8
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
THE LIBRARY OF CALEB CUSHING.
[From the New York Times.]
The late Hon. Caleb Cushing, whose wonderful mental powers were the admiration of all who knew him, gathered about him during his eventful life a collection of books widely differing from those to be found in any other private collection of the same size in this or any other country. To those who saw his library in his own home it externally presented but little attraction. Each volume was plainly and neatly covered with brown paper, and assigned to its place in the plain book-shelves which formed his book-cases, and there was nothing to show whether volumes were bound in the choicest of bindings or the plainest cloth, boards, or even paper covers, for all were clothed in the uniform covering. Himself an indefatigable worker, his books were his tools, and he took especial pains to provide himself with a full and valuable kit in the branches of literary work to which he gave his particular attention. He has the reputation of having been a remarkable linguist; not as a philologist and student of language, but as possessor of a marvelous faculty and aptness for acquiring a language and attaining proficiency in reading its literature. That he was perfectly familiar with French, Spanish (as used in Spain and also in Mexico and the South American provinces), Italian, Portuguese and German, is evident from the number of books in these languages in his collection. In it are to be found not only many first editions of Greek authors, works on Jus gentium in Latin, histories of governments from the famous Elzevir press, but Vattel, Grotius, Ortolan, Guerard, Duplessy, Martens, Pradier-Fodere, Jouffroy, Bello, Picard, Carvalho, Luchesi-Palli, Hautefeuille, Cauchy, Pardessus, Eschbach, Heff, Rocco, Wheaton, Lawrence, Atherdi, Calvo, Pujos, Mackintosh, Proudhon, Cussy, Villiaume, Pacheco, Sclopis, McCulloch, Dumesnil, and a host of other leading authors in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hortuguese, Dutch, etc., on the Law of Nations, International Law, Maritime Law, and kindred topics.
There is a fine collection of early works on the history of Spain, including "La Cronica Hispana," 1495, in black letter, and a full set of "Las Cronicas y Memorias de los Reyes de Castilla," seven volumes, Madrid, 1879-'87. The history of Mexico and the Spanish Provinces is quite fully represented. The collection of books relating to Mexico, its revolutions, and its laws, decrees, and numerous governments, is very
complete, and includes a large number of Mexican pamphlets, and several bound volumes of official newspapers. The South American provinces, Colombia and the Argentine Republic, are also well represented. There are several fine Spanish dictionaries, and also French, German, Portuguese, and Dutch.
Another very interesting feature of the collection is the large number of works relating to China and the Chinese about the time of the English opium war, and subsequently. It may not be generally known that Mr. Cushing was our first minister to China, and that in about one year's time he acquired a sufficient knowledge of the language to negotiate the first treaty between that nation and the United States. In addition to the English works on China referred to, there are Chinese vocabularies and dictionaries, and several hundred Chinese books in their curious, but very neat and compact, folding-cases. These comprise general histories of China, encyclopedias, stories, biographies, statistics of geology and productions, essays, the Sacred Edict, the Four Books, with commentaries, educational books, the Bible in Chinese, etc., many of them in imperial editions and illustrated, probably presented to Mr. Cushing by the Chinese Government. There are two sets of the New Testament in the Mantchoo or Tartar language, with the Imperial Mantchoo Dictionary in Mantchoo and Chinese in forty-four volumes. This is an exceedingly valuable collection of Chinese books, and should find a place en masse in the National Library at Washington, or in some one of our college libraries. In view of the recent arrival of a Chinese professor at Harvard, it would seem eminently fitting that these books should form the nucleus of a Chinese collection in the college library.
There are quite a number of Mr. Cushing's official visiting cards printed in Chinese, with the characters "Ku Shing" on strips of red paper nine and seven-eighths inches in length by four and three-quarters in width, and many of his books have a small book-plate with the same characters below "C. Cushing," in plain Roman caps. Mr. Cushing, while a laborious student, was also a great novel-reader, and hundreds of the best French, Spanish, and Mexican novels, in the originals, give evidence of his method of relaxing his mind from arduous study. Strangely enough, there are no English novels in the whole collection, save four or five of Scott's, one by Disraeli, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin." There is also a very full collection of publications relating