TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, 1843-45. 313 



I say for a few years. Twenty thousand dollars a year, 

 for twenty-five years, are five hundred thousand dollars; 

 and five hundred thousand dollars discreetly expended, not 

 by a bibliomaniac, but by a man of sense and reading, thor- 

 oughly instructed in bibliography, would go far, very tar, 

 towards the purchase of nearly as good a library as Europe 

 can boast. I mean a library of printed books, as distinct 

 from manuscripts. Of course such a sum would not pur- 

 chase the number of books which some old libraries are 

 reported to contain. It would not buy the 700,000 of the 

 Royal Library at Paris, the largest in the world; nor the 

 500,000 or 600,000 of that of Munich, the largest in Ger- 

 many; nor the 300,000, 400,000, or 500,000 of those of 

 Vienna and St. Petersburg, and the Vatican at Rome, and 

 Copenhagen, and the Bodleian at Oxford. But mere num- 

 bers of volumes alFord a very imperfect criterion of value. 

 Those old libraries have been so long in collecting ; acci- 

 dent and donation, which could not be rejected, have con- 

 tributed so much to them, a general and indiscriminate 

 system of accumulation gathers up, necessarily, so much 

 trash ; there so many duplicates and quadruplicates, and so 

 many books and editions which become superseded, that 

 mere bulk and mere original cost must not terrify us. Pon- 

 derantur non numerantur. Accordingly the Library of the 

 University at Gottingen, consisting of perhaps two hundred 

 thousand volumes, but well chosen, selected for the most 

 part, within a century, and to a considerable extent by a 

 single great scholar, (Heyne,) is perhaps to-day as valuable 

 a collection of printed books as any in the world. Towards 

 the accumulation of such a library, the expenditure of 

 two-thirds of this income for a quarter of a century would 

 make, let me say, a magnificent adv^ance. And such a step 

 taken, we should never leave the work unfinished ; yet 

 when it should be finished, and your library should rival 

 anything which civilization has ever had to show, there 

 would still be the whole principal of your fund unexpended, 

 yielding its income forever, for new and varying applica- 

 tions for increasing and diffusing knowledge in the world. 



[Mr. Choate here read a letter of Professor Torrey, of 

 Burlington, showing at ^\hat reduced prices valuable books 

 may now be purchased.] 



I hesitate, from an apprehension of being accused of en- 

 tering too far into a kind of dissertation unsuited to this 

 assembly of men of business, to suggest and press one-half 

 the considerations which satisfy my mind of the propriety 

 of this mode of expenditure. Nobody can doubt, I think, 



