President, Hon. JOHN BIGELOW.

First Vice-President, Rt. Rev. HENRY C. POTTER, D. D.

Second Vice-President, JOHN S. KENNEDY, Esq.

Secretary, GEORGE L. RIVES, Esq., 32 Nassau Street.

Treasurer, EDWARD KING, Esq., Union Trust Company, 80 Broadway.
Director, JOHN S. BILLINGS, LL.D., 40 Lafayette Place.

THE

REGULATIONS

HE Astor Building, 40 Lafayette Place, and the Lenox Building, Fifth Avenue and 70th Street, are open daily, excepting on Sundays, Independence Day, Christmas, and New Year, from 9 A. M. until 6 P. M.

The Reading rooms and the Exhibition rooms are free to all persons; but children under the age of fifteen years must be accompanied by an adult.

In the Reading room of each Library Building certain shelves are set apart for books of reference, which readers are allowed to take down and examine at their pleasure. For all other books an application must be made by filling out and signing one of the blanks provided for the purpose.

Published monthly by The New York Public Library, No. 40 Lafayette Place, New York City

Subscription One Dollar a year, single numbers Ten Cents. Subscriptions may be sent to I. Ferris Lockwood, Business Superintendent, No. 40 Lafayette Place, New York.

Entered as second-class matter at the New York, N. Y., Post Office, January 30, 1897

During the month of November there were received at the Library by purchase 389 books and 159 pamphlets, and by gift 1,022 books, 2,007 pamphlets, and 121 maps.

There were catalogued 5,290 volumes and 3,497 pamphlets, for which purpose 25,888 cards and 1,179 slips for the printer were written.

The following table shows the number of readers and the number of volumes consulted in both the Astor and Lenox branches of the Library during the month:

Among the important gifts received this month were, from Andrew H. Green, 52 volumes and 401 pamphlets, including several drafts of preliminary proceedings of the State Constitutional Convention, etc.; from F. A. Sorge, 71 volumes of documents, 106 pamphlets and a large number of newspapers, which included more or less complete files of over 150 publications, all relating to socialism; from Mrs. Henry Draper, 6 volumes of Russian music published in St. Petersburg, 1851 and 1864, containing 241 different compositions, mostly songs and ballads of Russian composers who flourished during the first half of this century; from Alexander Maitland, 12 volumes and 12 pamphlets, being a collection of Scotch music; from Lord Crawford, 3 volumes containing reproductions of ancient maps of the world with descriptions; from the Minister of the Interior, Holland, I volume relating to the National Museum of Amsterdam, and from the Director of Posts and Telegraphs of the Argentine Republic, 1 large map of the postal and telegraphic facilities of the Argentine Republic and Uruguay.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ON KEATS.

MY DEAR SIR,

(From the original manuscript in the New York Public Library.)

BOSTON, Dec. 5. 1841.

I address you rather than your brother editor, because I judge that the poetical department of Arcturus is more especially under your charge. I have to thank you for your sympathizing notice of my verses last spring. I thought then that you might like to have a contribution occasionally from me, but other engagements which it were tedious to specify hindered me from doing what my sympathy with the aims of your magazine dictated. I subscribed for your Arcturus before I had seen a number of it (though I can ill afford many such indulgences of taste) because I liked the spirit of your prospectus. For the same reason I sent you my volume of which I sent but a bare halfdozen to "the press "--because I despise our system of literary puffing. Your notice of Keats, in the number for this month, a poet whom I especially love & whom I consider to be one of the true old Titan brood-made me wish to see two of my own sonnets enshrined in the same volume. One of them you will see is addressed to the same 'marvellous day.' I cannot help thinking that you will like both of them.—

In your "News Gong" I see that you suggest a reprint of Tennyson. I wish you would say in your next that he is about to reprint a new & correct edition of his poems with many new ones which will appear in a few months. I think it would be a pity to reprint his poems at all-for he is poor & that would deprive him of what little profit he might make by their sale in this country-especially would it be wrong to reprint an incorrect edition. (Moxon will be his publisher)

I do not wish you to state your authority for this-but you may depend on it, for my authority is the poet himself. I have the great satisfaction of thinking that the publication is in some measure owing to myself, for it was by my means that he was written to about it, & he says that "his American friends" are the chief cause of his reprinting.

Wishing you all success in the cause of true & good literature

I remain your friend

J. R. LOWELL.

SONNET.

TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS.

Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room
Uplifting me with thy vast, quiet eyes,

On whose full orbs with kindly lustre lies
The twilight warmth of ruddy ember-gloom;

Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sudden bloom

Of hope secure to him who lonely cries
Wrestling with the young poet's agonies-
Neglect & scorn which seem a certain doom:

Yes the few words which, like huge thunderdrops,
Thy large heart down to earth shook doubtfully,
Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might,-
Serene & pure, like gushing joy of light,
Shall track the eternal chords of Destiny
After the moonled pulse of ocean stops.

SONNET-SUNSET & MOONSHINE.

The sunset hath a glory for the Soul,
Uplifting it from all earth's things apart
And building it a palace of pure Art
Where it doth sit alone in crown'd controul
And o'er all space its eyes unscaled roll;
But the dear moonshine looks in on the heart,
Giving each kindly blood-drop warmer start,
And knits me with humanity's great whole;
It doth not bear me, as the sunset doth,
Forth of the city, but on dull brick walls,
Silvery smileth, as 'twere nothing loath

To sanctify all that whereon it falls,

And with it my full heart grows forth & broods
In love o'er all life's sleeping multitudes.

[Postscript:] I said that you would like them.

[Addressed:]

For

EVERT A. DUYCKINCK Esq

New York City-
N. Y.—

TECHNICAL PERIODICALS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY.

PART II. J-Z.