taking into consideration the increasing population, and the rapid spread of culture, it seems reasonable to conclude that the number will be more than doubled in less than half the time. Now let us consider how much of this sea of literature we can hope to swallow. Suppose that we assist ourselves by a little calculation. Allow that a man could devote ten hours a day to reading, and in that ten hours he could read 200 pages. In a year he would get through 73,000 pages, which at the rate of 500 pages to a volume would give as the result of his year's labor 146 volumes. Now, if we should place the reading life of our student at fifty years, at his death he would have read just 7,300 volumes. This estimate is liberal. Not one man in ten thousand ever reads so many books. The vast majority of men never read one-tenth as many. But in order to impress the idea more distinctly on our minds, let us contemplate the facts from another point of view. Instead of directing our attention to the quantity we have to read, let us see the time we have to do it in. And on this point hear De Quincey, that philosophic dreamer, who passed his long life in mingled reverie and study. In his essay on the Art of Conversation," he says: "Three-score years and ten produce a total sum of 25,550 days, to say nothing of some seventeen or eighteen more that will be payable to you as a bonus on account of leap-years. Now, out of this total onethird must be deducted at a blow for a single itemnamely, sleep. Next, on account of illness, of recreation, and the serious occupations spread over the surface of life, it will be little enough to deduct another third. Recollect, also, that twenty years will have gone from the earlier end of your life-namely, about seven thousand days—before you can have attained any skill, or system, or any definite purpose in the distribution of your time. Lastly, for that single item which, among the Roman armies, was indicated by the technical phrase, 'corpus curare'-tendance on the animal necessities- namely, eating, drinking, washing, bathing, and exercise- deduct the smallest allowance consistent with propriety, and upon summing up all these appropriations, you will not find so much as four thousand days left disposable for direct intellectual culture. Four thousand, or forty hundreds, will be a hundred forties—that is, according to the lax Hebrew method of indicating six weeks by the phrase of forty days,' you will have a hundred bills or drafts on Father Time, value six weeks each, as the whole period available for intellectual labor. A solid block of about eleven and a half continuous years is all that a long life will furnish for the development of what is most august in man's nature." Assuming now that it has been shown that we can not read more than an insignificant proportion of existing books, two questions present themselves: I. Does not the excess of books over what we can read do us actual injury? 2. If not, does it do us any good? As to the first question, we think the affirmative might be plausibly maintained. We think we hear some respectable old gentleman saying: "Select as much as you can possibly make use of the very best-and destroy the rest; burn it, exterminate it, annihilate it!" And there does seem to be some show of reason in this. If the majority of books are bad, or at least not so good as the rest, the probability is that we shall stumble on a good many of the inferior ones; and if they do us no other injury, they certainly have the effect of keeping us from reading better ones. "And, sir," says our irate paterfamilias, "you have no idea of the trash our young people read nowadays; miserable, sensational stuff, sir, poisoning their minds. Burn it, sir, burn it—and a good riddance!" It might be further said, that in such a vast sea ideas are in some danger of being drowned. The wave that at last reaches the shore, pushing before it its charge of debris, has left many a rich prize buried or floating behind. There is reason to think that many a brilliant thought and many a bright discovery has been overlooked from mere hurry and crowding. To instance briefly: Buckle, in his History of Civilization in England (vol. ii., p. 311), says: "The most decisive arguments advanced by Niebuhr against the early history of Rome had all been anticipated by Voltaire, in whose works they may be found by whoever will take the trouble of reading what this great man has written instead of ignorantly railing against him." The great discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey was neglected by his contemporaries (Buckle, vol. ii., p. 80). Paradise Lost lay unread until introduced to the public by Addison. Doctor Johnson, in his Lives of the English Poets (vol. i., p. 123), says: "The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have always been mentioned as evidence of neglect ed merit and of the uncertainty of literary fame." The splendid discovery of the undulatory theory of light, first reduced to definite shape by Huygens, was long neglected, and remained so until finally taken up by Young.* Indeed, so prone are we to forget or overlook that which we have not constantly before us, that we often so lose valuable truths. Hear the high authority of Mill. In his System of Logic (p. 411) he says: "Considering, then, that the human mind, in different generations, occupies itself with different things, and in one age is led by the circumstances which surround it to fix more of its attention upon one of the properties of a thing, in another age upon another, it is natural and inevitable that in every age a certain portion of our recorded and traditional knowledge, not being constantly suggested by the pursuits and inquiries with which mankind are at that time engrossed, should fall asleep, as it were, and fade from the memory." In short, it would not be difficult to write an essay on "Lost Thoughts." But after all, the question had better be answered in the negative. The evils incident to the vast expansion of literature are more accidental than necessary. As to the second question, namely, Whether the excess does us any good? we answer in the affirmative. Every record of thought-however blotched and blurred—is precious, and is productive of some good. But what good? *See Brande's Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art, article "Light." If we can not read so many books, of what use are those