38 Mis. No. 48. 



At various times strong- efforts have been made for its improvement. At 

 length tlie munificent bequest of a foreigner, placed at the disposal of 

 Congress, furnished the means of meeting this, among other demands 

 of science and letters. In the act of Congress establishing the Smithsonian 

 Institution, and in the acts of the Board of Regents for the organization of 

 the same, a large public library forms a prominent feature. 



It has been supposed by some, not acquainted with researches requiring 

 many books, that very large libraries are superfluous. They calculate, 

 perhaps, how many books a man can read in a long life, and ask what 

 can be the use of more. Nay, evep many men fond of reading feel like an 

 Enghsh writer of some note, who describes his pain as amounting to 

 " midsummer madness" when he entered a large library and reflected how 

 small a number of all the books it contained he could read through. 



'^ In my youthful days," says De Q,uincey, " I never entered a great 

 library, say of 100,000 volumes, but my predominant feeling was one of 

 pain and disturbance of mind, not much unlike that which drew tears from 

 Xerxes, on reviewing his immense army, and reflectmg that in 100 years 

 no one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect to the books, the 

 same effect would be brought about by my death. Here, said I, are 

 100,000 books, the worst of l hem capable of giving nie some pleasure and 

 instruction, and before I can have had time to extract the honey from one- 

 twentieth of this hive, in all likelihood I shall be summoned away." 



" Now 1 have been told by an eminent English author, that with res- 

 pect to one single work, viz: the History of Thuanus, a calculation has 

 been made by a Portuguese monk, whicli showed that barely, to read over 

 the works, and allowing no time for reflection, would require three years 

 labor at the rate of, I think, three hours a day. Further, I had myself 

 ascertained that to read a duodecimo volume in prose of four hundred 

 pages, all skipping being barred, and the rapid reading which belongs to 

 the vulgar interest of a novel, was a very suflicient work for one day. 

 Consequently 365 per annum, that is with a very small allowance for the 

 claims of life on one's own account, and on that of one's friends, one thou- 

 sand for every triennium, that is ten thousand in thirty years, will be 

 as much as a man who lives for that only can hope to accomplish. From 

 the age of twenty to eighty, the utmost he could hope to travel through 

 would be twenty thousand volumes, a number not, perhaps, above five 

 per cent, of what the mere current literature of Europe would accumulate 

 in that period of years." 



Now, supposing for a n^oment that there were no other use to be made 

 of books but the reading of them through at so many pages the hour, one 

 would think it might have occured to this writer that there are among the 

 frequenters of a large library a great variety of men, with a wide diversity 

 of niterests, tastes and pursuits; that tliough each might not be able to read 

 through more than two thousand books — one-tenth part of the supposed 

 number — still fifty men, whose reading was in diffierent directions, might 

 call for a hundred thousand. 



But apart from this consideration, and above it, is another of far more 

 importance to the scholar. It is that this view of the use to be made of a 

 large collection of books is founded upon an utter misapprehension of the 

 relation of books and libraries to learning. 



There are three uses to be made of books by those v/ho understand theifr 

 value. 



