Nassau's public library. 6? 



cnpant of this little but exquisitely furnished tenement is itself 

 conscious of the gracefulness and beauty of the inner chambers 

 of the house it occupies upon the submerged shelf of the ocean. 

 It was a very pleasant surprise to find at Nassau a well selected 

 Public Library of over seven thousand volumes. It does much 

 credit to the government which established and sustains it, and 

 evidences wise statesmanship. Some of the other islands it is 

 said, are similarly favored. A person, entitled to draw books, is 

 permitted to take out five volumes at a time — a very liberal num- 

 ber, and probably more than could bo allowed if its patrons were 

 more numerous. Isolated as New Providence is from the great 

 world beyond the sea, the stranger, with the works of his favorite 

 authors before him, is lonely no more. He is in the midst of a 

 congenial world — tlie great world of letters — and no longer a 

 stranger in a strange land. His mind is enriched and seeded 

 with the great thoughts of tlie world's greatest tliinkcrs, present 

 and past. Philosophers unlock the secrets of nature, and spread 

 lier most profound and subtle laws at his feet. Romance lays 

 l)aro for him the mysteries (to some extent distorted and too 

 higlily colored) of the human heart, and the lights and shadows 

 of all phases of human life. History, with graphic pen, dipped 

 alike in truth and fable, portrays the rise, the decadence, and 

 ilie fall of states and empires, and points out tlie deep-seated 

 causes tliatmake and ruin nations. Divines cluster around liim, 

 and, wliile some for a greater or less fee permit him to look 

 tlirough their little pieces of smoked glass at the invisible world, 

 others, with lips hallowed with celestial fire from God's own 

 altar, discourse eloquently upon the mysteries of life, deatli and 

 immortality. While the poet, in soothing num])ers, sings in- 

 spired songs, conducts him on fancy's wings through all space, 

 and opens for liim alike grim purgatorial doors and the golden 

 gatts of the celestial city. 



