TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-47. 375 



in the world worth reading? I doubt it much. Are there 

 four thousand volumes published yearly worth buying ? I 

 do not believe there are. A small garner suffices to store 

 the wheat ; it is the chaff that is bulky and fills up the store- 

 house. Books are like wealth. An income we must have 

 to live ; a certain amount of income to live in comfort. 

 Beyond a certain income the power of wealth to purchase 

 comfort, or even wholesome luxury, ceases altogether. How 

 much more of true comfort is there in a fortune of a million 

 of dollars than in one of fifty, or say a hundred thousand ? If 

 more there be, the excess is hardly appreciable ; the burden 

 and cares of a millionaire outweigh it tenfold. And so 

 also, of these vast and bloated book-gatherings, that sleep 

 in dust and cobwebs on the library shelves of European 

 monarchies. Up to a judicious selection of thirty, fifty, a 

 hundred thousand volumes, if you will, how vast yea, how 

 priceless is the intellectual wealth ! From one to five 

 hundred thousand, what do we gain? Nothing? That 

 would not be true ; a goblet emptied into the Pacific adds 

 to the mass of its waters. But if, within these limits, we 

 set down one book out of a hundred as worth the money it 

 costs, we are assuredly making too liberal an estimate. 



I pray you, sir, not to stretch these strictures beyond their 

 precise application. I am not one of those who judge slight- 

 ingly the learning of the past. We find shining forth from 

 the dark mass of ancient literature, gems of rare beauty and 

 value ; unequalled, even to-day, in purity and truth. But, 

 then, also, what clouds of idle verbiage ! What loads of 

 ostentatious technicalities ! It is but of late years that even 

 the disciple of science has deigned to simplify and translate ; 

 formerly his great object seems to have been to obscure and 

 mystify. The satirist, in sketching an individual variety, 

 has aptly described the species, when he says : 



" The wise men of Egypt were as secret as dummies, 

 And even when they most condescended to teach, 



They packed up their meaning, as they did their mummies, 

 In so many wrappers, 'twas out of one's reach." 



But there are such noble enterprises as those of Gibbon 

 and Hallam ; valuable to all ; doubly valuable to the moralist 

 and statesman. And in regard to such it is argued that if one 

 of our own scholars, fired with generous ambition to rival the 

 historians of the Old World, enters on such a task, he may 

 find that a dozen, or perhaps a single book, necessary for ref- 

 erence, " cannot be found this side of Gottingen or Oxford.'* 

 Suppose he does, what is the remedy? A very simple one 

 suggests itself: that he should order, through an importer 



