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Nyerup, published in 1820, gives the titles of probably an equal number of 

 , ^"^orks belonging to the hterature of the countries subject to the Danish 

 ^crown. Holland , too, has noble historians, naturalists, poets, and dramatists, 

 >^and has produced many works of unsurpassed value upon the history of com- 

 merce and navigation . The list of Brunet contains not one in a hundred of the 

 standard authors of these several countries; and the library of Congress, as far 

 as I remember, does not possess a volume in the language of either of them. 

 Again , consider the vast extent and surpassing value of the literature of 

 Germany. Of the 3,000,000 different volumes of printed books supposed 

 to exist, it is computed that more than one-third are in the German language. 

 The learning of Germany embraces every field of human inquiry, and the 

 efforts of her scholars have done more to extend the bounds of modern 

 knowledge than the united labors of the rest of the Christian world. Every 

 scholar familiar with her literature— let me not say familiar, for life is toa 

 short for any man to count its boundless treasures — -but every enlightened 

 student who has but dipped into it, will readily confess its infinite superior- 

 ity to any other, I might almost say to all other literatures. It has been af- 

 firmed , that more than one-half of our population is of recent German origin,, 

 and German is the vernacular tongue of extensive districts of American soil. 

 Yet the library of Congress contains not one hundred, probably not fifty,, 

 volumes in that noble language. You have none of the numerous writers 

 of the vast empire of Russia, or of Poland; nothing of the curious literatures 

 of Hungary and Bohemia; only the commonest books in Italian and Span- 

 ish ; not a volume in the language of Portugal, rich as it is in various lit- 

 erature, and especially in the wild yet true romance of oriental discovery and 

 conquest, that com6s down to us through the pages of learned De Barros 

 and quaint old Castanheda, ringing upon the ear and stirring the blood like 

 the sound of a far-off trumpet. In the boundless world, too, of oriental 

 learning, of which our increasing commercial relations with the countries 

 of the East render it highly desirable that we should possess the means of 

 acquiring a kno,wledge, you have nothing to shew but a few translations of 

 the Bible, and perhaps some works of devotion or elementary religious 4oc- 

 Urine, which American missionaries have presented you. 

 ' Will it not be admitted that an American library, the national library of 

 a people descended from men of every clime, and blood, and language — a 

 country which throws open its doors as an asylum for the oppressed of every 

 race and every tongue, should be somewhat more comprehensive in its 

 range ? That it should at least have some representatives of every branch 

 of human learning, some memorials of every written tongue that is spoken 

 within its borders? 



But, even in English literature, our library is sadly meagi'e. How far 

 are we from possessing a tolerably complete series of the English printed 

 books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or even of that best age of 

 English learning, that age with whicli every honest American most truly 

 .sympathizes, the age 'of Cromwell and of Milton ? Would it not be well to 

 -have at our command the means of enabling some diligent scholar to write 

 jwhat has not yet been worthily written, or indeed scarce even attempted, a 

 complete history of the literature of our Anglo-Saxon mother tongue — or ta 

 (perform that Herculean task, which, in spite of the vaunted but feeble la- 

 ^bors of Webster, remains still to be accomplished, the preparation of a res- 

 .pectable Enghsh dictionary? : 



*j. If there is any department of learning, in which a library selected for the 



