lending my aid to a an undertaking calculated, as I think, to raise
the credit and to promote the best interests of the city which has so
many claims on my gratitude.

The Directors of our Institution have requested me to propose to you as
a toast the Literature of Britain. They could not have assigned to me
a more agreeable duty. They chief object of this Institution is, I
conceive, to impart knowledge through the medium of our own language.
Edinburgh is already rich in libraries worthy of her fame as a seat
of literature and a seat of jurisprudence. A man of letters can here
without difficulty obtain access to repositories filled with the wisdom
of many ages and of many nations. But something was still wanting.
We still wanted a library open to that large, that important, that
respectable class which, though by no means destitute of liberal
curiosity or of sensibility to literary pleasures, is yet forced to
be content with what is written in our own tongue. For that class
especially, I do not say exclusively, this library is intended.
Our directors, I hope, will not be satisfied, I, as a member, shall
certainly not be satisfied, till we possess a noble and complete
collection of English books, till it is impossible to seek in vain
on our shelves for a single English book which is valuable either on
account of matter or on account of manner, which throws any light on our
civil, ecclesiastical, intellectual, or social history, which, in short,
can afford either useful instruction or harmless amusement.

From such a collection, placed within the reach of that large and
valuable class which I have mentioned, I am disposed to expect great
good. And when I say this, I do not take into the account those rare
cases to which my valued friend, the Lord Provost (Mr Adam Black.), so
happily alluded. It is indeed not impossible that some man of genius who
may enrich our literature with imperishable eloquence or song, or who
may extend the empire of our race over matter, may feel in our reading
room, for the first time the consciousness of powers yet undeveloped.
It is not impossible that our volumes may suggest the first thought of
something great to some future Burns, or Watt, or Arkwright. But I do
not speak of these extraordinary cases. What I confidently anticipate is
that, through the whole of that class whose benefit we have peculiarly
in view, there will be a moral and an intellectual improvement; that
many hours, which m