422 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



son, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Gibbon, and, above all, 

 Alison, a popular writer in these days, and 



" Like Sir Agrippa, for profound 

 And solid lying, much renowned ;" 



but of those materials from which true history is to be 

 drawn, we have little, very little. The works belonging to 

 the proper history of the American Continent alone, every 

 one of which it would be highly de&irable to possess, num- 

 ber certainly more than 20,000 volumes, fully equal to one- 

 half the Congressional Library, and of these we have, as 

 yet, but a small proportion. 



If the bounty of the generous foreigner, in spite of the 

 broad language which expresses his liberal purpose, is to be 

 confined to the narrow uses which some gentlemen propose, 

 the appropriation of 10,000 per annum is unnecessarily 

 large, at least for permanent expenditure. A moderate 

 amount would collect all that is worth buying in the experi- 

 mental sciences, and a small annual appropriation would 

 keep up with the advance of knowledge in this department. 

 But it is due to ourselves, due to our age, due to the lofty 

 views which inspired a benefaction so splendid a gift 

 clogged with no narrow conditions that \ve act in a more 

 generous, a wider, a more catholic spirit; that we remember. 

 that " knowledge " embraces other arts than those of bread : 

 that man's economical interests are not his highest. 



The purpose of the testator, which we are to carry out, 

 was " the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." 

 What, then, is the most efficient means of increasing and 

 diffusing knowledge ? Increase, accumulation, must pre- 

 cede diffusion. Every rill supposes a fountain ; and know- 

 ledge cannot " flow down our streets like a river," without 

 there be first built and filled a capacious reservoir, from 

 which those streams shall issue. It is an error to suppose 

 that the accumulation of the stores of existing learning, 

 the amassing of the records of intellectual action, does not 

 tend also to increase knowledge. What is there new in the 

 material world, except by extraction or combination ? How 

 are new substances formed, or the stock of a given substance 

 increased, by the chemistry of nature or of art? By new 

 combinations or decompositions of known and pre-existing 

 elements. The products of the experimental or manufac- 

 turing laboratory are no new creations; but their elements 

 are first extracted by the decomposition of old compounds, 

 and then recombined in new forms. Thus is it also, in 

 some degree, with the immaterial products of the human 

 mind ; but there is this difference ; knowledge grows not 



