in a library intended for practical use and reading, and boldly answers
by suggesting five classes only: (1) science, (2) speculation, (3) art,
(4) history, and (5) miscellaneous and periodical literature. But this
seemingly simple division at once raises questions both of practical and
of theoretic difficulty. As to the last, periodical literature is fast
attaining to such magnitude, that it may require a classification of
its own, and that the enumeration which indexes supply, useful as it is,
will not suffice. And I fear it is the destiny of periodicals as such to
carry down with them a large proportion of what, in the phraseology of
railways, would be called dead weight, as compared with live weight. The
limits of speculation would be most difficult to draw. The
diversities included under science would be so vast as at once to make
sub-classification a necessity. The ologies are by no means well suited
to rub shoulders together; and sciences must include arts, which are but
country cousins to them, or a new compartment must be established
for their accommodation. Once more, how to cope with the everlasting
difficulty of 'Works'? In what category to place Dante, Petrarch,
Swedenborg, Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, or a hundred more? Where, again,
is Poetry to stand? I apprehend that it must take its place, the first
place without doubt, in Art; for while it is separated from Painting and
her other 'sphere-born harmonious sisters' by their greater dependence
on material forms they are all more inwardly and profoundly united
in their first and all-enfolding principle, which is to organize the
beautiful for presentation to the perceptions of man.

But underneath all particular criticism of this or that method of
classification will be found to lie a subtler question--whether the
arrangement of a library ought not in some degree to correspond with
and represent the mind of the man who forms it. For my own part, I plead
guilty, within certain limits, of favoritism in classification. I
am sensible that sympathy and its reverse have something to do with
determining in what company a book shall stand. And further, does
there not enter into the matter a principle of humanity to the authors
themselves? Ought we not to place them, so far as may be, in the
neighborhood which they would like? Their living manhoods are printed
in their works. Every reality, every tendency, endures. Eadem sequitur
tellure sepultos.

I fear that arra