ies, or some boundless Bodleian, instead of unfolding it through
infinite space and time, as an actual, concrete, unwritten reality. Be
creation a single act or an eternal process, it would have been all a
thing of books. The Divine Mind would have revealed itself in a library,
instead of in the universe. As for men, they would have existed only in
treatises on the mammalia. There are some specimens which we hardly
think are according to any anticipation of heavenly reason, and
therefore they would not have existed at all. Nothing would have been
but God and literature. Possibly a responsible creation like ours might
have been formed, nevertheless, by making each letter a living,
thinking, moral agent; and the alphabet might thus have written out the
Divine ideas, as men now work them out. If the conception seem to any
one chilly, if it have a dreary look, if it appear to leave only a
frosty metallic base, instead of the grand oceanic effervescence of
life, let him remember how often earthly authors have renounced living
realities, all personal sympathies and pleasures, communing only with
books, their minds dwelling apart from men. Remember Tasso and Southey;
ay, if you have yourself written a book that commands admiration,
remember what it cost you. Why hesitate to transfer to the skies a type
of life which we admire here below? But God having wrought out instead
of written out His thoughts, does it not appear that He designed for men
to do likewise?

And thus a new consideration is presented. The exhibit of the original
cost of the Bibliotheque Imperiale was the smallest item in our budget.
Mark the history of a book. How variously it engrosses the efforts of
the world, from the time when it first rushes into the arena of life!
The industry of printing embodies it, the energy of commerce disperses
it, the army of critics announce it, the world of readers give their
days and nights to it generation after generation, and its echoes
uninterruptedly repeat themselves along the infinite procession of
writers. The process reverts with every new edition, and eddies mingle
with eddies in the motley march of history. Its story may be traced in
martyrdoms of the flesh, in weary hours, strange experiences, unhappy
tempers, restless struggles, unrequited triumphs,--in the glare of
midnight lamps, and of wild, haggard eyes,--in sorrow, want, desolation,
despair, and madness. Born in sorrow, the book trails a pathway of
sorrow thr