political society, but as patrons of knowledge and the liberal arts. The 

 treasures of our national wealth are, perhaps, not at our command for this 

 purpose; and it is only by the discreet use of this bequest, and of the funds 

 which private liberality will assuredly contribute to extend the means of 

 the institution, that we can hope to kindle a luminary, whose light shall 

 encompass the earth , and repay to Europe the illumination we have bor- 

 rowed from her. 



The library of GoUingen, of which I have spoken, contains six times as 

 many volumes as the largest American collections; it has been accumulated 

 within a comparatively short period— scarcely a century — and, having been 

 selected upon a fixed plan by the ablest scholars in the world, it contains 

 few books originally without merit, few duplicates, and few which the pro- 

 gress of science and literature have rendered worthless. And yet, though, 

 upon the whole the best existing library, it, in many departments, does not 

 approach to completeness, and the scholars who resort to it are often obliged 

 to seek elsewhere sources of knowledge which Gottingen does not afford. 



We shall perhaps be best able to estimate our own deficiencies and wants 

 by comparing the contents of our Congressional library with the actual ex- 

 tent of existing literature. The library of Congress contains more thaa 

 40,000 volumes, in general valuable and w^ell chosen, with not many dupli- 

 cates, not many books that one would altogether reject. It is not composed, 

 like too many of our public hbraries, in any considerable degree, of books 

 which have been given, because the proprietor found them too worthless to 

 keep, but it has been almost wholly purchased and selected from the best 

 European sale catalogues, and yet there is no one branch of liberal study, 

 even among those of greatest interest to ourselves, in which it is not miserably 

 deficient. 



There is, perhaps, no better general catalogue of such books, in the va- 

 rious departments of learning, as are prized by collectors, than the Table 

 Methodique, in the last edition of Brunet's Manuel du Libraire. Brunei 

 -enumerates more than 30,000 works, making, in the whole, about 100,000 

 volumes, and professes to specify only the most important and the rarest. 

 The list contains, no doubt, very many works of little intrinsic worth, or 

 even adventitious interest; but it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that a 

 library of the larger class ought to possess at least 25,000 of the volumes it 

 specifies. But this list is even tolerably complete in but few departments. 

 In French history and literature, in civil and international law, in the his- 

 tory and literature of classical antiquity and of early typography , in theology, 

 in medicine, you will find it perhaps nearly satisfactory; but in the history 

 and literature of all other nations, and in almost every other field of inquiry 

 but those I have mentioned, the learned scholar will miss the titles of many 

 more valuable works than he will find , while many highly interesting and 

 important chapters are almost entirely blank. The Congressional library 

 does not probably contain one-fourth even of the small proportion of Brunei's 

 list which I have described as of intrinsic and permanent value. But are 

 there not numerous branches of knowledge well worthy a place in every 

 great literary repository, and which are yet wholly unrepresented in our al- 

 -coves? Let us devote a moment to some dry statistics concerning the litera- 

 ture of continental Europe. The Bibliotheca Historica Sueo-Gothica of 

 Warmholtz, the last volume of which appeared in 1817, enumerates no less 

 than 10,000 works illustrative of the history of Sweden alone; and the thirty 

 years since have added greatly to the number. The Literatur-Lexicon of 



