42 Mis. No. 48. 



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accumulated. The pages of our literary journals, the eloquent speeches 

 elicited in Congress by the bills to establish the Smithsonian Institution, 

 and the united voices of the friends of good letters throughout the land 

 bear sad and unvarying testimony to our deficiencies. 



Now, to supply these wants, or, in other words, to place American 

 students on a tooting with those of the most favored country of Europe, is 

 the design of the Smithsonian Library. 



We have, as yet, been able to make no purchases, except of those books 

 which were of immediate and indispensable importance to the officers of 

 the Institution, including the Building Committee. It is profoundly to be 

 regretted that we were not in a position to avail ourselves of the extraor- 

 dinary opportunities for the purchase of books which have been offered in 

 Europe during the last eight months. In May or June last, or even later, 

 in September and October, more valuable books could have been purchased, 

 it is said, for five thousand dollars than at ordinary times for fifty thousand. 

 I felt it my duty to lay before the committee, last summer, the facts which 

 I had collected on this subject, and to express the earnest hope that we 

 might be able to profit by the juncture; but the financial arrangemeius of 

 the Board entered into for the purpose of completing the building prevented 

 any immediate appropriation for this purpose. It is gratifying to know, 

 that although this profiting must be lost to us in particular, our country 

 will share in it, through tlie exertions of the gentleman to whom — most 

 fortunately for American scholarship — has been entrusted the task of select- 

 ing and purchasing a large library for our chief city. 



I should deem it hardly necessary at this time to allude to an idle story 

 which was cii'culated about a 57^ear ago, to the purport that the Institution 

 had expended $2,500 for the purchase of an old Bible, valuable principally 

 as a typographical curiosity, were it not that many of our citizens arc not to 

 this day disabused respecting it, and really si'ij)pose that we committed the 

 folly thus imputed to us. No such purchase has been made or contem- 

 plated. On the contrary, I believe that all the officers of the Institution 

 are decidedly opposed to any such expenditure of the fund. We wish 

 books for use and not for the gratification of mere curiosity. 



By a decision of the Regents, the income of the institution, which, after 

 the completion of the building, will amount, it is hoped, to nearly $'40,000 

 per annum, will be permanently divided between two great methods of 

 increasing and diffusing knowledge which had been proposed and dis- 

 cussed; the one by publications and original research, the other by collec- 

 tions in literature, science, and art. The share of money which, in ac- 

 cordance witli this arrangement, will fall to the library, will not be suffici- 

 cient to enable it to meet at once the demands of our expectant scholars. 

 It will be many years before their wishes can be fully gratified; but in the 

 meantime, by a wise expenditure of the funds, and by other assistance 

 which our arrangements provide for, it is hoped that the library will be 

 such as to afford great aid to learning. 



The plan of collecting the library is as follows : 



1. To purchase such books as may be needed by the various officers of 

 the institution, and by persons preparing memoirs and reports for our 

 publications, or engaged in researclies under the direction of the Secretary. 



2. To procure such works as may be required to render the institution 

 a centre of bibliographical reference. 



3. To procure a complete collection of the memoirs and transactions of 

 learned societies throughout the world, and an entire series of the most 



