dollars, with an annual payment of two dollars and fifty cents, the trustees have thought it advisable to fix the price for the present, for new shares, at forty dollars, with the same annual payment as before. To descant on the utility of public libraries, on this occasion, would certainly be deemed unnecessary. The facilities they afford to the researches of scientific men, the literary taste and curiosity they have a tendency to excite in the minds of ingenuous and aspiring youth, and the asylum they offer, from the ravages of accident and time, for the productions of genius and exalted virtue, are circumstances sufficiently obvious to every person of intelligence and reflection. While other cities in the United States can boast of their public libraries, which are every year becoming more extensive and respectable, it would certainly be a mortifying reflection to an enlightened citizen of this flourishing metropolis, to find, upon comparison, that the city of NewYork was holding an inferior rank in this particular; and that possessing all the ordinary advantages and means for the establishment of a large and splendid library, a taste and a regard for literature and science, which always chabacterize a polished and refined community, were unfortunately wanting to realize a plan so conducive to the acquirement and diffusion of useful knowledge. There is but little ground, however, for an apprehension of this kind; and the trustees have every reason to believe, that if the public are satisfied that every exertion and diligence will be used on their part to render the library more complete and respectable, that the means will be cheerfully furnished, in the mode above suggested, to effect so desirable an object. CONTENTS. An Act of the Legislature of the State of New-York, to remove Doubts respecting the Charter, passed An Act of the Legislature to enable the Trustees of the |