378 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



in this short life exhaust all art, bci-iiusc ho can thoroughly master but 

 a few hundred volumes, read or even have occasion to consult ])ut a 

 few thousands, we are not therefore authorized to conclude that all 

 beyond these arc superfluous. Each of the hundred authors who have 

 produced those thousands of volumes had read also his thousands. 

 The scholar is formed not by the books alone that he has read, but he 

 receives at second hand the essence of multitudes of others; for every 

 good book supposes and implies the previous existence of numerous 

 other good books. 



An individual even of moderate means, and who is content to contine 

 his studies within somewhat narrow bounds, may select and acquire 

 for himself a library adequate to his own intellectual wants and tastes, 

 though entireh' unsuited to the purposes of one of different or larger 

 aims, and by the diligent use of this he may attain a high degree of 

 mental culture; but a national library can be accommodated to no nar- 

 row or arbitrary standard. It must embrace all science — all history — 

 all languages. It must be extensive enough, and diversified enough, 

 to furnish aliment for the cravings of every appetite. We need some 

 great establishment that shall not hoard its treasures with the jealous 

 niggardliness which locks up the libraries of Britain, but shall emu- 

 late the generous munificence which throws open to the world the 

 boundless stores of literary wealth of Germany and France — some 

 exhaustless fountain, where the poorest and humblest aspirant may 

 slake his thirst for knowledge, without money and without price. 



Of all places in our territory, this central heart of the nation is the 

 fittest for such an establishment. It is situated in the middle zone of 

 our system — easily and cheaply accessible from ever}^ quarter of the 

 Union — blessed with a mild, a salubrious, and an equable climate — 

 abundant in the necessaries and comforts of physical life — far removed 

 from the din of commerce, and free from narrow and sectional 

 influences. 



Let us here erect a temple of the muses, served and guarded by no 

 exclusive priesthood, but with its hundred gates thrown open, that 

 every votary may enter unquestioned, and you will find it thronged 

 with ardent worshipers, who, though poverty may compel them to 

 subsist, like Heyne, on the pods of pulse and the parings of roots, 

 shall yet forget the hunger of the body in the more craving wants of 

 the soul. 



From the limited powers of our National Government, and the 

 jealous care with which their exercise is watched and resisted, in cases 

 where the interests of mere humanity — not party — are concerned, it 

 can do little for the general promotion of literature and science. The 

 present is a rare opportunity, the only one yet offered, and never per- 

 haps to be repeated, for taking our proper place among the nations 

 of the earth, not merely as a political society, but as patrons of knowl- 



