ollar of the assessed
valuation, for establishing and maintaining free libraries. This law
will bear good fruit. Yet it is a step backward from the act of 1859.
That act created a library fund by setting apart for that purpose
one-tenth of the school-fund income, and imposing a tax of one-tenth of
a mill on all property. The sum of $88,784.78 had been thus accumulated
when the war of 1861 broke out,--and the money was used for military
purposes. It ought to be refunded by the State, or United States, and
expended for its original object. The great superiority of the law of
1859 lies in its extending to rural districts,--and so leaving no hamlet
unvisited--while the maxim of the present law is, "Coals to Newcastle,
owls to Athens, apples to Alcinous. He that hath--to him shall be
given." It gives a library to Madison, where 40,000 volumes were already
within reach, but nothing at all to five and twenty other places in Dane
County, whose need of books is ten times greater. But libraries bring
forth after their kind, and free libraries, we may hope, will become
co-extensive with free schools.

Madison, to-day, in opening to all her sons and daughters a Free
Library, has outstripped every other municipality in the State. It is a
noble preeminence, and will do her honor to the end of the world.

The Madison Free Library, it may be reasonably hoped, will approximate
to the bibliothecal ideal. It starts with an inheritance of 3,308
volumes, accumulated during a score of years by the Madison Institute.
Its revenue is considerable, and it will grow in even pace with the
growth of the city. Nothing but Adam and Minerva was ever born of full
stature. The tax now assessed for it would impoverish no man till after
the lapse of thrice three thousand years. It was limited to less than a
third of what the law allows because we make the entering edge of a
wedge thin, and would learn wisdom from Satan who never makes his
temptations so bad at the beginning as at the end. Is is only the first
step that costs. The Free Library will be ready for windfalls, and so
surely as history repeats itself, they will pour cornucopias into its
lap. Of the million volumes in the British Museum, two out of every five
were gifts. No wonder. Book-gatherers abhor the breaking up of their
collections as we do the dissolution of the Union, or as abolitionists
did the snapping of family ties by slave-traders. Lest what they have
joined together shall be put a