e been
decidedly in favor of the latter.

The high price of the materials for writing, and the difficulty of
procuring them, must also have been a great obstacle to the
multiplication of books. When copies could only be procured by the slow
and expensive process of transcription, it seems impossible to suppose
that a large number could have been usually prepared of any ordinary
work. Those of our readers who are aware that only about four hundred
and fifty copies of the celebrated _Princeps_ editions were struck off,
will readily assent to the correctness of this opinion. The barbarous
system of ancient warfare must have also caused the destruction of a
great many works, raised the price of others, and rendered extremely
difficult--not to say impossible--the accumulation of a very large
number in any one place. The difficulties which the bibliomaniacs of our
own times encounter in procuring copies of the editions of the fifteenth
century, and the extravagant prices at which some of them have been
sold, are enough to show how small a part of an entire edition has been
able to pass safely through the short space of four centuries. How few
copies, then, of a work written in the time of Alexander, could have
reached the age of Augustus or of Trajan! With facts like these before
us, how can we talk of libraries of 700,000 or 800,000 volumes in the
ancient world? When we find it so difficult at the present day, in spite
of the testimony of intelligent travellers, and of all the advantages we
possess for making our estimates, to ascertain the truth with regard to
the great libraries of modern Europe, how can we give credit to the
contradictory and exaggerated statements which were promulgated in ages
of the darkest ignorance concerning ancient Rome and Alexandria? "After
an attentive examination of this subject," says that eminent
bibliographer M. Balbi, "it seems to me improbable, if I should not
rather say impossible, that any library of ancient Europe, or of the
middle ages, could have contained more than 300,000 or 400,000 volumes."

But even allowing 700,000 volumes to the largest of the Alexandrian
libraries--that, namely, of which a great part was accidentally
destroyed during the wars of Julius Caesar--allowing the same number to
the library of Tripoli, and to that of Cairo; and admitting that the
third library of Alexandria contained 600,000 volumes, and the Ulpian of
Rome, and the Cordovan founded by Al-Hakem, an eq