is to be won, his labors in which, however, are appreciated by the few whose quiet suffrage outvalues the noisy applause of the moment.  His little work on the “Construction of Library Catalogues” is a truly valuable contribution to letters, rendering, as it does, the work of classification more easy, and increasing the chances of our getting good general directories to the books already in our libraries, without which the number of volumes we gather is only an increase of incumbrance.  It is a great detriment to sound and exhaustive scholarship, that the books for students to read should be left to chance; and we owe a great deal more than we are apt to acknowledge to men who, like Mr. Jewett, enable us to find out the books that will really help us.  Dr. Johnson, to be sure, commends the habit of “browsing” in libraries; and this will do very well for those whose memory clinches, like the tentacula of zooephytes, around every particle of nourishment that comes within its reach.  But the habit tends rather to make ready talkers than thorough scholars; and he who is left to his chances in a collection of books grasps like a child in the “grab-bag” at a fair, and gets, in nine cases out of ten, precisely what he does not want.

We think 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