A special Fourth of July treat awaits New Yorkers at the New York Public Library, where from today through August 4 we may view one of only two known “fair copies” of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand. The copy is from the library’s own awe-inspiring collection, but as its exhibition in the compact and lovely Wachenheim Gallery, on the first floor, with its subdued lighting, indicates, the document’s fragility forecloses all but its most occasional display.

As our nation’s founding documents go, New Yorkers may be excused for feeling closer to the Constitution, written in part by one of our own, Gouverneur Morris, and the Federalist Papers, the bulk of them written by New Yorker Alexander Hamilton. The declaration, by contrast, came from Jefferson, a Virginian who scorned New York. He described our city as “a cloacina of all the depravities of human nature.” And he meant that in a bad way. He strove tirelessly to relocate the capital from New York. He envisioned a capital city to rise ex nihilo from the swampy, mosquito-infested banks of the Potomac River.

The declaration’s public declamation on the Commons (today’s City Hall Park) incited a mob to race down Broadway to Bowling Green, where an equestrian statue of George III stood. The mob toppled the statue, the molten lead from which, according to legend, formed some 40,000 musket balls. The black iron fence surrounding Bowling Green stands as our city’s commemoration of the declaration: It’s the very fence the mob broke through on July 9, 1776 — minus the iron crowns the mob knocked from the fence posts.

It’s unlikely that any of us shall be similarly incited by the library’s current exhibit. The genius of our founding documents lay in the stability they conferred upon a nation now 231 years old. But if you want to catch some revolutionary fever, then go to the library, where you may see not only the declaration but also “From Revolution to Republic in Prints and Drawings,” reviewed here already, which remains through July 7. Be sure to look at Franz Xaver Habermann’s colored etching “The Destruction of the Royal Statue in New York.” When the German artist heard of George’s toppling, he sought to render the scene. Alas, he had no earthly idea what New York looked like, and he also imagined that we revolutionary New Yorkers had our African slaves do the actual toppling. Wrong in every detail, nonetheless the etching reminds us that the declaration of Independence once combined with New York City to form a powerful image for widespread trans-Atlantic consumption. The visitor to the library’s exhibits may find rewarding a trip down to Bowling Green to run his hand over the jagged tops of the fence posts where the iron crowns got knocked off. July 4, after all, should be less about barbecues and beaches than about reflection on who we are as a nation.

The library’s copy of the declaration includes Jefferson’s underlinings of passages that the Continental Congress, contrary to his wishes, excised from the final document. The exhibition also includes copies of the first Philadelphia and New York printings of the declaration presented to the Continental Congress, copies of the earliest newspaper printings (from the Pennsylvania Gazette of July 10, 1776), a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Washington, and a short film on the declaration.

The library, ever full of treats and surprises, also shows us a founding document of a different kind: a Gutenberg Bible. Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of movable type printing, produced about 180 copies of the Bible in the 1450s. Forty-eight intact copies are known to exist. The library’s comes from the collection of James Lenox. A legendary New York bibliophile, Lenox’s library formed, with the Astor Library, the core of the new New York Public Library in the 1890s. Several Gutenberg Bibles made their way to New York, but Lenox’s arrived first, in 1847. (J.P. Morgan purchased the one in his eponymous library in 1896.) The library tells us that, on orders, the agents at the Custom House, then on Wall Street, in the building that is now Federal Hall National Memorial, removed their hats upon seeing the Bible. I hope visitors to the Edna Barnes Salomon Room, on the library’s third floor, where the Bible is on display, do the same. They may also wish to tip their hats to Mr. Lenox, who looks out at us from a fine Daniel Huntington portrait on the wall in the north stairwell, off the library’s Astor Court.

One marvels at the quality and vibrancy of Gutenberg’s printing after more than 500 years. While visitors cannot examine the library’s Bible page by page, they may so examine — digitally — a similar Gutenberg Bible at the University of Texas’s extraordinary Web site dedicated to Gutenberg (http://tinyurl.com/hvyc).

Declaration until August 5, Bible until August 31 (Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, 212-592-7730).