AMERICAN INSTITUTE. Ill 



sity may be said to be intuitive. Mr. Astor seems to have acted 

 upon tlie promptings of liis own mind, in founding the noble 

 institution which so aptly bears his name. " It is," says a writer 

 in the United States Magazine, " a first experiment of throwing 

 open a library in a great city to any one and every one without 

 any formality of admission or any restriction whatever, except as 

 to age." Wlien it is remembered that this is not a mere accumu- 

 lation of eighty thousand volumes, but so many, most of which 

 have been selected with special reference to the want which 

 suggested the. idea of collecting them, it seems difficult to assign 

 limits to the benefits so conferred upon a practical people. 

 "The first purchase for a library," says Dr. Cogswell, the present 

 learned superintendent, " was made March 15th, 1839, and 

 amongst the volumes bought were Brittaiu's Architectural Anti- 

 quities of Great Britain, Young's Recent Discoveries in Hiero- 

 glyphic literature. White's Gradations in Man, and Churchill's 

 Voyages. These were the nucleus of the Astor library, and may 

 fairly be considered as a type of the whole collection." 



The donation in 1853, by William B. Astor, Esq., " for the 

 establishment of a department to be called the Industrial Library," 

 continues the magnificent design. What a splendid collection of 

 books is here at hand for the use of the students and professors 

 of the university ! 



Union of Institutions. 



With such institutions as the Cooper Union, and the Astor 

 Library, and the Dudley Observatory, a beginning of the great 

 American university of arts and sciences seems already made. 

 The museums of material products and machinery, of the arts 

 and manufactures, and of agricultural products and machines, of 

 natural history in all its branches, and the galleries of art, are 

 yet to be founded and grouped in systematic order around it. 



This university, like the genius in the Ai'abian Nights, released 

 by the fisherman from his confinement in the vase, will, from a 

 shadowy smoke, take substantial form, increasing as the country 

 grows, and filling the measure of its greatness. Unlike the 

 relieved genius, it will be the minister of good, instead of evil, 

 and will have the seal of Solomon set, not upon the case contain" 



