are the errors that sometimes creep into works of
reference of high credit, by accepting too confidently statements
publicly made. In one edition of the Dictionary of Congress a certain
honorable member from Pennsylvania, in uncommonly robust health, was
astonished to find himself recorded as having died of the National Hotel
disease, contracted at Washington in 1856. In this case, the editor of
the work was a victim of too much confidence in the newspapers. In the
Congressional Directory, where brief biographies of Congressmen are
given, one distinguished member was printed as having been elected to
Congress at a time which, taken in connection with his birth-date in the
same paragraph, made him precisely one year old when he took his seat in
Congress.

Even in reporting the contents of public and private libraries,
exaggeration holds sway. The library of George the Fourth, inherited by
that graceless ignoramus from a book-collecting father, and presented to
the British nation with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed
to sell it to Russia, was said in the publications of those times to
contain about 120,000 volumes. But an actual enumeration when the books
were lodged in the King's library at the British Museum, where they have
ever since remained, showed that there were only 65,250 volumes, being
but little more than half the reported number. Many libraries, public
and private, are equally over-estimated. It is so much easier to guess
than to count, and the stern test of arithmetic is too seldom applied,
notwithstanding the fact that 100,000 volumes can easily be counted in a
day by a single person, and so on in the same proportion. Here, as in the
statistics of population, the same proverb holds good, that the unknown
is always the magnificent, and on the surface of the globe we inhabit,
the unexplored country is always the most marvellous, since the world
began.

These discrepancies in authorities, and exaggerations of writers, are not
referred to for the purpose of casting doubt upon all published history,
but only to point out that we cannot trust implicitly to what we find in
books. Bearing in mind always, that accuracy is perhaps the rarest of
human qualities, we should hold our judgment in reserve upon controverted
statements, trusting no writer implicitly, unless sustained by original
authorities. When asked to recommend the best book upon any subject, do
not too confidently assert the merits of