144 LECTURES. 



for the same reasons, because it is so very necessary to do sometliing 

 s quickly as possible for the maps. 



It is sad to think, that of all these reasonable and useful proposi- 

 tions not one has been successful. Nevertheless, this want of success 

 cannot prevent it from being brought forward, if necessary, again and 

 again, until at length the time shall arrive when, all minds being 

 prepared for it, the question will be carried unanimously. 



Still, it is highly desirable, for various reasons, that the thing 

 should be done at once. Destructive time is continually at work, and 

 the gradual but never-ceasing progress of decay bereaves us daily of 

 the most valuable documents, which can never be replaced. A hun- 

 dred, nay, fifty years ago, we had still many of these treasures left, 

 which, by carelessness and inattention, are now lost to the world. 

 Even the early maps of these very young States are sometimes of the 

 greatest rarity ; and the first surveys of counties which were organ- 

 ized within the memory of people still living are, in some cases, no 

 longer extant. 



Besides the rapid diminution of the number of documents, the grow- 

 ing taste for collecting them makes them daily less accessible by en- 

 hancing their price. Rare old books, tracts, and maps, formerly but 

 little cared for except by a few amateurs, are now sold in Paris for 

 five and ten times the price which they brought twenty or thirty 

 years ago. Any one who has been at all attentive to the movements 

 of the literary market will have observed the same phenomenon in 

 London, in Germany, and in other countries. 



This general increase in the price of historical documents has, how- 

 ever, been in no department so enormous and striking as in that 

 which relates to the history of America, probably because American 

 books, tracts, and maps, as the records and monuments of mere colo- 

 nies, were formerly the least esteemed of any, and because, in conse- 

 quence of the transformation of those colonies to first-rate independent 

 powers, they are now found to be of the highest importance. Nearly 

 every new catalogue or report of a booksellers' auction gives us new 

 proofs of this fact. 



A work by one of this first American missionaries — the celebrated 

 Eliot — which a few years ago could be bought for a trifle, produced 

 recently at an auction in the city of New York the sum of two hun- 

 dred dollars. A Spanish manuscript map of America, which the dis- 

 tinguished Baron de Walckenaer purchased for a small sum at the 

 beginning of this century, was contended for at his death by different 

 nations, and at last sold to the Spanish government at a price exceed- 

 ing two hundred pounds. 



Such facts, of which numberless instances might be given, speak a 

 clear language. And we cannot yet see where this movement will 

 stop. It will, no doubt, go on until old American documents and 

 maps become scarce and valuable as the most precious gems. We 

 thus find ourselves in the position of the famous Roman king. Time, 

 like the sybil of the ancient story, destroys each year more of these 

 venerable leaves, and, while thus diminishing the number to be di^ 

 posed of, enormously enhances their price. 



Besides the fearfully augmenting scarcity of old American docii- 



