knowledge among men? It would place within the reach of our minds, of our thinkers, and investigators, and scholars, all, or the chief, intellectual and literary materials, and food and instruments, now within the reach of the culti vated foreign mind, and the effect would be to increase the amount of individual acquisition, and multiply the number of the learned. It would raise the standard of our scholarship, improve our style of investigation, and communicate an impulse to our educated and to the general mind.

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By such a library as you can collect here, something will be done, much will be done, to help every college, every school, every studious man, every writer and thinker in the country, to just what is wanted most. Inquirers after truth may come here and search for it. It will do them no harm at all to pass a few studious weeks among these scenes. Having pushed their investigations as far as they may at home, and ascertained just what, and how much more, of helps they require, let them come hither and find it. Let them replenish themselves, and then go back and make distribution among their pupils; ay, through the thousand channels, and by the thousand voices of the press, let them make distribution among the people! Let it be so, that

"Aither as to their fountains other stars

Repairing, in their golden urns draw light.”

Think of the large absolute numbers of those who, in the succession of years, will come and partake directly of these stores of truth and knowledge! Think of the numbers without number, who, through them, who, by them directly, will partake of the same stores! Studious men will come to learn to speak and write to and for the growing millions of a generally educated community. They will learn that they may communicate. They can not hoard if they would, and they would not if they could. They take in trust to distribute; and every motive of ambition, of interest, of duty, will compel them to distribute. They buy in gross, to sell by retail. The lights which they kindle here will not be set under a bushel, but will burn on a thousand hills. No, sir; a rich and public Mbrary is no anti-republican monopoly. Who was the old Egyptian king that inscribed on his library the words, the dispensary of the soul? You might quite as well inscribe on it, armory, and light, and fountain of liberty!

DR. CHANNING in his Address to Young Men generally, and to Workingmen in particular, thus speaks of books as the powerful means of Self-Culture:

In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.

To make this means of culture effectual, a man must select good books, such as have been written by right-minded and strong-minded men, real thinkers, who instead of diluting by repetition, what others say, have something to say for themselves, write to give relief to full, earnest souls; and these works must not be skimmered over for amusement, but read with fixed attention and a reverential love of truth. In selecting books, we may be aided much by those who have studied more than ourselves. But, after all, it is best to be determined in this particular a good deal by our own tastes. The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.

Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart. Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this.

CHANNING.-On Self Culture.

A GREAT LIBRARY-THE TREASURE-HOUSE OF LITERATURE.

There, is collected the accumulated experience of ages-the volume of the historian, like lamps, to guide our feet:-there stands the heroic patterns of courage, magnanimity, and self-denying virtue:-there are embodied the gentler attributes, which soften and purify, while they charm, the heart :-there lie the charts of those who have explored the deeps and shallows of the soul:there the dear-bought testimony, which reveals to us the ends of the earth, and shows that the girdle of the waters is nothing but their Maker's will:-there stands the Poet's harp, of mighty compass, and many strings:-there hang the deep-toned instruments through which patriotic eloquence has poured its inspiring echoes over oppressed nations:-there, in the sanctity of their own self-emitted light, repose the Heavenly oracles. This glorious fane, vast, and full of wonders, has been reared and stored by the labors of Lettered Men; and could it be destroyed, mankind might relapse to the state of savages.

JAMES. A. HILLHOUSE.-Relations of Literature to a Republican Government.

Hail, Learning's Pantheon! Hail, the sacred ark,

Where all the world of science doth embark,

Which ever shall withstand, as it hath long withstood,

Insatiate Time's devouring flood!

Hail, Bank of all past ages, where they lie

T'enrich with interest all posterity!

Where thousand lights into one brightness spread,

Hail, Living university of the Dead!

COWLEY.-University Library of Oxford, 1650.

TEMPLE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

I can believe that the English language is destined to be that in which shall arise, as in one universal temple, the utterance of the worship of all hearts. Broad and deep have the foundations been laid; and so vast is the area which they cover, that it is co-extensive with the great globe itself. For centuries past, proud intellectual giants have labored at this mighty fabric; and still it rises, and will rise for generations to come: and on its massive stones will be inscribed the names of the profoundest thinkers, and on its springing arches the records of the most daring flights of the master minds of genius, whose fame was made enduring by their love of the Beautiful and their adoration of the All Good. In this temple the Anglo-Saxon mosaic of the sacred words of truth will be the solid and enduring pavement; the dreams of poets will fill the rich tracery of its windows with the many-colored hues of thought; and the works of lofty philosophic minds will be the stately columns supporting its fretted roof, whence shall hang, sculptured, the rich fruits of the tree of knowl edge, precious as "apples of gold,"-" the words of the wise."

G. W. Moos-Dean's English.

EXTRACTS from the Addresses delivered on the occasion of the Dedi cation of the Public Library of the City of Boston, on the 1st of January, 1858.

HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, President of the Board of Commissioners, charged with the erection of the building, on delivering the keys to the mayor, spoke as follows:-

Welcome, fathers and mothers of our city; welcome, young ladies and children of the schools; welcome, lovers and patrons of literature and learning, of science and the arts; welcome, friends to good manners and good morals, and to those innocent recreations and ennobling pursuits by which alone vulgarity and vice can be supplanted; welcome, pastors and teachers of our churches and colleges; welcome, rulers and magistrates of our city, of our commonwealth, and of our whole country; welcome, citizens and residents of Boston, one and all, to an edifice which is destined, we trust, to furnish a resort, in many an hour of leisure and in many an hour of study, not for yourselves alone, but for those who shall come after you, through countless generations; and where shall constantly be spread, and constantly be served, without money and without price, an entertainment ever fresh, ever abundant, and ever worthy of intelligent and enlightened freemen. *

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This substantial and spacious building owes its existence exclusively to the enlightened liberality of the municipal government. And I avail myself of the earliest opportunity to acknowledge most gratefully, in behalf of the Board of Commissioners as now composed, and of all who have been associated with us during its existence, the unhesitating promptness and unanimity with which every appropriation which has been asked, or even intimated as desirable, has been granted by successive City Councils.

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When a celebrated ruler and orator of Greece was arraigned for the costliness of some one of the many magnificent structures which are associated with his administration, and whose very ruins are now the admiration of the world, he is said to have replied, that he would willingly bear all the odium and all the onus of the outlay, if the edifice in question might henceforth bear his own name, instead of being inscribed with that of the people of Athens. But the people of ancient Athens indignantly rejected the idea, and refused to relinquish, even to the illustrious and princely Pericles, the glory of such a work.

Nor will the people of Boston, I am persuaded, be less unwilling to disown or abandon the credit which is legitimately theirs, for the noble hall in which we are assembled ;—and while the munificence of benefactors, abroad and at home, and the diligence and devotion of Trustees or of Commissioners, may be remembered. with gratitude by us all, the city herself" our illustrious parent," as she was well entitled by our venerable benefactor, Mr. Jonathan Phillips-will never fail to claim the distinction as exclusively her own, that with no niggardly or reluct aat hand, but promptly, liberally, and even profusely, if you will, she supplied the entire means for its erection.

These empty shelves will soon be filled. Gems and jewels more precious than any which the mines of either continent can ever yield, will soon find their places in the caskets and cabinets which have here been prepared for them; and living jewels, like those of the Roman matron of old-even the sons and daughters of our city-will soon be seen clustered around them.

It was a poetical and beautiful conceit of the great philosopher of our motherland-of Bacon, I mean, the contemporary and fellow-countryman of our Pilgrim Fathers that "libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed." But Cicero, methinks, did better justice to the theme. We are told that, when that illustrious orator and statesman saw the books, which composed his precious private library, fairly arranged in the apartment which he had provided for them, in his villa at Antium, he wrote to his friend Atticus, "Postea vera quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit, mens addita videtur meis ædibus.”

"Now that my books have been put in their places by your learned Greek, Tyrannio, a soul seems to have been added to my dwelling."

Yes, my friends; within these walls shall soon be gathered, not merely the mighty masters of philosophy and rhetoric, of history and poetry, whom the Roman Cicero recognized and reverenced as introducing a soul into his dwelling, but the great lights of all ages, the wise and learned of all climes--and those, especially, who have adorned a civilization, and vindicated a liberty, and illustrated a Christianity which that Cicero never conceived of, shall be congregated around them. Here soon shall many a waiting heart be kindled into something of the exultation of that good old Bishop of Norwich, when he exclaimed, on the sight of a great library, "What a happiness is it, that, without all offense of necromancy, I may here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts!-that I can at pleasure summon up whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors, from all the coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgments on all points and questions which I may propose!"

And not the reverend fathers and acute doctors only shall answer to our call; but here also the poets of all ages shall be ever ready to sing to us their choicest strains ;-the dramatists of all ages to rehearse to us their richest scenes of wit or of woe;-the orators of all ages to recite to us the triumphant argument, or the thrilling appeal, which may have shaken empires from their base, or changed the current of the world's affairs. Here, too, the practical inventor and ingenious mechanic shall exhibit to us his specifications, his plans, and his drawings. Here the great interpreters of Nature shall unfold to us the mechanism of the heavens, the testimony of the rocks, and the marvels and mysteries of animal and vegetable life. Here the glowing pictures of fiction and fancy shall pass and repass before our vision, beneath the magic wand of a Scott, a Dickens, or a Cooper; the living portraits of sages and patriots, of other lands and of our own land, be displayed to us by a Guizot or a Brougham, a Carlyle or a Campbell, a Sparks or an Irving;-and the grander panorama of history be unrolled for us by a Gibbon or a Grote, a Hume or a Macaulay, a Bancroft, a Prescott, or a Motley. May God, in his goodness, grant that increased supplies of wisdom, and knowledge, and virtue, for us and our posterity, may be its rich and abundant fruits :that it may be so sanctified by His grace to the highest interests of the whole community, that here, at least, the tree of knowledge may never be disunited from the tree of life-and that, constituting, as it will, the complement and the crown of our great republican system of popular education, it may do its full part in bearing up and sustaining, for a thousand generations, a well-compacted and imperishable fabric of freedom;-of that freedom which rests upon intelligence, which must be regulated by law, and which can only be maintained by piety, philanthropy, and patriotism.

