Note 81 — PART I. AMERICANA IN LIBRARIES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES.

The first sale—there are to be four—took place in March, 1878, and illustrated a new device in testamentary bequests. Mr. Brinley devised to certain libraries the sum of several thousand dollars each, to be used to their credit for purchases made at the public sale of his books. The result was a competition that carried the aggregate of the sales, it is computed, as much beyond the sum which might otherwise have been obtained, as was the amount devised,—thus impairing in no degree the estate for the heirs, and securing credit for public bequests. The scheme has been followed in the sale of the library (the third part of which was Americana, largely from the Menzies library) of the late J. J. Cooke, of Providence, with an equivalent appreciation of the prices of the books. It is a question if the interests of the libraries benefited are advanced by such artificial stimulation of prices, which a factitious competition helps to make permanent.