sphere with that order of being to which God, angels and men belong. In both cases the animal instincts have been sharpened and guided by the power of rational mind, and then prostituted to the pursuit of enjoyment in channels that no animal but man would choose. The point I would make in this connexion, and around which I would draw the attractions of philosophy, history and the added sanctions and sanctity of holy revelation, is, that the mind is the seat of all the happiness that of right belongs to human kind. All other enjoyment is shared with the brute and would be man's, if there were no books, no thoughts, no converse with spirit, no heaven. Under the brightness of this truth the value of books appears. We ought to give more time to thinking, and by the sole power of our own faculties make progress in knowledge. "There is one art," says Coleridge, himself an example and teacher of its power, "of which every man should be master, the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?" But life is short, and labors are many and pressing: few have time, and fewer have power to learn without books or by the ear. We must read and learn. Books are savings-banks, in which one generation deposites its earnings for the use of the next: they add their earnings to the store, and thus the capital is increased from age to age. Learning hath this advantage that giving does not impoverish, and withholding does not enrich. But let us dwell awhile on the pleasures to be found in the realms of knowledge, now to be opened in this library. I shall seek them in the departments of philosophy, history and imagination. I. THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY.-There is scarce a deeper, purer word in the language than this-philosophy. It has lost its original force and beauty, and is applied to scholastic science or metaphysical abstractions, when its gentle and all but divine composition speaks only the love of wisdom. Beautiful in its conception, it conducts the soul toward the source of the high and heavenly; purifies the spirit even in the days of its dwelling in tabernacles, and brings it into companionship with those who study the nature of truth and worship its infinite head. With the study of philosophy the unlettered mind associates only the pursuit of vain speculations, as profitless and visionary. Philosophy is folly in the world's dictionary. So be it. Its glory is, that it is self-reliant, and its worshipper is just as rich and happy in its possession, as if he had the stone once sought to turn all it touched to gold. This alchemy hath true philosophy. The highest wisdom is in the revelation of its Author, and the streams that flow from that source are many and full; their banks are fertile, their waters, sweet, and he who drinks shall never thirst. Descending from this high source, the writings of men who have tasted the springs of divine truth, and next to these, the works of the learned in every region of thought are before us, revealing such fields of investigation as ever invite, but never exhaust the study of the inquiring mind. Is it pleasure then you seek? And have you a mind that is formed for communion with the wise and good? Were you admitted to the society of Plato and Socrates, of Bacon and Newton, of Edwards and Coleridge, their presence might oppress, and prevent the high enjoyment which communion with their spirits would impart to one at home in their presence. But their works a child may read; and true modesty, an attribute of genius, as a child-like temper is the emblem of heaven, may sit down in the alcoves of a library at the feet of these illustrious men whose shadows fall solemnly on the track of time, and commune with them reverently and joyously. The man of many cares, whose spirit pressed in life's struggle, often longs for rest, shall turn from the toils of his daily service, and here refresh his soul by converse with the mighty dead. Cato and Cicero, who has given us the thoughts of Cato, in his own eloquent language, rejoiced in the doctrine of the soul's immortality, because it promised to restore us to the society of those men whose virtues and wisdom we have admired, and who being dead, yet speak to us in their imperishable works. I mean no irreverence when I say the walls of our library shall enclose a heaven, more worthy the aspirations of an immortal mind than Cicero, or Cato or all the sages of pagan antiquity ever thought of. Groping on the confines of truth, and feeling after God, if haply they might find him, they rejoiced in the hope of a heaven of communion with the wise and good. But within these walls will be gathered not merely pagan wise men, but the long line of illustrious and holy minds, whose wisdom, enlightened by the inspiration of heaven, has shed a more enduring brightness upon the mysteries of thought. And as in our intercourse with men, like seeks like, and pleasure is found in harmony of soul, so here the spirit shall seek its kindred, and in the pursuit of a high and heavenly wisdom, every virtuous taste shall find its own refreshment and delight. There is joy in seeking after wisdom: not to make one richer in gold or lands: not to get power that hath glory and greatness, as the world counts it; but wisdom for itself, wisdom to be like God, wisdom to be wise. Listen to the words of wisdom in praising Wisdom's words. 66 They be white-winged seeds of happiness, wafted from the islands of the blessed, Which thought carefully tendeth in the kindly garden of the heart; They be sproutings of an harvest for eternity, bursting through the tilth of time, Green promise of the golden wheat, that yieldeth angel's food: They be streams of living waters fresh from the fountain of Intelligence; Such and so precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter." II. THE STUDY OF HISTORY.-The page of history invites a wider circle of guests. History is philosophy teaching by facts. But the great multitude of men unused to severe and patient thought, prefer to see the result of principles, rather than to search for causes. They will admire, as an acted drama, the rise and fall of empire, without studying the principles that lie at the root and make them flourish or fall. History is the drama of the world. It is the thing done. An artist took his seat in a little bark, and setting it afloat in the waters of the father of rivers, steered slowly and steadily down the stream, gazing upon the banks along which he passed, sketching the changing scenery, the virgin forest, the beetling cliffs, the spreading prairie, the Indian wigwam, the rising city, the deserted cabin, the wonders of nature and of art that are scattered all along its banks, till at last he floated out with the stream into the gulf that received him as eternity swallows time. The canvass on which this panorama is drawn, he spreads before his admiring countrymen who flock to behold it. It is a sketch of more than a thousand miles condensed to three. It is an emblem of the world's history. All cannot float along down the stream and survey the wonders of its shores. But the historian has made the voyage; and on his pages, as on a canvass from pole to pole, he has drawn the map of time! This is history. It rises, stretches, stands up in solemn stateliness and the reader of history is the spectator of the drama of six thousand years. Far away in the twilight of dim antiquity the patriarchs of sacred story move along, with measured step and slow the wandering tribes of a scattered world appear upon the canvass, and one-third of the whole period of the Earth's history has passed away. That wide waste of waters with a single speck upon its surface, has a buried world in its bosom. It rises from the grave again and starts into life. Babylon and Nineveh appear. Those gloomy walls, like mountains of masonry, are the Pyramids of Egypt. Those flying ships are steering away to Argos for the golden fleece, and opening the paths of commerce through the sea. That giant, stalking in the greatness of his strength, is the Grecian Empire: he falls, and there you see a host of weaker powers exulting from his ashes and marching on the track of time. Those thundering legions with glittering shields and spears are the millions of Alexander, and the field is theirs, as the conqueror sighs for another world to subdue. The canvass moves-and the Roman Eagles spread their wings over a subject world. See those splendid monuments of art, the silent witnesses of genius buried beneath the rubbish of two thousand years. The northern hordes are sweeping down upon that last |