speaking-not dead! for Milton has told us that a "good book is not absolutely a dead thing-the precious lifeblood 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" 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 are indispensable, which cannot be found this side of Göttingen or Ox

ford; it tires of the pursuit, or abandons it altogether, or substitutes some shallow conjecture for a deep and accurate research. And there is the end!

Now there are very many among us, and every day we shall have more, who would feelingly adopt this language. Place within their reach the helps that guide the genius and labors of Germany and England and let the genius and labors of Germany and England look to themselves! Our learned men would grow more learned and more able; our studies deeper and wider; our mind itself exercised and sharpened; the whole culture of the community raised and enriched. This is, indeed, to increase and diffuse knowledge among men.

If the terms of the trust, then, authorize this expenditure, why not make it? Not among the principal, nor yet the least of reasons for doing so, is, that all the while you are laying out your money, and when you have laid it out, you have the money's worth, the value received, the property purchased, on hand, to show for itself and to speak for itself. Suppose the professors provided for in the bill should gather a little circle of pupils, each of whom should carry off with him some small quotient of navigation or horticulture, or rural economy, and the fund should thus glide away and evaporate in such insensible, inappreciable appropriations, how little there would be to testify of it! Whereas here, all the while, are the books; here is the value; here is the visible property; here is the oil, and here is the light. There is something to point to, if you should be asked to account for it unexpectedly; and something to point to, if a traveller should taunt you with the collections which he has seen abroad, and which gild and recommend the absolutisms of Vienna or St. Petersburg.

Another reason, not of the strongest, to be sure, for this mode of expenditure, is that it creates so few jobs and sinecures, so little salaried laziness. There is no room for abuses in it. All that you need is a plain, spacious, fireproof building, a librarian and assistants, an agent to buy your books, and a fire to sit by. For all the rest, he who wants to read goes and ministers to himself. It is an application of money that almost excludes the chances of abuses altogether.

But the decisive argument is, after all, that it is an application the most exactly adapted to the actual literary and scientific wants of the States and the country. I have said that another college is not needed here, because there are enough now, and another might do as much harm as good. But that which is wanted for every college, for the whole country, for every studious person, is a well-chosen library, somewhere among us, of three or four hundred thousand books. Where is such a one to be collected? How is it to be done? Who is to do it? Of the hundred and fifty colleges, more or less, distributed over the country, one has a library of perhaps fifty thousand volumes; others have good ones, though less; others smaller and smaller, down to scarcely anything. With one voice they unite, teacher and pupil, with every scholar and thinker, in proclaiming the want of more. But where are they to come from? No State is likely to lay a tax to create a college library, or a city library. No deathbed gift of the rich can be expected to do it. How, then, is this one grand want of learning to be relieved? It can be done by you and by you only. By a providential occurrence, it is not only placed within your constitutional power, but it has become your duty; you have pledged your faith; you have engaged to the dead

and living that, without the charge of one dollar on the people, you will meet the universal and urgent demand by the precise and adequate supply. By such a library as you can collect here, something will be done, much will be done, to help every college, every school, every studious man, every writer and thinker in the country to just what is wanted most. Inquirers after truth may come here and search for it. It will do them no harm at all to pass a few studious weeks among these scenes. Having pushed their investigations as far as they may at home, and ascertained just what, and how much more, of helps they require, let them come hither and find it. Let them replenish themselves, and then go back and make distribution among the people! Let it be so that

"Hither as to their fountains other stars

Repairing, in their golden urns, draw light.”

I have no objection at all—I should rejoice rather-to see the literary representatives of an instructed people come hither, not merely for the larger legislation and jurisprudence, but for the rarer and higher knowledge. I am quite willing, not only that our "Amphictyonic Council" should sit here, but that it should find itself among some such scenes and influences as surrounded that old renowned assembly; the fountain of purer waters than those of Castalia; the temple and the oracle of our Apollo! It will do good to have your educated men come to Washington for what has heretofore cost voyages to Germany. They will be of all parts of the country. They will become acquainted with each other. They will contract friendships and mutual regards. They will go away not only better scholars, but better Unionists. Some one has said that a great library

molds all minds into one Republic. It might, in a sense of which he little dreamed, help to keep ours together.

I have intimated, Mr. President, a doubt whether a college or university of any description, even the highest, should be at present established here. But let it be considered by the enlightened friends of that object, if such there are, that even if your single purpose were to create such a university, you could possibly begin in no way so judiciously as by collecting a great library. Useful in the other modes which I have indicated, to a university it is everything. It is as needful as the soul to the body. While you are doubting, then, what to do, what you will have, you can do nothing so properly as to begin to be accumulating the books which you will require on whatever permanent plan of application you at last determine.

I do not expect to hear it said in this assembly that this expenditure for a library will benefit a few only, not the mass; that it is exclusive, and of the nature of monopoly. It is to be remembered that this fund is a gift; that we take it just as it is given; and that by its terms it must be disbursed here. Any possible administration of it, therefore, is exposed to the cavil that all cannot directly, and literally, and equally partake of it. How many and of what classes of youth from Louisiana, or Illinois, or New England, for example, can attend the lectures of your professor of astronomy? But I say it is a positive and important argument for the mode of application which I urge, that it is so diffusive. Think of the large absolute numbers of those who, in the succession of years will come and partake directly of these stores of truth and knowledge! Think of the numbers without number who, through them, who by them indirectly, will partake of the same stores! Studious