we are able to make, of what has fallen under our own notice, we are inclined to think, that that class of students, not to speak of the individual instances of its furnishing leading lights, has, on the whole, done its fair share of service to the great interests of society. And, if it were otherwise, we should by no means hold the question of the fitness of such patronage to be settled. The experience of a few years or decades cannot settle it; and certainly there is nothing in the reason of the case, to prove that the supposed actual result is to be looked for. Nor, if the result were both probable and realized, would we allow that the assumed practical inference follows. Independently of all such considerations, we should still desire, and that on grounds, we think, of patriotism and good sense, to have the poorest man feel, that his son, if disposed to use them, had the best advantages of education within his reach, and, with those advantages, the privilege of the most favorable experiment to lift himself to the highest places in society. We should still earnestly desire to have the poorest men know and feel, that opportunities for obtaining the best learning were no aristocratic possession, and that they had none but themselves to reckon with, if the best learning should become characteristically an aristocratic accomplishment.

He

We know, again, that there is in some minds, an indisposition to this form of bounty, on account of an impression, that there is something humbling in becoming its object. They think, that to receive it, argues, or forms, something of an abject spirit, or does both. We cannot but hold, that this view is taken in utter blindness to the conditions, under which Providence has made us men to live on earth. who demands to be independent, must go seek quarters in some other planet. Providence meant that all men should find their own happiness in communicating it to others; and, if all are to confer favors, it can hardly be that all will not have to receive them. It meant that there should be such a happy sentiment as gratitude; and, as none were to be excluded from its enjoyment, so none were allowed to be above being served. Every human being is a debtor to men before and about him;-a stipendiary to the past and to the present. When so much of what we most value, and are every moment enjoying, the protection of good laws, the spirit of society, the guidance of transmitted wisdom,

is necessarily the free gift to us of the fruit of costly labors, which cannot be estimated in money,- and, if they could, which we have no money to pay for, it clearly appears to us more nice than wise, to be lofty about receiving the smaller balance of kindnesses, which it still remains optional with us to reject. And while a man is making his superlative distinctions between what he can, and what he cannot, help receiving gratuitously from others, he will only be experiencing the multiform mortifications of that most mortifying passion, pride, till he is taught sense enough to be willing to have his impracticable principle break down under the distraction. He who is difficult about being a "charity scholar," if such is the phrase, at Cambridge, if he will carry out his doctrine, must be disturbed and shame-faced, when he goes thence, and comes to deposit his vote, or vent his voice, in that eleemosynary establishment, Faneuil Hall. For he is there a charity voter, and a charity orator. If Faneuil had not given the Hall, the town would now have to build it, and the citizen and speaker would be taxed to pay the bill. At all events, Harvard College admits none but charity scholars. Some rich men's sons are studying there; but not one of them all pays his scot and lot. As truly as any of their associates, they are objects of the College's bounty. It is simply a question between them of more and less. We take it that not a word of the statement to this effect, on the fifth page of the sermon before us, can be called in question; and, if so, he who is a beneficiary to the annual amount of one hundred and fifty dollars, while at his right or left hand sits another who gets but one hundred dollars, may be made by fifty per cent. a more abjectspirited man than his neighbour, may be depressed half as much again in his own esteem, but a most humiliating process for all the ingenuous youth, without exception, must doubtless be our college life.

Both of these methods, then, of relieving the expensiveness of an education at Cambridge, seem to have their recommendations; and it is not improbable that, on a full view of the subject, it might be thought wise to direct endeavours towards a partial attainment of both, rather than an exclusive one of either. In the case of any thing considerable of the kind being done, it may be supposed that the government of the College would feel more at liberty to direct any

funds, come or coming into their hands, and subject to their direction, to the provision of safe and proper accommodation for its library. That is a thing which it is high time were done, to whomsoever it may belong to do it. The destruction of that library would be an intolerable stigma on the name of the government, or the alumni, or the neighbourhood, or the State, or the country, or whomsoever else the stern justice of posterity might select to bear the blame. We state familiar facts, when we repeat, that being considerably the richest in the western hemisphere, it consists of forty thousand volumes, many of which are rare, important, and costly; that it contains a collection, - undoubtedly the most precious in the world in the department of American History, of six or seven thousand volumes, and thirteen thousand maps and charts, bought, partly, against the competition of a king, by one of those "merchants" of ours, who are "princes," and partly furnished by the munificence of a son of another of those "traffickers,' who are "the honorable of the earth"; that it is necessarily disposed in rooms, whose narrow dimensions absolutely forbid its further extension, a measure for which other liberal citizens are understood to be standing ready, so justly popular is the object; and that it is within six feet of a building, where in the winter are constantly kept thirty fires under the care of youth, whose engagements, besides, cause them to be absent three times every day, for an hour together. The risk is appalling. We cannot sleep on a windy night when we think of it. The burning of the comparatively small, and on all accounts incomparably meaner collection, seventy years ago, threw the province into a sort of universal mourning. A "ruinous loss the papers of the time well called it. The governor, on the second following morning, sent a message to the Representatives to "heartily condole with" them "on the unfortunate accident"; and America and Britain were moved to repair the mischief. May this generation not be doomed to see on that spot such another heap of priceless ruins! But if the horror do not befall, it is not wishing, that will have averted it.

