arly supplanted by the one volume,
well-printed and bound book at five or six shillings. Many more
reductions would follow in the higher class of books, were not the
measure of reciprocal copyright thus far secured handicapped by the
necessity of re-printing on this side at double cost, if a large American
circulation is in view.

The writers of America, with the steady and rapid progress of the art of
making books, have come more and more to appreciate the value of their
preservation, in complete and unbroken series, in the library of the
government, the appropriate conservator of the nation's literature.
Inclusive and not exclusive, as this library is wisely made by law, so
far as copyright works are concerned, it preserves with impartial care
the illustrious and the obscure. In its archives all sciences and all
schools of opinion stand on equal ground. In the beautiful and ample
repository, now erected and dedicated to literature and art through the
liberal action of Congress, the intellectual wealth of the past and the
present age will be handed down to the ages that are to follow.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] G. H. Putnam, "Books and their makers in the Middle Ages," N. Y.
1897, vol. 2, p. 447.

CHAPTER 24.

POETRY OF THE LIBRARY.

THE LIBRARIAN'S DREAM.

1.
He sat at night by his lonely bed,
With an open book before him;
And slowly nodded his weary head,
As slumber came stealing o'er him.

2.
And he saw in his dream a mighty host
Of the writers gone before,
And the shadowy form of many a ghost
Glided in at the open door.

3.
Great Homer came first in a snow-white shroud,
And Virgil sang sweet by his side;
While Cicero thundered in accents loud,
And Caesar most gravely replied.

4.
Anacreon, too, from his rhythmical lips
The honey of Hybla distilled,
And Herodotus suffered a partial eclipse,
While Horace with music was filled.

5.
The procession of ancients was brilliant and long,
Aristotle and Plato were there,
Thucydides, too, and Tacitus strong,
And Plutarch, and Sappho the fair.

6.
Aristophanes elbowed gay Ovid's white ghost,
And Euripides Xenophon led,
While Propertius laughed loud at Juvenal's jokes,
And Sophocles rose from the dead.