able works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge." But il 

 we consider how much is embraced in these comprehensive words, we shalli 

 arrive at a very different conclusion. The great libraries of Europe range 

 from 200,000 to half a million, or perhaps even 750,000 volumes. That 

 of the University of Gottingen, the most useful of all for the purposes of 

 general scholarship, contains about 300,000. How long would it require^ 

 to collect a library like this, with an annual expenditure of ten thousand, 

 dollars? The Library of Congress is said to have cost about $3.50 per 

 volume; but, as a wiiole, it has not been economically purchased, and 

 though composed chiefly of works which do not maintain a permanently 

 high price, yet as a large proportion of the annual purchases consists of ne%t> 

 books from the press of London, the dearest book market in the world, its. 

 cost has been much higher than that of a great miscellaneous library ought 

 to be. The best public library in America, for its extent, (10,000 volumes,), 

 which I am happy to say is that of the university of my native State, Ver-^ 

 mont, cost but $1.50 per volume. It can hardly be expected, that Govern- 

 ment, which always pays the highest] price, will be so favorably dealt with;: 

 and it is scarcely to be hoped, that it will succeed in securing the services of 

 so faithful and so competent an agent as was employed by the University of 

 Yermont. 



I have myself been, unfortunately for my purse, a book-buyer, and 

 . have had occasion to procure books, not only in this country, but from all 

 the principal book marts in Western Europe. From my own experience, 

 and some inquiry, I am satisfied that the whole cost of such books as a 

 national library ought to consist of, including binding and all other charges, 

 except the compensation and travelling expenses of an agent, should not 

 exceed two dollars per volume. If you allow $2,000 for the compensation 

 and expenses of an agent, (which would not be increased upon a consider- 

 ably larger expenditure,) you have $8,000 remaining, which, at the aver- 

 age cost I have supposed, would purchase four thousand volumes a year. 

 How long, I repeat, would it require at this rate to accumulate a library 

 equal in extent to that of Gottingen ? More than seventy years. In some 

 seventy years, then, in three score years and ten, when you, sii, and I, and 

 all who hear my voice, and all the present actors in this busy world shall be 

 numbered with the dead, we may hope, that free, enlightened America, by 

 the too sparing use of the generous bounty of a stranger, will possess a col- 

 lection of the recorded workings of the human mind, not inferior to that 

 now enjoyed by a single school in the miniature kingdom of Hanoverl And 

 what provision is made for the increase of books meanwhile? Look at the 

 activity of the presses of London and Paris — at the vastly prolific literature 

 ^ of Germany — at the increasing production in our own country — to omit the 

 smaller but still valuable contributions to the store of human knowledge ia 

 the languages of other countries, and you will perceive that this appropria- 

 tion, so far from being extravagantly large , will scarcely even suffice for 

 keeping up with the current literature of the day. Gottingen mean time 

 will go on. Her 300,000 volumes will increase in seventy years to half ct 

 .million, and we shall still lag 200,000 volumes behind. 



The utility of great libraries has been questioned, and it has been confi- 

 . dently asserted, that all truly valuable knowledge is comprised in a compar- 

 atively small number of volumes. It is said that the vast collections of the 

 .Vatican, of Paris, of Munich, and of Copenhagen are, in a great measure, 

 ^composed of works originally worthless, or now obsolete, or superseded by 



