rs nearly a mile of new shelving
will be required to meet the wants of a single library. But, whatever
may be the present rate of growth, it is small in comparison with what
it is likely to become. The key of the question lies in the hands of the
United Kingdom and the United States jointly. In this matter there rests
upon these two Powers no small responsibility. They, with their vast
range of inhabited territory, and their unity of tongue, are masters
of the world, which will have to do as they do. When the Britains and
America are fused into one book market; when it is recognized that
letters, which as to their material and their aim are a high-soaring
profession, as to their mere remuneration are a trade; when artificial
fetters are relaxed, and printers, publishers, and authors obtain the
reward which well-regulated commerce would afford them, then let floors
beware lest they crack, and walls lest they bulge and burst, from the
weight of books they will have to carry and to confine.

It is plain, for one thing, that under the new state of things
specialism, in the future, must more and more abound. But specialism
means subdivision of labor; and with subdivision labor ought to be
more completely, more exactly, performed. Let us bow our heads to
the inevitable; the day of encyclopaedic learning has gone by. It may
perhaps be said that that sun set with Leibnitz. But as little learning
is only dangerous when it forgets that it is little, so specialism is
only dangerous when it forgets that it is special. When it encroaches
on its betters, when it claims exceptional certainty or honor, it is
impertinent, and should be rebuked; but it has its own honor in its
own province, and is, in any case, to be preferred to pretentious and
flaunting sciolism.

A vast, even a bewildering prospect is before us, for evil or for good;
but for good, unless it be our own fault, far more than for evil. Books
require no eulogy from me; none could be permitted me, when they already
draw their testimonials from Cicero[4] and Macaulay.[5] But books are
the voices of the dead. They are a main instrument of communion with
the vast human procession of the other world. They are the allies of the
thought of man. They are in a certain sense at enmity with the world.
Their work is, at least, in the two higher compartments of our threefold
life. In a room well filled with them, no one has felt or can feel
solitary. Second to none, as friends to the