pointed Commissioners "to investigate the subject, and to make report of their doings, and in what manner the claims of said Trustees can or ought to be adjusted and determined."

The tenants "state, that, having long considered their lands discharged from the payment of the rent, it has been the common practice among them for more than thirty years, to make no distinction between the common land and leased land, either in devising it by will, making partition among the heirs, or in buying, selling, or exchanging. And, in their conveyances, general covenants and warranties against incumbrances have been inserted, as well with regard to the leased lands as to lands never liable to the said rent-charge. And they assert, that it is now utterly impossible to distinguish the portion, which was originally subject to the said rent from that which was not."

To understand this fully, it is necessary to observe, that all the lands over 12,500 acres had been originally reserved for commons; but, by the act of 1741, they were granted by the Trustees to the tenants, "who proceeded to make a division thereof among themselves, from time to time according to their respective interests." 1

The Commisioners, who were the Hon. Solomon Strong of Leominster, and the Hon. Nathan Brooks of Concord, reported in June, 1830, that, under all the circumstances, it would be advisable for the Trustees to relinquish one third part of the rent, and for the Legislature to pay two thirds.

The report was referred to

the next session of the General Court. 2

1 Report to the House of Representatives, March 2, 1830.

2 Records of the Trustees and General Court. Pickering's Reports,

VII. pp. 121, 132.

The whole annual rent now claimed by the Trustees is 666 dollars and 66 cents. The whole rent also from the 25th of March 1823, remains unpaid. Independent of this interest in Hopkinton and Upton, there is a fund of nearly $20,000, resulting from a gradual accumulation of sums unexpended at different times, and judiciously managed by the Trustees. 1

[The history of the Hopkins fund, since the decease of the author, is contained in the following statement, furnished by the Treasurer of the Trustees.

"The report of the Commissioners, made in June, 1830, having been finally rejected by the Legislature in 1831, the tenants presented a new petition, in January, 1832, strongly urging their claims on the justice of the government. This appeal was more successful than those which had been made by the Trustees to former legislatures; and on the 23d of March, 1832, a resolve was passed, authorizing the payment of eight thousand dollars to the Trustees, from the treasury of the State, upon condition that the tenants should raise such further sum, as the Trustees should consent to accept, together with the eight thousand dollars, in full discharge of all claims in law or equity against the Commonwealth, and against the tenants. An arrangement was afterwards made, by which the Trustees consented to receive from the tenants two thousand dollars, in addition to the grant by the legislature. That sum was received of the tenants by the Treasurer of the Trustees, on the 4th of October, 1832, and the sum granted by the State, on the 21st of November following; and full releases were executed to the Commonwealth and the tenants by the Trustees.

"Thus was finally terminated a controversy, which seemed to threaten endless litigation, and very deplorable consequences both to the tenants and to the trust.

"After the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court, that the Trustees must seek their remedy against the tenants, a large number of actions were instituted for the recovery of the rents. These had been pending about six years. The Trustees had been obliged to prepare, with almost incredible difficulty and labor, a map of the lands, and a chain of title to each parcel for more than a century, from very scanty and imperfect materials. Several expensive trials were had; and the whole charge necessarily incurred by the Trustees, in preserving this portion of the fund committed to their care, exceeded two thousand five hundred dollars." EDIT.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE Library was now become, for that period, a very respectable establishment. Besides the donations already mentioned, it had received additions from numerous individuals; among whom were the Rev. Dr. Isaac Watts, the Rev. Joseph Henry, the Rev. Richard Baxter, the Rev. Peter Bulkley, the Rev. James Peirce, President Mather, and Dr. Benjamin Colman. The first Catalogue of the books was printed in 1723. It is still extant, and contains about 3500 volumes, arranged under the very common, but unscientific and inconvenient heads, of folios, quartos, octavos, &c.

Considerable additions had been made to the library since the time, when that devourer of books, Cotton Mather, expressed himself concerning it in the following

manner:

"'T is, I suppose, the best furnished that can be shown any where in all the American regions; and when I have the honor to walk in it, I cannot but think on the satisfaction, which Heinsius reports himself to be filled withal, when shut up in the library at Leyden : 'Plerumque in eâ simulac pedem posui, foribus pessulum obdo, et in ipso Eternitatis gremio, inter tot illustres animas sedem mihi sumo; cum ingenti quidem animo, ut subinde magnatum me misereat, qui fælicitatem hanc ignorant.'"

1

Mather's Magnalia, B. IV. p. 127, fol. ed. printed in London, 1702.

In this collection were to be found the most considerable of the Greek and Latin classics,' the Christian Fathers, the Talmud Babylonicum; many of the most important works of modern times, as the London Polyglott (a Republican copy), Cudworth's Intellectual System, Lightfoot's works, the Histories of Clarendon, Thuanus, &c., some of the works of Erasmus, Descartes, Lord Bacon, Selden, Grotius, Leclerc, Gassendi, Newton, Boyle; the works of Chaucer, Shakspeare's Plays, Milton's Poetical Works; and many others of the first rank in literature and science.

A great proportion of the works, at least two thirds, were theological. 2

Most of them were in the learned languages, principally Latin. There were few in any modern languages, except English. There was a great paucity of works in modern literature. Not one of the productions of Dryden, Sir William Temple, Shaftesbury, Addison, Pope, Swift, or any other of the constellation of fine writers of Queen Anne's reign, or of any of the twentythree years, which had elapsed, of the century, in which the Catalogue was printed.

With few exceptions, the books were printed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The oldest book in that library, whose date is above given, was printed at Strasburg in 1490, and was on the same subject with one, which, till recently, was the oldest in the present library, and which was printed at Venice in 1481. They are commentaries, by different persons, on the work entitled "Sententiarum Libri IV," by Peter Lom

1 It is remarkable that there was no copy of Homer, in the original, among them.

2 Of the present Library scarcely one fourth is of that description.

bard, Bishop of Paris in the twelfth century. In that library there were not less than twenty-four ponderous tomes, all folios but two, on the same work, put forth at different times; and these formed but a small part of the number of commentaries, written by many learned doctors from time to time, on that celebrated production of scholastic theology. Some idea may be formed of the difference between the old library and the present one, from the fact, that the latter contains the single copy above-mentioned. It was written by St. Thomas Aquinas, and is entitled "Super Quarto Libro Sententiarum." fol. Venet. 1481. The old library also contained a copy of the "Book of Sentences" itself, which the present does not.

The oldest book now in the Library is a fine Latin copy of Diogenes Laërtius, printed at Venice, by Nicolas Jenson, in 1475.

Few of the books in the old library, which are not also in the present one, would probably be thought of much value at the present day, except with reference to the history of literature.

"The Library," says Neal in his History of New-England (first printed in 1720), "the Library is very defective in modern authors, which may be one reason why the stile and manner of the New-England writers does not equal that of the Europeans."

The American writer, Cotton Mather, with whom Neal seems to have been most familiar, and from whom he took the greatest part of his history, was, in point of "stile and manner," no very favorable specimen of the New-England authors. That voluminous writer was certainly distinguished for any thing rather than good taste in composition. He was in this respect at least inferior to his father, to Mr. Pemberton, Dr. Col