sunder, they rejoice to lay up their
treasures in an institution which shall never die. Accordingly, in
tracing the origin of one hundred and eighty libraries in continental
Europe, it has been discovered that all of them, except sixteen, were
presented to the municipalities by book-lovers.

Experience this side the Atlantic is thus far equally encouraging. I
will notice a single specimen. The Boston Free Library is mainly
contributed by individuals. One thousand volumes were given by Everett;
2,300 by Bowditch; 11,360 by Theodore Parker; 26,000 by Joshua Bates;
11,899 by the Old South Church, and those of greater rarity than any
other equal number of volumes. Then Ticknor and Prescott bestowed the
best Spanish library ever gathered by private men, and Wheelwright one
scarcely inferior, relating to South America. Of pecuniary benefactions,
I will only mention $10,000 from Lawrence, $30,000 from Phillips, and
$50,000 from Bates. But legacies to the Free Library have become so
common that we may confidently expect that, if any Bostonian shall die
and bequeath it nothing, the courts will decide the neglect of the
Library to be conclusive proof of insanity, and so will nullify his
will! On the whole, we cannot be too sanguine concerning the prospective
progress of our book-feast for the million.

But a library, however perfect, and though freely open to all the world,
may be a light shining in a darkness which comprehendeth it not. Many
years ago, I was a student in such a library at Rome. It was larger than
any one in America at that time, and offered the best of all its stores
daily to everybody, and that without charge. Yet it was well-nigh a
solitude. The reason was obvious. My walk thither was through a gauntlet
of beggar-boys, and I once took with me an Italian primer, and cried out
that I would give something to any boy who could read. I held it up
before nineteen in succession, but no one could spell out a line. They
had eschewed not only writing as tempting to forgery, but reading also
as a black art. Had they been giants they could,--like the barbarians
who sacked Rome,--ruin, but not relish, the nectared sweets of books. To
them the collective wisdom of the world was as sunshine to the blind, or
as smoke in the nursery riddle,--"roomful, houseful, can't catch a
handful!"

"Or like gospel pearls which pigs neglect
When pigs have that opportunity."

But in regard to _our_ Free Library, I have better hop