uld hope, would be much increased by donations
from public-spirited individuals, and individuals interested
in the progress of knowledge, while, I think, the public
treasury should provide for the more popular department.

Intimations of the want of such public facilities for
reading are, I think, beginning to be given. In London I
notice advertisements of some of the larger circulating
libraries, that they purchase one and two hundred copies of
all new and popular works; and in Boston, I am told, some of
our own circulating libraries will purchase almost any new
book, if the person asking for it will agree to pay double
the usual fee for reading it; while in all, I think,
several, and sometimes many copies of new and popular works
are kept on hand for a time, and then sold, as the demand
for them dies away.

Omitting other details, now of no importance, the letter ends as
follows:--

Several years ago I proposed to Mr. Abbott Lawrence to move
in favor of such a library in Boston; and, since that time,
I have occasionally suggested it to other persons. In every
case the idea has been well received; and the more I have
thought of it and talked about it, the more I have been
persuaded, that it is a plan easy to be reduced to practice,
and one that would be followed by valuable results.

I wish, therefore, that you would consider it, and see what
objections there are to it. I have no purpose to do anything
more about it myself than to write you this letter, and
continue to speak of it, as I have done heretofore, to
persons who, like yourself, are interested in such matters.
But I should be well pleased to know how it strikes you.

To this letter Mr. Everett replied as follows:--

CAMBRIDGE, July 26, 1851.

MY DEAR TICKNOR,--I duly received your letter of the 14th
from Bellows Falls, and read it with great interest.

The extensive circulation of new and popular works is a
feature of a public library which I have not hitherto much
contemplated. It deserves to be well weighed, and I shall be
happy hereafter to confer with you on the subject. I cannot
deny that my views have, since my younger days, undergone
some change as to the practicability of freely loaning books
at home from large public libraries. Those who have been
connected with the administration of such