that we can not look at? The answer is, that we can look at them. We can refer to them. But it is evident that in order to find our way through such a vast labyrinth we must have some clew. To wander unguided would be useless. And here let us pause for a moment to see if we can picture to ourselves some such efficient guide. An Eastern prince, says the fable, desired the learned men of his kingdom to condense the voluminous existing records of knowledge to such compass as would enable him to make himself master of their contents. After years of labor they showed him volumes enough to fill a small room. "Too much," said his majesty; "I have not time for all that." After another period of years the labor of the sages reduced the mass so much as to allow of its being carried upon an ass. "Too much," persisted the prince. Again the wise men applied themselves, and this time they succeeded in inscribing the sum of human knowledge upon a palm - leaf. Such a process is not typical of what we should desire. We are not content to trust the learning of any set of condensers. We do not care to have artificial landscapes in imitation of nature's grand and inaccessible scenery. We want maps and roads and other conveniences to enable us to visit the originals with the least possible trouble. In short, we want trustworthy guide-books, containing complete directions to enable us to find our way through the morasses and tangled forests of literature to the clear cool springs of truth. Are we investigating any particular subject? What a relief would it be if we had something that would tell us immediately the names of all the books that had been written upon it, with the general facts concerning them, such as the age and time in which they were written, the general views they advoca- appeared Bouillaud's catalogue, which ted, the men by whom they were written, their merit both absolute and in relation to other works on the same subject, their principal defects and inaccuracies, the reviews and criticisms and replies they may have drawn forth, together with the places where they are most easily accessible, and any other useful information concerning them that might exist; and all in a kind of short-hand language, easily decipherable and plainly intelligible. Let us inquire whether we have anything of this sort, and, if not, whether anything of the kind is possible. 1. We have nothing of the sort. Encyclopedias do not approach it. They are in no sense indexes. They do not aim to tell us what has been written, but to add something more to the pile. Highly condensed they are, it is true, and, in many cases, convenient; but, as already said, we can not sufficiently trust any man's learning to allow him to condense for us. We wish to see for ourselves what there is. Neither do catalogues of the names of books come much nearer. Wonderful industry has been expended in them. Every public library has now its catalogue; and most of the large publishing-houses have them also. The Reference Catalogue of Current Literature (printed 1874) consists of over 3,000 pages, and professes to contain the titles of over 50,000 works. But though these have a certain use, it is obvious that, unless we know the name of the author we wish to consult, it is idle to run over a list of names. We might have to go through the whole book before finding the name we desired. It would be like looking into our City Directory to find the name of a person whose appearance may have taken our fancy in the street. 2. But such a thing is possible. It has indeed been attempted. In 1679 was the first that deserved any notice. It divided recorded knowledge into five grand divisions, namely: Theology, Jurisprudence, History, Philosophy, and Literature; and amplified each headBut the execution was very imperfect. In 1825 Mr. Hartwell Horne published his Outlines for the Classification of a Library. In 1834 Sir John William Lubbock published his Remarks on the Classification of Human Knowledge. But none of these are up to the mark. Two things are necessary for a perfect literary digest. First, there must be a correct system of classification, and secondly, there must be the most enormous and unwearied labor in filling up correctly the outline. The system, however, would seem to be the most important thing. And great minds have discussed it. Professor Henfrey, F. R. S., in a lecture upon the Educational Claims of Botanical Science, delivered before the London Society of Arts, says: "The most remarkable of the classifications of the sciences which have been given to the world may be briefly characterized by arrangement under three heads, indicating the totally distinct points of view from which they set out, namely: (a), Those based upon the sources of knowledge; (b), Those based upon the purpose for which the knowledge is sought; and (c), Those based upon the nature of the objects studied." After giving reasons why the first two should be rejected, he adopts the third, of which he says: "The objective classification of the sciences may be briefly explained here. The primary divisions depend upon the groups or classes of truths, which must be arranged according to their simplicity, or, what amounts to the same thing, their generality; in other words, the small number of qualities attached to the notions with which they deal. The mathematical sciences deal with ideas which may be abstracted entirely from all material existence, retaining only the conceptions of space and number. The physical sciences require in addition the actual recognition of matter or force, or both, in addition to relations in space and time, but they are still confined to universal properties of matter. The biological sciences are distinguished in a most marked manner by their dependence; the laws of life relate to objects having relations in space and time, and having material existence; they display, more over, in their existence, a dependence upon physical laws which form their medium; but they are distinguished by the presence of organization and life, characterized by a peculiar mobility and power of resistance to the physical forces, and an individ uality of a different kind from that found in inorganic matter. The sciences relating to man, to human society, are removed another step, by the interference, among all the preceding laws, of those relating to the human mind in its fullest sense." Compte has given to the