which occupy most important positions, as the leading institutions in States which are even now in fact empires-States which, even now, count their population almost by millions, are furnished with some two or three thousand refuse books from private collections; and this is the best library to be had within hundreds of miles in any direction.

This being the state of the case, we feel it to be due to the cause of truth and sound learning-nay, more, to the cause of Christ and of his Church, to offer some considerations in respect to the importance of well-furnished libraries to colleges, and particularly to colleges at the West.

The first consideration which we would name is the fact, unquestioned and indisputable, that the instructors in all these institutions testify with one voice, that libraries are absolutely essential to the successful prosecution of their official duties.

We hardly need say, that this testimony deserves to be received, and if no other argument could be presented, this ought to be decisive. No maxim is more generally received by practical men than this: "that every man understands his own business best." It is allowed to every class of men in business, to the manufac turer, the merchant and the mechanic, to take the liberty of judg ing what facilities he needs, to accomplish his own plans; and we confide in his judgment, when it is given, as being the judg ment of one whose opinion on such a point is all for which we ask. In the case of the merchant, we do not wait till we are instructed as to the necessity of employing this or that particular clerk, or of establishing this or that agency; but we confide in the knowledge which the merchant does possess, and which we do not, of the details of his business.

The mechanic is left by every man of sense and discretion, to decide for himself, in respect to every facility which he considers requisite to the production or the finishing of articles of superior workmanship. We allow and expect him to expend large sums of money in the purchase of costly and nicely-finished tools-the use and importance of which we do not understand. The capitalist places hundreds of thousands of dollars at the command of the agent of a manufacturing corporation, or the engineer upon a Railroad, and does not hesitate to trust to each the details of the expenditures, even though a large portion is spent upon a waterwheel, a steam-engine, or upon complicated machinery, the relation of which to the final result, the capitalist cannot be expected fully to appreciate. Surely, then, it is not a great or uncommon confidence which we expect from the patrons of our colleges, when we ask them to trust the instructors of these institutions, in respect to the very great importance of a Library to themselves, in the discharge of those duties with which they are alone conversant, and of which they alone are the most competent judges.

We trust the mechanic to judge of the tools of his trade, and we are not surprised when he tells us, that he must have hundreds or thousands of dollars to complete his outfit. We allow a shipbuilder to hide thousands of dollars out of sight in the hull of a ship-in bolts and knees, and what would seem to be but heavy and incumbering timbers; and we leave him to judge whether this or that timber, bolt or knee, is required to make the ship stout enough to ride the maddened ocean. Shall we not give to the instructors of our youth somewhat of the same confidence, whom we appoint to the high service of training the intellect and the character of the men, who in half a generation, are to bless or to curse our nation by their influence?

The testimony of the instructors of the American colleges is easily to be learned. It is a united and earnest testimony. On no subject do they feel more strongly than upon this. Next to the supply of their bodily necessities, the starvation of their minds and the crippling of their intellectual energies, press upon them with a mountain weight. They are placed upon their elevated station, and are set as a mark for the critical scrutiny of all observers. They are expected to furnish their own minds with stores of knowledge, more and more abundant-to brighten and strengthen their powers by the discipline of constant use, and to enrich and train the minds of a rising generation. But the means and appliances are denied them. What they know to be necessary to their work, as truly and as clearly as the merchant knows that a given tool or machine is necessary to his, they cannot obtain. The men who are able to furnish it do not see the use of it; nay, they strongly suspect, if they do not certainly know, that there is no use in it. If the scholar overcomes the modesty into which he had been schooled by his sensitive spirit and his retired life, and appears before his patron, with hat in hand, and asks for money enough to buy a bulky encyclopedia or an expensive lexicon, he meets with the response that his said patron cannot see the use of buying so many books-that it is more than probable that all the books have not been read which the college already possesses. Or it may be, this or that benevolent and Christian man asserts, that his money must all go to purposes more directly Christian and useful-it being suggested to him by some zealot, who has made a short passage through or out of a college, through want of conscience and principle enough to learn before he essays to teach, that colleges are rather heathenish affairs. As if the bolts that bind and hold the water-wheel or the regulator, were not as directly active in the production of the finished fabric, as the laying of the thread or the adjusting of the shuttle. As if the teacher of the teachers of the people, and the preacher to their preachers, had not as real and as important an agency in the upbuilding of the Church, and in

the salvation of men, as the preachers and teachers themselves. But so it is not thought, and when the guardian or professor of a college goes to his task-master and complains that he cannot make bricks without straw, the answer is sometimes uttered, and more frequently thought, "Ye are idle, ye are idle."

But why should not the instructors of our youth be trusted in respect to their own calling, especially when that calling is so high and noble, and the character of those who prosecute it is, in general, so generous and worthy of confidence? Why should not their earnest wishes, so strongly felt and so often repeated, be received as just? And why, above all things, should prejudices be scattered through portions of the religious world against their motives, their discretion, their interest in the cause of Christ, or the fervor of their Christian zeal? Why should not the same confidence be extended to them which is allowed to the man who is skilful with his hands, or fertile and shrewd in moneymaking schemes? We might here rest the whole argument, and putting it earnestly, on this single ground, plead in the name and in the behalf of all the instructors of the land, that they may receive a little confidence at the hands of their patrons, and be taken at their word, when they ask that their powers to be useful may be augmented by the requisite appliances. There are, however, additional considerations, which make the matter so clear, as not only to prove the claim valid, but also, that it is a most pressing claim.

