hions of
a generation or two. Tables, chairs, and cabinets first grow
unfashionable, and then old; in neither stage have they any friends who
will comfort or support them--they are still worse off than books. But
then comes an after-stage, in which they revive as antiquities, and
become exceeding precious. As Pompeiis, however, are rare in the world,
the chief repositories of antique furniture have been mansions shut up
for a generation or two, which, after more fashions than generations
have passed away, are reopened to the light of day, either in
consequence of the revival of the fortunes of their old possessors, or
of their total extinction and the entry of new owners. How the house and
window duties disturbed this silent process by which antiques were
created is easily perceived.

One service our Legislature has done for the preservation of books in
the copies which require to be deposited under the Copyright Act at
Stationers' Hall for the privileged libraries. True, this has been
effected somewhat in the shape of a burden upon authors, for the benefit
of that posterity which has done no more for them specially than it has
for other people of the present generation. But in its present modified
shape the burden should not be grudged, in consideration of the
magnitude of the benefit to the people of the future--a benefit the full
significance of which it probably requires a little consideration to
estimate. The right of receiving a copy of every book from Stationers'
Hall has generally been looked on as a benefit to the library receiving
it. The benefit, however, was but lightly esteemed by some of these
institutions, the directors of which represented that they were thus
pretty well supplied with the unsaleable rubbish, while the valuable
publications slipped past them; and, on the whole, they would sell their
privilege for a very small annual sum, to enable them to go into the
market and buy such books, old and new, as they might prefer. The view
adopted by the law, however, was, that the depositing of these books
created an obligation if it conferred a privilege, the institution
receiving them having no right to part with them, but being bound to
preserve them as a record of the literature of the age.[54]

[Footnote 54: I am not aware that in the blue-books, or any other source
of public information, there is any authenticated statement of the
quantity of literature which the privileged libraries receive through