even those which are preserved, commonly
survive in a lamentably fragmentary state. The obvious causes of the
rapid disappearance of periodical literature, are its great volume,
necessarily increasing with every year, the difficulty of lodging the
files of any long period in our narrow apartments, and the continual
demand for paper for the uses of trade. To these must be added the great
cost of binding files of journals, increasing in the direct ratio of the
size of the volume. As so formidable an expense can be incurred by very
few private subscribers to periodicals, so much the more important is it
that the public libraries should not neglect a duty which they owe to
their generation, as well as to those that are to follow. These poor
journals of to-day, which everybody is willing to stigmatize as trash,
not worth the room to store or the money to bind, are the very materials
which the man of the future will search for with eagerness, and for some
of which he will be ready to pay their weight in gold. These
representatives of the commercial, industrial, inventive, social,
literary, political, moral and religious life of the times, should be
preserved and handed down to posterity with sedulous care. No historian
or other writer on any subject who would write conscientiously or with
full information, can afford to neglect this fruitful mine of the
journals, where his richest materials are frequently to be found.

In the absence of any great library of journals, or of that universal
library which every nation should possess, it becomes the more important
to assemble in the various local libraries all those ephemeral
publications, which, if not thus preserved contemporaneously with their
issue, will disappear utterly, and elude the search of future historical
inquirers. And that library which shall most sedulously gather and
preserve such fugitive memorials of the life of the people among which it
is situated will be found to have best subserved its purpose to the
succeeding generations of men.

Not less important than the preservation of newspapers is that of reviews
and magazines. In fact, the latter are almost universally recognized as
far more important than the more fugitive literature of the daily and
weekly press. Though inferior to the journals as historical and
statistical materials, reviews and magazines supply the largest fund of
discussion concerning such topics of scientific, social, literary, and
religious