The President says, in his "Considerations," submitted to the Legislature the winter before last; "Let the Legislature of Massachusetts only grant sufficient means for such a building as the case requires, and it is not too much to

say, nor to pledge, that this library, instead of containing forty thousand volumes, shall, within ten years, contain sixty thousand volumes. Dispositions to that effect have been intimated by men capable of carrying them into execution." He says, again; "It has been ascertained that the books now actually constituting the library, would require thirty alcoves of the same height and extent (viz. with the twenty, which now occupy the whole space,) properly and safely to preserve them." We wish to suggest, in addition to this object of safe preservation, the importance of that of convenient use. Great libraries are not more, perhaps not so much, depositaries of books to be borrowed from them, as of books to be consulted within them. But to consult books in Harvard College library, is now all but out of the question. There is hardly so much as room to pass conveniently between the book shelves and other indispensable furniture. Every book should be brought, by means of galleries, within convenient reach. A moderate temperature should be kept up throughout the room; and the alcoves, furnished with tables and with stationery, should present accommodations and a degree of retirement, for reading and writing. We have occasion, from time to time, to visit that library, but we certainly do not go thither one time in ten times, that we should, if the apartments were more tenantable. For ourselves, we use no exaggeration in saying, that the day that arrangements were made for Harvard College library, only similar to those existing for that of the Boston Athenæum, that day it would rise tenfold in value to us. And that which is the case with us, may not improbably be, more or less, the case with others.

It is not for us to predict what the Commonwealth will do in the premises; though we think we can guess what its enlightened people would do, if left to themselves. They make it no sectarian question; and the petitions of the several faculties of the Episcopal, Baptist, and Orthodox Congregational schools of theology, were cordially presented to second the application of the College. And we think we can conjecture what their intelligent representatives, following the generous lead of the upper house, would do, if released from side-way influences, and unbiassed by regard to considerations of supposed practical connexion of this subject with others, which, in their own nature, are as remote from it as possible. Were we legislators, we should plead for this provision for the Col

lege, not on the ground of the College's wants, nor of its deserts, but on the ground of what the Commonwealth owes to its own dignity, and growth, and greatness. We would say, whatever influence you are to have in the councils and over the destiny of this nation, you are to owe, not to the extent of your territory, nor to your numbers, nor to your money, but to the mastery of your minds. Look to the fair intellectual fame of Massachusetts. See to it, that there be always clear, and well trained, and well stored understandings, to discern her rights, and interests, and honor, and, seeing, to maintain and to advance them. Take care to make her, in the way to which plain indications of Providence invite, "a name and a praise" in the wide earth. Take good heed, that, through your slowness, the republic receive no detriment. The sons of the College are able to take care of your interest within her walls, and they will do it, when they shall know that you have abandoned it. But you have only to speak the word, and the work is done. And if, while you are hesitating, the brightest jewel in her crown is reft, look to your reckoning with posterity, when it shall bitterly say, how untrue it has found you to its claims and interests, while the past had never been wanting to yours.

*

We have only further, before leaving this point, to turn the tables upon a former remark, and say, that if, in a despair, which certainly we could not undertake to justify, of provision from the public chest for this pressing want of a library building, the sons of the College were to resolve them

"Think not, that the commonwealth of learning may languish, and yet our civil and ecclesiastical state be maintained in good plight and condition. The wisdom and foresight, and care for future times, of our first leaders, was in nothing more conspicuous and admirable, than in the planting of that nursery, and New England is enjoying the sweet fruit of it. It becomes all our faithful and worthy patriots that tread in their steps, to water what they have planted."- President Oakes's Election Sermon, 1678.

"Behold an American University, which hath been to these plantations, as Livy saith of Greece, for the good literature there cultivated, Sal Gentium; an University, which may make her boast unto the circumjacent regions, like that of the orator on the behalf of the English Cambridge; 'Fecimus (absit verbo invidia, cui abest falsitas) ne in demagoriis lapis sederet super lapidem, ne deessent in templis theologi, in foris jurisperiti, in oppidis medici; rempublicam, ecclesiam, senatum, exercitum, viris doctis replevimus, eòque melius bono publico inservire comparatis, quò magis eruditi fuerint.""-Magnalia, IV. p. 125.