TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-47. 421 



American soil. Yet the Library of Congress contains not 

 one liundrecl, probably not fifty, volumes in that noble lan- 

 guage. You have none of the numerous writers of the 

 vast empire of Russia, or of Poland ; nothing of the curious 

 literatures of Hungary and Bohemia; only the commonest 

 books in Italian and Spanish; not a volume in the language 

 of Portugal, rich as it is in various literature, and especially 

 in the wild yet true romance of Oriental discovery and con- 

 quest, that comes down to us through the pages of learned 

 De Barros and quaint old Castanheda, ringing upon the ear 

 and stirring the blood like the sound of a far-off trumpet. 

 In the boundless world, too, of Oriental learning, of which 

 our increasing commercial relations with the countries of 

 the East render it highly desirable that we should possess 

 the means of acquiring a knowledge, you have nothing to 

 show but a few translations of the Bible, and perhaps some 

 works of devotion or elementary religious doctrine, which 

 American missionaries have presented you. 



Will it not be admitted that an American library, the 

 national library of a people descended from men of every 

 clime, and blood, and language — a countrj- which throws 

 open its doors as an asjdum for the oppressed of every race 

 and every tongue, should be somewhat more comprehensive 

 in its range ? That it should at least have some represent- 

 atives of every branch of human learning, some memorials 

 of every written tongue that is spoken within its borders ? 



But, even in English literature, our library is sadly mea- 

 gre. How far are we from possessing a tolerably complete 

 series of the English printed books of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries, or even of that best age of English 

 learning, that age with which every honest American most 

 truly sympathizes, the age of Cromwell and of Milton ? 

 Would it not be well to have at our command the means of 

 enabling some diligent scholar to write what has not yet 

 been worthily written, or indeed scarce even attempted, a 

 complete history of the literature of our Anglo-Saxon 

 mother tongue — or to perform that Herculean task, which, 

 in spite of the vaunted but feeble labors of Yfebster, re- 

 mains still to be accomplished, the preparation of a respect- 

 able English dictionary ? 



If there is any department of learning, in which a library 

 selected for the use of the representatives of a democracy 

 should be complete, it is that of history. But what have 

 we of the sources of historical investigation ? Histories 

 indeed we have, but little history. True, we have Robert- 



