should be without," and which everybody wants, are not here. That is just it. The remainder of a picked library in this country is frequently found to be equivalent to a weeded library. The part left is often the best. The American bibliographers and librarians, with notable exceptions, are gregarious and are inclined to be too imitative, running in grooves. There is the Obadiah Rich groove, the TernauxCompans groove, and the Ander Schiffahrt groove. Books described by these worthies go off like hot cakes, and are found in dozens of libraries, public and private; but it is only the rare cognoscenti, the knowing ones of a thousand, who ferret out the unknown and undescribed books and secure them. One may safely assert that not one quarter of the titles of the books pertaining to the discovery, exploration, and development of our Continent, are recorded in these and other manuals. The very fact that a book of this kind is not so recorded is a sufficient reason why it, like folly, should be shot as it flies.

One often hears librarians and book collectors talk of trash, and sees them, not unfrequently, decline as such the plums of history offered them, because, forsooth, they do not find them described in their own favorite manuals, or because

they are translations, or written in a language they cannot read. Sirs, there is no such thing as trash in our historical literature, or in the historical literature of any language, so far as it relates to America. You may, if you please, apply that disparaging term to a funeral sermon on my grandmother, and I may, if I please, entertain a like opinion of the one on yours; yet both of these documents might very properly be preserved in the public libraries of a nation whose hopes and prospects are backed by its genealogy, its biography, and its history. It is amazing to see how light is the mental pabulum that best nourishes some minds, while others require nothing less hearty than the Novum Organon Baconis. No American probably ever wrote or owned a book so weak but there might be found another American with a mind just strong enough to thrive upon it. With these views the writer unhesitatingly declares his belief that this collection, well suited to varying tastes and capacities, is as nearly exempt from trash as any one probably ever offered by auction to the American public. The collection is miscellaneous and valuable; but the proprietors have no twinges of conscience about breaking it. The books are good ones and generally in good condition, many well bound and some even in extravagant bindings, or they are in a good state for binding — large, clean, and uncut. Some of the books, it is true, are not adapted to the capacities of all collectors, any more than all collectors are fitted to possess some of the books; but the books on an average are probably of as high a quality as the average of the collectors. The proprietors, therefore, on the whole, can with confidence recommend the library (ut vulgo) as one eminently well calculated for dispersion. Incomplete in itself, it will go far towards completing others, and filling up those inconvenient chinks which every earnest student of American history finds in our libraries, and will continue to find until librarians and committees turn over a new leaf, and give their attention to the collection of the true sources of American history, regardless of the language in which they are written, measuring their purchases rather by the capacities

of their purses and shelves than by their knowledge of the subjects. It is proverbial that the better and more conscientious of the American historians break down with their labors before they have collected their materials, or they are driven abroad to mouse out in foreign countries and foreign languages what ought to be at home at their service in the public libraries. It is requiring too much of our historians, besides their reference books and general tools, to oblige them to procure for themselves these thousand-and-one expensive out-of-the-way helps. They should belong to the public, and should be collected rather than the common every-day ones, if all cannot be had.

When it is fairly comprehended by our curators, with their large funds and hungry alcoves, that probably more than five sixths of all the books pertaining to the discovery, exploration, and development of our young Hemisphere born since the Printing-Press, are in the languages of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, and France, it is not unlikely that even committees who cannot read a word of these languages, or librarians who cannot catalogue the books, rather than other Motleys should be driven abroad in search of what ought to be found at home, will venture to buy such books on trust, on the new and growing principle that a public library should lead and not follow the wants of scholars. The narrow remark, hitherto often heard, that Dutch books are not read, and the Portuguese ones never called for, will probably not much longer be repeated by librarians who make any pretensions to the collection of materials of American history. One might as well attempt to write the history of New England without a knowledge of the English language, as a history of New York without the Dutch, or of Brazil without the Portuguese, of Mexico without the Spanish, or Canada without the French. A very considerable proportion of our earliest and best geographical books are in Latin and no other language. Many of our earliest maps are by German geographers; and in order to comprehend their lines and see as they saw, the modern historian must divest himself of his native shackles,