At the close of Mr. Winthrop's address, His Honor, Alexander H. Rice, mayor of the city, on receiving the keys of the building, made a very appropriate address, from which we give the closing paragraphs:

Our city has sometimes been called the Athens of America; sometimes in compliment; let it never be in derision. The real claim to that shining title must rest upon the culture which is bestowed upon the institutions and the arts, which suggest a resemblance to the charming "Eye of Greece." In the rising greatness of that peerless city, we are told that the enlightened and patriotic arbiter of its fortunes, the patron of literature and learning, not only reclaimed the works of Homer from threatened oblivion, but established a public library at Athens, open to the free use of its citizens, and by these acts established there the home of the Muses. The golden age of Cimon and Pericles followed-the age of the Gymnasium, of the Academy, of the Agora, of the Temple of Eleusis, of the Parthenon, and of the Propyla, and of all the culture which produced and surrounded them-that age of dazzling splendor which has not yet ceased to excite the wonder and admiration of mankind. I may not pause to compare the civilization of that age with ours, in all that is useful and beneficent to man; but if, in our contemplations of the glory of that era, there come to us impressions of

exhaustless wealth, vast extent, and resources unapproachable to us of the present, let it be remembered that the wonderful Athens of history contained a populat on less than that of Boston to-day, and that the number of those who might exerc.se the rights of citizenship therein was less than our number of voters. How far the free library of Pisistratus affected the character and fortunes of the Grecian city, neither history nor tradition discloses; but we know that it preceded its power and splendor, and that these all came from the brain and the hand of man. Whether the noble institution, whose flattering auspices we here hail to-day, shall be the harbinger of a more illustrious future to our Athens, may depend, in some degree, upon the patronage which shall await upon these halls; for the power of knowledge is essentially the same in every period of time, though the fruits of its cultivation may be changed by the altered conditions of the race and the age.

But time forbids that I should pursue the theme; a single word more, and I have done. While here, gathered in joyous assemblage to-day, there are thosesome of whom are before me, others are absent and distant-all of whom should have a place in our memories. It was the custom at certain Athenian festivals for the knights to make the circuit of the Agora, beginning at the statue of Hermes and paying their homage to the statues and temples around it. On this new year's festival, now first celebrated within these walls, since we have not yet their statues about us, let us summon to our thoughts, in living personality, the images of all the noble benefactors of our Public Library, the contributors of funds, of books, and of valued service; and let us pay to each the homage of our hearts' best gratitude, as they pass through the courts of our memories. Length of days and happiness to the living-fresh laurels for the memory of the departed-praises to Heaven for their gifts and their example.

Hon. EDWARD EVERETT, President of the Board of Trustees, on receiving the keys from the mayor, delivered an address, from which the following passages are taken :—

The City of Boston, owing to peculiar circumstances in its growth and history, has been, at all times, as I think, beyond most cities in the world, the object of an affectionate attachment on the part of its inhabitants-a feeling entitled to respect, and productive of good, even if it may sometimes seem to strangers overpartial in its manifestations. It is not merely its commanding natural situation, the triple hills on which it is enthroned, its magnificent bay and harbor, and the group of islands and islets that sparkle like emeralds on their surface-not merely this most admirable Common, which opens before our windows, delightful even at this season of the year, and affording us in summer, in its noble malls and shady walks, all that the country can boast of cool, and beautiful, and salubrious, transported to the heart of the city; "the poor man's pleasure-ground," as it has been well called, though a king might envy it;-nor the environs of our city, of surpassing loveliness, which inclose it on every side in kindly embrace; it is not solely nor principally these natural attractions which endear Boston to its citizens. Nor is it exclusively the proud and grateful memories of the past-of the highsouled fathers and mothers of the land, venerable in their self-denying virtues, majestic in the austere simplicity of their manners, conscientious in their errors, who, with amazing sacrifices, and hardships never to be described, sought out new homes in the wilderness, and transmitted to us delights and blessings which it was not given to themselves to enjoy-of those who in succeeding generations deserved well of their country-the pioneers of the Revolution, the men of the stamp-act age, whose own words and acts are stamped on the pages of history, in characters never to be effaced-of those who, when the decisive hour came, stood forth in that immortal hall, the champions of their country's rights, while it scarcely yet deserved the name of a country; it is not exclusively these proud and grateful associations, which attach the dutiful Bostonian to the city of his birth or adoption.

No, Mr. Mayor, it is not exclusively these, much as they contribute to strengthen the sentiment. It has its origin, in no small degree, in the personal relation in which Boston places herself to her children; in the parental interest which she cherishes in their welfare, which leads her to take them by the hand almost from the cradle to train them up in the ascending series of her excellent free schools;