world his views upon the subject. Herbert Spencer also. His division is as follows: "SCIENCE. "Abstract-Logic, Mathematics. "Abstract-concrete-Mechanics, Physics, Chemis try, etc. It would be a Herculean task, but not impracticable. Consider our friends the lawyers. They toil not overmuch, neither have they greater abilities than the rest of us; and yet I say unto you that it is easy for them, by the aid of their "digests," to pick out of the incredible mass of cases decided by the numerous courts of England and America, almost since their organization, all that bear upon the point they happen to be maintaining. It is unnecessary to dilate upon the benefits of such a literary digest. Not only would it increase real information -not only would it render thorough investigation easy, and make possible. "Concrete-Astronomy, Geology, Biology, Psy- things that no one now dreams of un chology, Sociology, etc." This is enough to show that the matter has been discussed. To arrive at the result of the discussion would require more careful and extended examination. As to filling up the outline when we are agreed upon it, that would be only a question of time and labor. dertaking-but it would serve to correct errors which escape detection by the very wearisomeness of tracing them up. It would decrease quackery, cant, and ignorance, and be fatal to all manner of literary crimes. Blessed shall he be among men who hastens the day of its achievement. THE A CHAPTER ON ARCHITECTURE. HE highest of the technic arts, and that which has contributed more than any other to the comfort and well-being of mankind, is architecture. Nations that have passed away or become absorbed have left us, in almost imperishable monuments of stone, records far more trustworthy and more characteristic than the written histories which recount the deeds of kings and warriors. Vague, indeed, were our ideas of Nineveh until the researches of Layard and his successors in the work brought to light, from the mounds of decayed adobe in which they were hidden, the sculptured slabs that surrounded the halls of the palaces of Sennacherib and Shal maneser. Small would be our knowledge of the ancient Egyptians did not the giant pyramids, the wondrous temples, and the deep-cut tombs of the valley of the Nile, covered with pictured scenes and hieroglyphics, remain to attest the high civilization to which they attained; and the Pelasgi and Etruscans, who preceded the Greeks and Romans, would be almost mythical did we not possess specimens of their Cyclopean architecture. We learn far more of the manners, customs, and refinement of the ancient Greeks from an intelligent study of the ruins of the Acropolis than from a perusal of the victories of Miltiades and Ci mon. Alexander could destroy the Persian empire, but the pillars of the palaces of Persepolis still tower aloft, and speak to us of the glories of Xerxes and Darius. Rome has written her history over half the world; triumphal arch and arcaded aqueduct, pillared temple and gigantic amphitheatre, tell of her power, her religion, and her cruelty; while tesselated pavements and decorated walls, scattered through the realms once subject to her sway, are evidence of the luxury of her private citizens. and was on the eve of becoming a style when the school of Michael Angelo and Palladio, with its five orders (five prison-cells for thought), became paramount and spoiled all. In the seventeenth century architecture had almost lost its artistic character, but at the commencement of the eighteenth came the Grecian revival, brought about by the careful study of the Parthenon and other temples. This revival left us a legacy of houses and churches without apparent roofs, and with windows hidden behind a screen of columns. Then came the Gothic revival, most powerful in England, and resulting in a new growth of spires and tracery, painted windows, and pointed arches. Each of these nations had its own peculiar style, a style which faithfully reflected the genius of its people, and when the last of these empires passed away, the influence of its architecture was not extinct, but impressed itself, in various forms and degrees, upon the edifices erected by the conquering Teutonic races. Out of the medley of stylesRomanesque, Lombard, Rhenish, Norman, Burgundian-rose at last a distinct and grand style, the last of the real styles, the Gothic; a style of clustered columns and pointed arches, vaulted naves, and traceried windows "richly dight," of buttress and pinnacle and lofty tower-a style which was the expression of the ardent faith of Christendom, poured out and crystallized in churches and cathedrals over the length and breadth of Europe. But faith declined as knowl--which is fast approaching a style, and edge increased; the almost forgotten remains of ancient Rome were exhumed and studied, and architecture lost its oneness. Instead of aiming to produce something which should express the purpose for which the building was intended, in a manner suitable to the climate and conditions of life of their age, architects began to copy, at a more or less respectful distance, and with more or less of eclectic accuracy, the buildings of former ages. The early Renaissance of Italy and France had its own beauties, At the present epoch, no European nation, except perhaps the French, can claim to have anything approaching a style of its own; nor is it likely, in these days of steam, when travelers are millions where they were thousands half a century ago, and when the products of a section of country are the commodities of the world, that any nation will again be sufficiently isolated to elaborate a distinct style. To their intense love of art, as well as to their exclusiveness and national vanity, the French owe that manner-founded on an adaptation of the classic styles to modern require ments, mingled with some Gothic detail which may, in the course of time, be expanded and adapted until it becomes the style of civilized man all the world over. In our utilitarian age, destitute of the all-absorbing faith of our forefathers, temples and cathedrals have lost their pre-eminence, freedom has frowned upon palaces and castles, and the rapid developments of modern science have brought in many new classes of structures in their place. Docks, wharves, quays, bridges, warehouses, and factories are now of equal importance, from an architectural point of view, with the |