S. Mis. 53. 37 



It would show the proportionate attention to the various departments 

 of learnini?. 



It would show, from year to year, llie increase or decrease of interest 

 in particular pursuits. 



It would show the comparative literary fertihty and wealth of differ- 

 ent portions of the country. 



It would sliow the progressive improvements in the subsidiary arts 

 of paper-making, binding, engraving, and so forth. 



All these points possess interest to different classes of inquirers. The 

 wants of all literax}^ investigators sliould be respected, and, as far as 

 possible, supplied. The historian is not less to be provided for than 

 the philosopher, the artist than the statesman. If we had the means, 

 therefore, of forming a complete collection of copyright works, we would 

 reject nothing, not even that which might to ourselves appear utterly 

 trivial, and unworthy of preservation ; for the article which one would 

 reject, might, in coming times, for some reason which could not possi- 

 bly have been foreseen, possess more interest than any other in the 

 collection. 



It is impossible for any man to judge competently of the wants of 

 future generations. It is unsafe to intrust to any one the power of re- 

 jecting works as worthless. Many enHghtened contemporaries of Milton 

 and Newton would have rejected, as worthless, the Paradise Lost and 

 the Principia. Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder of the great library 

 which bears his name— a contemporary of Shakspeare — insisted,' con- 

 trary to the advice of his librarian. Dr. James, in excluding pla3^s and 

 almanacs, and most pamphlets, which he was accustomed to call "riff- 

 raff" and "baggage-books." The Bodleian Library is now paying 

 very high prices lor those books which then might have been procured 

 almost without cost. 



It is stated that one of the libraries in England, to which books were 

 sent by copyright, and which was allowed to select such as were 

 worthy to be retained, rejected, in a single year, The Antiquary ; Mrs. 

 Opie's novels ; one of Wordsworth's odes, and his letter to a friend of 

 Burns; Cobbett's publications; Jameson on Minerals, (second edition,) 

 and the Edinburo^ Medical and SurG:ical .Journal ; The Sieo:c of Co- 

 rinth, and Shelley's Alastor; Lord Brougham's Speech on Agricultural 

 Distress, and McCulloch's Essay on the Natiomd Debt ; Comparative 

 Tables of Commercial Weights ; Beethoven's Musical Compositions, 

 and many other similar works. (See " Copy of a Represcntaiion from 

 the Trustees of the British Museum to the Treasury," March 27, 1846, 

 page 35.) 



There ought, therefore, to be in ever}' country one complete collec- 

 tion of everything pubhshed — one library, where everything printed 

 should be garnered up, and treated as of some importance; for, although 

 in the multitude of libraries everything may be preserved somewhere, 

 yet, from being scattered about, and from there being no one place where 

 the student would be sure of" finding all that he might seek, many books 

 would be practically lost. 



The investigator of the last half century of American histor}'' is now 

 obliged to travel the country through to collect books and- papers for 

 his work. Suppose that everything published in the countr}'' for the 