The more highly a man is educated, the larger is the library which he needs, that his education may accomplish its highest results. We know very well that the contrary opinion is very commonly held. It is generally thought that the more perfectly a man is trained, he knows so much the more, and, of course, has so much less to learn; or, in other words, the more books a man has read, so much the fewer remain to be read. If, then, a professor or a teacher has studied many books, he will, of course, require a smaller library.

This view of the subject leaves out of sight two important facts. First, that education, in its preliminary stages, and as late even as the meridian of life, is the training of the powers to use books wisely and effectually, rather than a transfer of so much knowledge from so many books, which books may be laid aside and disused for ever afterwards. It also fails to recognise the fact that the higher are the qualifications, and the wider the attainments of the scholars, the more numerous are the circles of science to which he is introduced, and the greater the library which he must have at his command.

Let us bring to the test the first of these opinions, that the education of the instructor has enabled him to dispense with books, rather than taught him how to use them. Suppose his

department to be theology, or philosophy, natural or moral, or the mathematics, or the languages. What is to be his employment? Instruction. And how does a man teach wisely and well? Can he do this as he retails drily the facts which he has once committed to his memory, or as he brings all his knowledge out from a wakeful and wakening spirit? Manifestly in the latter way only. In the one case he will be a teaching machine, in the other he will be a teaching man. But how can he keep his mind awake? Can he do it by mechanically repeating his past acquisitions, going round and round like a mill-horse in the same circle; or must he not advance, task his powers continually to the utmost, by grappling with new questions, and extending his researches as widely as possible? But how can a man investigate except he has books? Do you say that he must think more and read less? But what if it should be true, as it is, that books are necessary to furnish material to think about? In the classics, in the natural sciences, in history and criticism, books are the subject-matter of the scholar's thoughts-the very things he is to think about. They are not only a field for his labors, but the field, and the only field, in which he can labor. Unless the professor have books, in these departments, he cannot investigate, for he has nothing about which to inquire. Tell a miner to dig for ore, and furnish him no ore-vein in which to labor. Tell a farmer to plough, and give him no field in which to plough; and when he says he cannot, tell him he certainly can and ought, for he has a most splendid plough. Tell a man to see without light, and when he complains, compliment him on his keen and strong eye-sight; but do not educate a teacher, and tell him to work his mind, and labor in his department, and then deny him anything to work with or to work upon.

The relation of the student to the past and the future, and especially the relation of the teacher of science, is beautifully conceived of by Plato, by the image of a man receiving a lighted torch from one behind, and passing it forward to one before; or, in other words,the scholar must acquaint himself with science, as it is brought up to the present time-must first know what is already known, and add his thoughts to the thoughts of others. His great concern is not with visible and material things, not with farms, or trading, or manufactures, or commerce, but with the unseen products wrought out by the thoughts of other men, upon which he employs his thoughts, adding to their store, criticising their errors, making more clear and available their half-finished productions, and then passing on his thoughts and theirs to the next generation. But how shall he communicate the torch unless he receive it, or how shall he trim and brighten the lamp from the past, unless he have it constantly at hand? How can he go on to do this if the moment that he has learned how to hold and trim

the light, it is snatched from his grasp? But this is done to the teacher if he is denied a library?

These remarks not only apply to those departments of which the field is properly books, and in which little can be done without books, but they hold good of those in which the mind is mainly directed to itself; for example, mental and moral science and theology. Here reading without thinking is of little account, and it sometimes happens, that books are misused, so that reading the thoughts of others takes the place of thinking one's own. But even here, it is true that books are an important, and even an indispensable aid. They show us how others have thought on these subjects. They reveal to us what they have discovered and proved. They uncover to us their minds, showing us how they reflected; unveiling to us the process by which they reached this truth, or were entangled in that specious and dangerous error. They excite to still farther attainments, by admitting us to a close and personal intercourse with the minds of earnest thinkers, and, by kindling a generous and warm-hearted sympathy.

When the student-teacher seats himself in his library, all the good and wise men who have thought, and lectured, and written, on the subjects to which his mind and life are devoted, are present to converse with him. Butler shows him how he regarded the great truths at which his mind labored with such evident toil, and how, by slow and painful efforts, he struggled to bring them out. Edwards puzzles him by the information, that on looking very closely at things which are apparently obvious they may be more difficult than he imagines. Berkeley amuses, instructs, and elevates him by the logical acuteness and consistency with which he conducts the principles of his prodecessors right on to his own fantastic conclusions. Reid breaks, by vigorous and welldirected blows, the fine-spun web of Berkeley and Hume, and dares to be true to nature and common sense. Kant, with halfmalicious and half-earnest coolness, throws down his puzzles and tells him to solve them if he can. The society of these thinkers is his daily food. It invigorates and stimulates him day by day, and hour by hour. His previous training has qualified him to profit by this society. If he has books, he can at any moment listen to their best and most matured thoughts, as they utter them in the richest and the most persuasive words. And what if he has not books? He does not cease to be a man, it is true, nor does he cease to be a thinker. His training will not leave him, it is true-his powers to perceive clearly, to distinguish acutely, to reason strongly, will still remain; and it will be felt wherever he lives, and whenever he acts or speaks. He will turn all his acquired strength into some sphere of practical usefulness. But his life as a scholar must come to an end. He is cut off from