interest of $200,000; and here is an annual interest of $30,000, of which thus far I have provided for an expenditure of some $5000 only. What will you do with the rest?

It is easy to waste this money; it is easy to squander it in jobs, salaries, quackeries; it is easy, even under the forms of utility, to disperse and dissipate it in little rills and drops, imperceptible to all human sense, carrying it off by an insensible and ineffectual evaporation. But, Sir, I take it that we all earnestly desire I am sure the Senator from Ohio does so so to dispense it as to make it tell. I am sure we all desire to see it, instead of being carried off invisibly and wastefully, embody itself in some form, some exponent of civilization, permanent, palpable, conspicuous, useful. And to this end it has seemed to me, upon the most mature reflection, that we cannot do a safer, surer, more unexceptionable thing with the income, or with a portion of the income, perhaps $20,000 a year for a few years, -than to expend it in accumulating a grand and noble public library, one which, for variety, extent, and wealth, shall be, and be confessed to be, equal to any now in the world.

I say for a few years; twenty thousand dollars a year, for twenty-five years, are five hundred thousand dollars; and five hundred thousand dollars discreetly expended, not by a bibliomaniac, but by a man of sense and reading, thoroughly instructed in bibliography, would go far, very far, towards the purchase of nearly as good a library as Europe can boast. I mean a library of printed books, as distinct from manuscripts. Of course such a sum would not purchase the number of books which some old libraries are reported to contain. It would not buy the seven hundred thousand of the Royal Library at Paris, the largest in the world; not the five hundred thousand or six hundred thousand of that of Munich, the largest in Germany; not the three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand of those of Vienna and St. Petersburg, and the Vatican at Rome, and Copenhagen, and the Bodleian at Oxford. But mere numbers of volumes afford a very imperfect criterion of value. Those old libraries have been so long in collecting, accident and donation, which could not be rejected, have contributed so much to them, a general and indiscriminate system of accumulation

gathers up, necessarily, so much trash; there are so many duplicates and quadruplicates, and so many books and editions which become superseded, that mere bulk and mere original cost must not terrify us. Ponderantur non numerantur. Accordingly the library of the University at Gottingen, consisting of perhaps two hundred thousand volumes, but well chosen, selected for the most part, within a century, and to a considerable extent by a single great scholar [Heyne], is perhaps today as valuable a collection of printed books as any in the world. Towards the accumulation of such a library, the expenditure of two thirds of this income for a quarter of a century would make, let me say, a magnificent advance. And such a step taken, we should never leave the work unfinished; yet when it should be finished, and your library should rival anything which civilization has ever had to show, there would still be the whole principal of your fund unexpended, yielding its income forever, for new and varying application for increasing and diffusing knowledge in the world.

[Mr. Choate here read a letter of Professor Torry of Burlington, showing at what reduced prices valuable books may now be purchased.]

I hesitate, from an apprehension of being accused of entering too far into a kind of dissertation unsuited to this assembly of men of business, to suggest and press one half the considerations which satisfy my mind of the propriety of this mode of expenditure. Nobody can doubt, I think, that it comes within the terms and spirit of the trust. That directs us to "increase and diffuse knowledge among men." And do not the judgments of all the wise, does not the experience of all enlightened, States, does not the whole history of civilization, concur to declare that a various and ample library is one of the surest, most constant, most permanent, and most economical instrumentalities to increase and diffuse knowledge? There, it would be durable as liberty, durable as the Union,— a vast storehouse, a vast treasury, of all the facts which make up the history of man and of nature, so far as that history has been written; of all the truths which the inquiries and experiences of all the races and ages have found out; of all the opinions that have been promulgated; of all the emotions, images, sentiments, examples of all the richest and most in

structive literatures; the whole past speaking to the present and the future; a silent yet wise and eloquent teacher, dead, yet speaking; not dead! for Milton has told us that a "good book is not absolutely a dead thing, the precious life-blood rather of a master-spirit; a seasoned life of man embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." Is not that an admirable instrumentality to increase and diffuse knowledge among men? It would place within the reach of our mind, of our thinkers and investigators and scholars, all, or the chief, intellectual and literary materials and food and instruments now within the reach of the cultivated foreign mind; and the effect would be to increase the amount of individual acquisition, and multiply the number of the learned. It would raise the standard of our scholarship, improve our style of investigation, and communicate an impulse to our educated and to the general mind. There is no library now in this country, I suppose, containing over fifty thousand volumes. Many there are containing less. But, from the nature of the case, all have the same works; so that I do not know, that of all the printed books in the world, we have in this country more than fifty thousand different works. The consequence has been felt and lamented by all our authors and all our scholars. It has been often said that Gibbon's history could not have been written here for want of books. I suppose that Hallam's "Middle Ages" and his "Introduction to the Literature of Europe" could not. Irving's "Columbus " was written in Spain. Wheaton's "Northmen was prepared to be written in Copenhagen. See how this inadequate supply operates. An American mind kindles with a subject; it enters on an investigation with a spirit and with an ability worthy of the most splendid achievement; goes a little way, finds that a dozen books, one book perhaps, is indispensable, which cannot be found this side of Gottingen or Oxford; it tires of the pursuit, or abandons it altogether, or substitutes some shallow conjecture for a deep and accurate research, and there an end. Let me refer to a passage or two of the complaints of studious men on this subject:

