that a great mistake is made in the multiplying of libraries
in the same neighborhood, unless for some specialty, such as Natural
History or the like. It is sad to think of the money thus wasted in
duplicates and triplicates. Rivalry in such cases is detrimental rather
than advantageous to the interests of scholarship. Instead of one good
library, we get three poor ones; and so, instead of twenty men of real
learning, we are vexed with a score of sciolists, who are so through
no fault of their own. We hope that the movement now on foot, to give
something like adequacy to the University Library at Cambridge, will
receive the aid it deserves, not only from graduates of the College, but
from all persons interested in the literary advancement of the country.
So there be one really good library in the United States, it matters
little where it is, for students will find it,--and they should at least
be spared the necessity of going abroad in order to master any branch of
learning.

A great library is of incalculable benefit to any community. It saves
infinite waste of time to the thinker by enabling him to know what has
already been thought. It is of greater advantage (and that advantage is
of a higher kind) than any seminary of learning, for it supplies the
climate and atmosphere, without which good seed is sown in vain. It is
not merely that books are the "precious life-blood of master-spirits,"
and to be prized for what they contain, but they are still more useful
for what they prevent. The more a man knows, the less will he be apt to
think he knows, the less rash will he be in conclusion, and the less
hasty in utterance. It is of great consequence to the minds of most
men how they _begin_ to think, and many an intellect has been lamed
irretrievably for steady and lofty flight by toppling out into the
helpless void of opinion with wings yet callow. The gross and carnal
hallucinations of what is called "Spiritualism"--the weakest-kneed of
all whimsies that have come upon the parish from the days of the augurs
down to our own--would be disenchanted at once in a neighborhood
familiar with Del Rio, Wierus, Bodin, Scot, Glanvil, Webster, Casaubon,
and the Mathers. Good books are the enemies of delusion, the most
effectual extinguishers of self-conceit. Impersonal, dispassionate,
self-possessed, they reason without temper, and remain forever of the
same mind without obstinacy. The man who has the freedom of a great
library leng