A CHINESE LIBRARY







A CHINESE LIBRARY


The endowment of a Chinese chair at Columbia University naturally
suggests the acquisition of a good Chinese library. At the University of
Cambridge, England, there is what I can only characterise as an ideal
Chinese library. It was not bought off-hand in the market,—such a
collection indeed would never come into the market,—but the books were
patiently and carefully brought together by my predecessor in the
Chinese chair during a period of over forty years' residence in China.
The result is an admirable selection of representative works, always in
good, and sometimes in rare, editions, covering the whole field of what
is most valuable in Chinese literature.

I now propose, with your approval, to give a slight sketch of the
Cambridge Library, in which I spend a portion of almost every day of
my life, and which I further venture to recommend as the type of that
collection which Columbia University should endeavour to place upon
her shelves.

The Chinese library at Cambridge consists of 4304 volumes, roughly
distributed under seven heads. These volumes, it should be stated, are