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"An extensive library, answering to the wants of literary men who are to use it, is essential to the public and effectual promotion of learning. In this country the want of large libraries is a serious discouragement of

superior attainments and accurate researches in almost every walk of study. The time necessary for reading or examining a particular book is often consumed in attempts to discover or obtain it; and frequently, after every effort, it cannot be procured. We are obliged to give over our inquiries on subjects where we would arrive at fulness and exactness in our knowledge, because destitute of the assistance which the learned, in the same track of study, have furnished, or to continue them under the disadvantage of ignorance respecting what has been done by others. Thus, we are liable to be occupied in solving difficulties which have been already cleared, discussing questions which have been already decided, and digging in mines of literature which former ages have exhausted. Every one who has been in the way of pursuing any branch of study in our country beyond the mere elements, or the polite and popular literature of the time, knows how soon the progress is often arrested for want of books. This is not the case merely with persons of moderate means, who are unable to purchase a library of their own; but it is a want felt under the most favorable circumstances.

"It is also of great importance that the library of a university should not only be good, but very good,— ample, munificent; a deposit of the world's knowledge. It is a grievous thing to be stopped short in the midst of an inquiry for perhaps the very book that throws most light upon it; and the progress of learning must be small indeed among us, so long as the student must send across the Atlantic at every turn for the necessary aids to his pursuits. It is not with us as it is in Europe, where very many large libraries exist, and where what is not contained in one may be found in another; and the learned are able to aid each other's labors, by furnishing mutually, as desired, extracts and references to such books as may exist at one place and fail at another. To say nothing of our two best libraries being remote from each other and from many parts of the country, they are themselves, of course, inadequate. In making one tolerably complete department expressly chosen for that, and entirely devoted to it, we might easily comprise the amount of books in our largest collection. When it is added that the libraries mentioned are miscellaneous, their number of books small, as the sum total is scattered over all the parts of knowledge, and many introduced by separate contributions without mutual reference to each other, it is obvious that, comparatively speaking, the best must be extremely defective." — North American Review, vol. viii. p. 192.

materials for an Take even the

"What public library in this country contains the accurate history of any one department of science? most limited, or rather one of the most recent of all, the science of political economy. Here, our researches are confined to one definite period. We have no dusty archives to explore, no time-worn manuscripts to decipher. The origin of the science is within the memory of our fathers, and we ourselves have witnessed its sudden growth and rapid development. Yet how much is to be done, how many authorities to be weighed, how many different treatises to be analyzed and compared, before we can venture to say, Here is the history; for such was the rise, such the progress, such the changes of opinions, such the received and such the rejected theories of political economy! The writers of the

first French school, of the Scotch school (and if we wish for history, we must go beyond the publication of Adam Smith's great work), the Italian, the new French, and the new English schools, all have not merely a claim upon our attention, but are entitled to a full and accurate examination. And even then our task would be incomplete; for literary justice would require us to trace, through the works of general political writers, the hints and remarks which have contributed to the progress of the branch we are studying, by the discovery of truth or by the exposition of error. If such be the obligation of the student whose researches are confined to a subject so new, what must be the necessities of the historian who attempts to throw light upon those periods for which the testimony of printed authorities is to be confronted with that of manuscripts and public documents, and where ignorance and prejudice have combined with the more powerful incentives of interest to perplex his path by contradictory statements and conflicting opinions!

"Books are needed, not confined to any single branch, but embracing the whole range of science and of literature, which shall supply the means of every species of research and inquiry, and which, placed within reach of all, shall leave idleness no excuse for the lightness of its labors, and poverty no obstacles which industry may not surmount.

"Whoever reflects, though but for a moment, upon the numerous branches into which modern literature runs, and remembers that the literary glory of a nation can only be secured by a certain degree of success in each of them whoever considers the immense mass of varied materials without which no historical work of importance can be composed, or the extensive learning which is required of even the most gifted genius of an age like ours, and adds to these considerations the general and undeniable fact that of those who would gladly devote themselves to literature, but a few can ever hope to obtain by their own resources the command of the works that are essential to the successful prosecution of their studies, will be ready to acknowledge that we have, as yet, done but a small part of what may be justly claimed from a nation which aspires to the first rank for the liberality and politeness, and high moral tone of its civilization. Late, however, as we are to begin, scarce anything in this department has been accomplished in Europe which might not be done with equal success in America. And so numerous and manifest are our advantages in some important particulars, that a prompt will and sound judgment in the execution of it might, in the course of a very few years, render the American student nearly independent of those vast collections which, in Europe have required centuries for their formation. The undertaking, however, in order to be successful, should be a national one. Without arguing that no State is fully equal to it, or that in the bounds of any single State it would not answer the same purpose, we may be permitted to say that the enlargement of the library of congress upon those broad principles, the application of which to the collection of books has become a difficult and important art, would reflect an honor upon the country equal to the permanent advantages which it would secure to every member of the community." — North American Review, vol. xlv. p. 137.