Page 40 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

3 8 II'ISCONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.
within the past year, have I heard the example of the Wisconslra
Historical Society cited and commended. At New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and other points within a,
few months, I have heard of the progress of your society in
language most complimentary to a11 concerned. You have
indeed, accomplished wonders. IZxcelaior is justly your motto."
We will conclude these extracts by a somewhat lengthy quo-
tation from a paper in the New Yo~k Advocafe and Journal, of
Dec. 10,1857, not merely because it contains a flattering notice
of our young Society, but because it conveys some truthful and
mell-expressed views of I-Iistorical Societies generally-and to
which, for convenience, we will insert some headings:
.Princij~al Collections of American Eistory .

"Taking into account our military, commercial, literary, and
religious power, we may be said to have faiily assumed our
rightful historic place only within the past twenty years. And
within this time has been developed the most of onr historic
zeal. Before this period, special agents, commissioned to scour
American and European libraries for documents illustrative of
early American history, had scarcely been thought of; now they
are most common. The paucity of this collected literature may
be better understood from a few words as to its locality and
amount. The appreciation of it will, of course, be found epi-
tomized in the public, society, and private libraries, because the
mass of the book trade only appear as the purchasers of' impor-
ted collections, and afterwards as the media of distribution, but
at no time as the hoarders of it. So far as we can %scertain,
the best collection of autographs, ordinary manuscripts, pam-
phlets, and books, such as in any way refer to the discovery and
settlement of our continent, our colonial history, and the
inception of our Revolution, is to be found in the British Mu-
seum. In this country the largest ingatherings have been
effected by the Nem York Historical Society, the Antiquarian
Society of Worceeter, and Harvard University, and the New
York State Library; the relative value of their collections being