Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt: ...fund is a gift; that we take it just as it is given; and that by its terms it must be disbursed here. Any possible administration of it, therefore, is exposed to the cavil that all cannot directly and literally and equally partake of it. How many and of what classes of youth from Louisiana, or Illinois, or New England, for example, can attend the lectures of your professor of astronomy? But I say it is a positive and important argument for the mode of application which I urge, that it is so diffusive. Think of the large absolute numbers of those who in the succession of years, will come and partake directly of these stores of truth and knowledge! Think of the numbers without number who through them, who by them indirectly, will partake of the same stores! Studious men will come to learn to speak and write to and for the growing millions of a generally educated community. They will learn that they may communicate. They cannot hoard if they would, and they would not if they could. They take in trust to distribute; and every motive of ambition, of interest, of duty, will compel them to distribute. They buy in gross, to sell by retail. The lights which they kindle here will not be set under a bushel, but will burn on a thousand hills. No, Sir; a rich and public library is no anti-republican monopoly. Who was the old Egyptian king that inscribed on his library the words: the dispensary of the soul? You might quite as well inscribe on it, armory and light and fountain of liberty! It may possibly be inquired what account I make of the library of congress. I answer, that I think it already quite good, and improving; but that its existence constitutes no sort of argument against the formation of such a one'as I recommend. In the theory of it, that...