regeneration to the mind of the human race, it opened as with an Almighty hand the avenues of the soul, and poured upon it a stream of knowledge and truth, to flow with ever increasing fulness to the end of time. We are prone to wonder that those inventions which now contribute to our constant use in the shop, the highway of travel and of conversation, and which seem essential to the intercourse and existence of society, should have slept for ages in the mind of man like the Venus in the quarry. Why were they not found out before? But I submit that the most amazing fact in this connexion is, that the ART of PRINTING was not invented till the year of our world 5,439, or Anno Domini 1435! Through long dark years the sacred oracles had been multiplied by the slow process of manual transcription. Strange that no cunning Hebrew, among the many inventions of the times when the wisest of all men lived, discovered the way of making more books; although of making many, there was then no end. Why did Solomon never think of it? Or in those palmy days of Grecian glory, when the nuptials of art and science were celebrated, the fruit of which fair union was an offspring of beauty that charms the eye of admiring taste, even in these last days and in the ends of the earth; why, I ask, did not the art and science of Greece give birth to the art of printing? Go and walk through the alcoves of Cambridge or Oxford, or the British Museum, or the Vatican, amid those amazing exhibitions and collections of human learning: sit there for days and years to pursue the ever-increasingly delightful work of knowing all that is to be known; ply the oar of mind till you are gray, and wiser than the wisest: and then sigh that you have hardly yet pushed away from the shore: but what is that vast, boundless, priceless store of phil

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osophy, poetry and history, compared with what would now be there, had the printing press given form and immortality to all that Plato and Socrates, Homer and Sophocles, Livy and Cicero wrote, and spread those productions among the sons and daughters of Greece and Italy to wake the slumbering poet, orator and philosopher in souls that never had a thought beyond the shepherd's cot, or, at farthest, the warrior's grave. I once asked a friend to go with me to look upon a work of art, which, though deaf, had heard the plaudits of the world; and as we came away, he said, with a tear in his flashing eye, "I could do it, I feel it in me." At the altar of genius, genius kindles; and the brotherspirit burns to rear another shrine at which other hearts shall worship. Hence painting, sculpture and architecture were the fields in which Grecian mind must make its high developments. As these creations rose, the rapt soul gazed on them, and one arch of beauty, one breathing canvass, one speaking statue, started the lurking Phidias and Praxitiles, and made a thousand painters and sculptors. So had the printing press given wings to the works of the great masters of literature, and multiplied the lessons of wisdom, the chronicles of history and the charms of song, these would have called into life the dormant energies of multitudes whose works of equal, perhaps transcendent beauty and power would now adorn and ennoble the empire of knowledge, and shed usefulness and gladness on the pathway of man.

Four hundred years only have elapsed since the art of printing was vouchsafed to man, and now behold the progress of letters, of religion, of thought among the nations of the earth. The multiplication of books is not so great an advantage, as their easy production and diffusion. Previous to this epoch, libraries were

scarce, within the means only of the wealthy and powerful, and in their possession accessible only to the few. Now every house may have a library larger than many of the learned men of early times were able to call their own. Melancthon is said to have had only four volumes in his library, and an old proverb cautions us against an opponent who reads but one.

It may be interesting here to present a table recently prepared and published in England, showing the aggregate of several public libraries in the principal cities of Europe.

There must be other public Libraries in provincial towns; those named are metropolitan.

In our own country, for obvious reasons, we are unable to speak of such collections, but the statistics, compiled by Dr. Ludwig, of the number of public libraries in the different States of the Union, with the number of volumes, shew that we have made a vigorous beginning.

Total-Libraries, 235; Volumes, 1,260,100.

The library, whose Hall we open this evening, is to take rank among these; and in some important features, I doubt not, it is to be as great a benefit to society as the more ancient, costly and extensive collections of other cities and other lands. It is to be a library for the people. It is founded by their labors for their pleasure and advantage, and to be open to them on terms that render all its departments available by every virtuous and industrious person in the community. In all essential respects it is a FREE library: such restrictions only being thrown around it as shall secure it from abuse and promote its healthful increase.

Rejoicing together this evening in the progress of this noble work, let us now refresh our minds in the anticipation of those pleasures which we shall share with each other within these walls. Addressing, as I do, an intellectual assembly, engaged in a literary enterprise and aiming at the general diffusion of knowledge for the improvement of the common mind, I do not doubt that I shall have universal consent to the proposition, that all the pleasures of a rational being should centre in the soul. The lion has his pleasures, and the lamb. The sources of happiness open to each are adapted to their respective natures: and pursuing those tastes implanted by infinite wisdom and benevolence, they carry out the ends for which they were

created. Happiness is a legitimate object of pursuit, worthy of a creature of God, and promised as an endless reward of those who love him. The creature with a mind to reason, to comprehend, to study, to advance toward perfection, may debase himself by the pursuit of sensual pleasures; may poach on the manor of the brute and quarrel with the ox for his husks, or dispute the kennel with the dog, but he is out of the line of his destiny. A good dinner gratifies the palate of an epicure: but the pleasure is shared with every carniferous animal. Pleasures that flow to the soul through the organs of sense, as the pleasures of appetite, of equipage, of dress, of sumptuous living, are shared in common with the lower orders of being, and are enjoyed in greater or less profusion, as industry or fortune provides them. The miser who nightly draws his chest from its lurking place to add his gold, while his heart glows joyously over his hard-gotten heap, is despised. But had he taken a portion of his gold to the smith to be beaten into platters to stand on his sideboard and adorn his table loaded with delicious viands, and into cups to hold his sparkling wine; had he given a portion of his gold in exchange for a carriage and proud bays to drag it with him in it, the world would envy him as a happy man. A miser is called a miser-able man. The millionaire in his chariot and palace, is reckoned among the blessed. But tell me, ye who are able to calculate the difference of exchange, and can weigh the pleasures that become an immortal rational mind, and have some adequate conception of what the capacity is and the proper destiny of the spirit of man, tell me why the miser is not as happy with his gold in ingots as in houses and horses! In neither case is the pleasure co-existent in the same

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