would be so wide a departure from his large and wise purposes, as fairly to defeat his noble aims. Had he been in fact a person of so narrow views as this argument supposes, he would have guarded against the possible misapplication of his charity, by express words of direction or restriction; and it is a proof of rare generosity in an enthusiastic lover of an engrossing pursuit, that in a bequest appropriating his whole estate to the high purpose of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men, he made no special provision for the promotion of those sciences which were to him the most attractive of studies.

After all, however, he was not a student of so limited a range of inquiry as has been sometimes assumed. He was a man of studious and scholastic habits, and of large and liberal research, specially devoted, indeed, to the cultivation of certain branches of natural knowledge, but excluding no science, no philosophy, from his sympathies. Too enlightened to be ignorant of the commune vinculum, the common bond of mutual relation, which makes all knowledges reciprocally communicative and receptive-each borrowing light from all, and each in turn reflecting light upon all-he was too generous to confine his bounty to the gratification of tastes entirely similar to his own. None of the objects embraced in this bill are alien from his probable views. Books, indeed, he did not collect, as we propose to do, because to one who had no fixed habitation à library would have been but an incumbrance; and he lived in the great cities of Europe, where public and private munificence has collected and devoted to general use such ample repositories of the records of knowledge, that individual accumulation of such stores is almost superfluous. But, though he gathered no library, his writings show him to have been a man of somewhat multifarious reading; and it is quite a gratuitous assumption to suppose him to have been one of those narrow minds, who think no path worth traveling but that which they have trodden, no field worth cultivating whose fruits they have never plucked. Apart, then, from the liberty which the broad words of the will give us, we are entitled to believe that the purposes of the testator were as comprehensive as the language he has used-that he aimed at promoting all knowledge for the common benefit of all men-and to appropriate to the American people, in a spirit worthy of the object and of ourselves, the compliment he has paid us, by selecting us as the dispensers of a charity which knows no limits but the utmost bounds of human

knowledge, and claims as its recipients the men of this and of all coming ages.

The limitation of the bequest, then, is to the "increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Here two objects are aimed at. Increase, enlargement, extension, progress; and diffusion, spread, communication, dissemination. These the bill seeks to accomplish by various means. It proposes to increase knowledge by collecting specimens of the works of nature, from every clime, and in each of her kingdoms; by gathering objects in every branch of industrial, decorative, representative, and imaginative art; by accumulating the records of human action, and thought, and imagination, in every form of literature; by instituting experimental researches in agriculture, in horticulture, in chemistry, and in other studies founded upon observation. It proposes to diffuse the knowledge thus accumulated, acquired, and extended, by throwing open to public use the diversified collections of the institution in every branch of human inquiry; by lectures upon every subject of liberal interest; by a normal school, where teachers shall become pupils, and the best modes that experience has devised for imparting the rudiments of knowledge shall be communicated; by preparing and distributing models of scientific apparatus, and by the publication of lectures, essays, manuals, and treatises. Of the various instrumentalities recommended by this noble and imposing scheme, the simplest and most efficient, both as it respects the increase and the diffusion of knowledge, is, in my judgment, the provision for collecting for public use a library, a museum, and a gallery of art; and I should personally much prefer, that for a reasonable period the entire income of the fund should be expended in carrying out this branch of the plan.

But in expressing my preference for such a present application of the moneys of the fund, and my belief that we should thus best accomplish the purposes of the donor, I desire not to be understood as speaking contemptuously of research and experiment in natural knowledge and the economic arts. I have too much both of interest and of feeling staked upon the prosperity of these arts, and they are to me subjects too intrinsically attractive, to allow me to be indifferent to any measure which promises to promote their advancement. I am even convinced, that their earnest cultivation and extension are absolutely indispensable to our national prosperity, our true independence, and almost our political existence; and I am at all times ready to maintain their claim to all the legislative favor which it is within the

