342 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



purchased now, it in true, much more cheaply; l)ut, on the other hand, 

 the rare old books and curious manuscripts necessary to complete a 

 library of the largest class would raise the average. Assuming, then, 

 the above rate, a rival of the Munich library would cost us a million 

 and a half of dollars; its binding alone would amount to a sum equal 

 to the entire Smithsonian fund as originall}^ remitted to us from 

 England. 



And thus not only the entire legacy, which we have promised to 

 expend so that it shall increase and diffuse knowledge among men, is 

 to be squandered in this idle and bootless rivalry, but thousands on 

 thousands must be added to finish the work — from what source to be 

 derived, let its advocates inform us. And when we haA^e spent thrice 

 the amount of Smithson's original bequest on the project we shall 

 have the satisfaction of believing that we may possibly have saved to 

 some worthy scholar a hundred, or perchance a few hundred dollars, 

 which otherwise he must have spent to obtain from Europe ha-lf a 

 dozen valuable works of reference! 



But there are other reasons urged for this appropriation of the 

 Smithsonian fund. 



There is something to point to if you should be asked to account for it unexpect- 

 edly; and something to point to if a traveler should taunt you with the collections 

 which he has seen abroad, and which gild and recommend the absolutisms of Vienna 

 or St. Petersburg. (Senator Choate's speech, as above. ) 



This purchasing of a reply to some silly traveler's idle taunts at 

 a cost of a million and a half of dollars, including a fund sacredly 

 pledged to human improvement, seems to me a somewhat costly and 

 unscrupulous mode of gratifying national vanity. It is ineffectual, 

 too, unless we are prepared to add a few millions more to bu}^ up, if 

 money could buy, the means of reply to other taunts, quite as just 

 and quite as likely to be cast up to us. There is the Vatican, with its — 



Statues but known from shapes of the earth, 

 By being too lovely for mortal birth. 



There is the Florence gallery, with its — 



Paintings, whose colors of life were caught 

 From the fairy tints in the rainbow wrought — 



images of beauty, living conceptions of grandeur, refining, cultivating, 

 elevating — worth all the musty manuscripts of Oxford ten times told! 

 How are we to escape the imputation that our rude land can show no 

 such triumphs of art as these? Are we to follow Bonaparte's plan? 

 Are we to carry war into the land of the olive and the vine, and 

 enrich this city as the French Emperor did his capital with the artis- 

 tical spoils of the world? Unless we adopt some such plan, must not 

 Europe's taunts remain unanswered still ? 



And let them so remain. I share not the feelings of the learned and 