power of the general Government to bestow. I would not, therefore, exclude them from the plan of a great national institution for the promotion of all good learning; but I desire to assign them their true place in the scale of human knowledge, and I must be permitted to express my dissent from the doctrine implied by the bill, as originally framed and referred to the special committee, which confines all knowledge, all science, to the numerical and quantitative values of material things. Researches in such branches as were the favored objects of that bill, have in general little of a really scientific character. Geology, mineralogy, even chemistry, are but assemblages of apparent facts, empirically established; and this must always be true, to a great extent, of every study which rests upon observation and experiment alone. True science is the classification and arrangement of necessary primary truths, according to their relations with each other, and in reference to the logical deductions which may be made from them. Such science, the only absolute knowledge, is the highest and worthiest object of human inquiry, and must be drawn from deeper sources than the crucible and the retort.

The bill provides for the construction of buildings, with suitable apartments for a library, and for collections in the various branches of natural knowledge and of art, and directs the annual expenditure of a sum "not exceeding an average of ten thousand dollars, for the gradual formation of a library composed of valuable works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge." As I have already indicated, I consider this the most valuable feature of the plan, though I think the amount unwisely restricted; and shall confine the few observations I design to submit respecting the bill chiefly to the consideration of this single provision. I had originally purposed to examine the subject from quite a different point of view, but the eloquent remarks of the chairman of the special committee, (Mr. Owen,) which seem to be intended as an argument rather against this provision than in favor of the bill, and as a reply to the able and brilliant speech of a distinguished member of another branch of Congress, upon a former occasion, (Mr. Choate,) has induced me to take a somewhat narrower range than I should otherwise have done. I wish, sir, that Senator were here to rejoin, in his own proper person, to the beautiful speech of the gentleman from Indiana, who seems rather to admire the rhetoric, than to be convinced by the logic, of the eloquent orator to whom I refer. In that case, sir, I think my friend from

Indiana, trenchant as are his own weapons, would feel, as many have felt before, that the polished blade of the gentleman, who lately did such honor to Massachusetts in the Senate of the United States, is not the less keen, because, like Harmodius and Aristogiton, he wraps it in sprays of myrtle.

It has been objected by some, that the appropriation is too large for the purpose expressed-"The gradual for of a library composed of valuable works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge." But if we consider how much is embraced in these comprehensive words, we shall arrive at a very different conclusion. The great libraries of Europe range from 200,000 to 500,000, or perhaps even 750,000 volumes. That of the university of Gottin gen, 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 whole 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 new 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, Vermont, costs but $1.50 per volume. It can hardly be expected, that Government, 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 Vermont.

I have myself been, unfortunately for my purse, a bookbuyer, 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 considerably larger expenditure,) you have $8,000 remaining, which, at the average 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 sir, 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 collection of the recorded workings of the human mind, not inferior to that enjoyed by a single school in the miniature kingdom of Hanover! 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 of our own country-to omit the smaller but still valuable contributions to the store of human knowledge in the languages of other countries, and you will perceive that this appropriation, so far from being extravagantly large, will scarcely even suffice for keeping up with the current literature of the day. Gottingen meantime will go on. Her 300,000 volumes will increase in seventy years to half a million, and we shall still lag 200,000 volumes behind.

The utility of great libraries has been questioned, and it has been confidently asserted, that all truly valuable knowledge is comprised in a comparatively 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 new editions, or surpassed by later treatises. That there is some foundation for this opinion, I shall not deny; but after every deduction is made upon these accounts, there will still remain in any of these libraries a great number of works which, having originally had intrinsic worth, have yet their permanent value. Because a newer, or better, or truer book, upon a given subject, now exists, it does not necessarily follow that the older and inferior is to be rejected. It may contain important truths or interesting views that later, and, upon the whole, better authors have overlooked-it may embody curious anecdotes of forgotten times-it may be valuable as an illustration of the history of opinion, or as a model of composition; or if of great antiquity, it may possess much interest as a specimen of early typography.

Again, because any one individual, even the most learned cannot, in this short life, exhaust all art, because he can thoroughly master but a few hundred volumes, read, or even have occasion to consult, but a few thousands, we are not therefore authorized to conclude that all beyond these are