Daily National Intelligencer

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

FROM WALSH'S AMERICAN REGISTER.

The regular library of the Congress of the United States was burnt in the capitol at Washington, at the time of the barbarous conflagration of that edifice by the British. It consisted of the best English works in history, politics literature, and of the records of the federal administration. It is now replaced by a much more valuable collection—the library of the ex president Jefferson, which the federal government bought from him at the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. There would have been something more satisfactory in this transaction, had the legislature of Virginia been the purchaser and bestowed it as a gift on the federal government. However this may be it was an inestimable acquisition. There are about six thousand two or three hundred volumes. Mr. Jefferson, while in Europe at the commencement of the American war, spared no pains or expense, in collecting from every quarter whatever could serve to complete American history. He was indefatigable, too, in accumulating the best materials, in the shape of memoirs, abridgements, &c. of European history, particularly by the diplomatic. Hence the catalogue which he furnished to congress presents a multitude of books equally curious and useful which would have been unattainable for this body in any other way. The deficiencies, which are, no doubt, considerable, are, however, such that they may be readily supplied. There is but a slender provision of the historical and political literature of the last ten years. What the proprietor received as an homage to his character and taste, is for the most part of no value.

The collection is exuberant in the ancient classics; richly stocked with the best classical history, ancient and modern, in the principal languages of Europe.

The titles History Ancient and Modern, Politics, Geography, and Criticism, of the catalogue, are particularly full and select. The head of criticism presents a number of precious works relating to the Anglo Saxon and old British languages. When we advert to the real condition of the Fine Arts in the United States,—whatever may be the pretensions advanced,—we cannot attach too much importance to the contents of the chapters under that title in Mr. Jefferson's catalogue. There is in the most attractive and splendid form, all that could be desired, especially in architecture, where we are most lame, for the diffusion of technical knowledge and the improvement of the public taste.

Most of the great works and celebrated elementary treatises, in the mathematical and physical sciences, are included in this collection. Three fourths, indeed, of the whole number of volumes are of the highest reputation and of acknowledged authority. A better nursery or substratum for a great national library could not be found. and it surely will be admitted that not unless is to come within the aim of congress, both on the score of pride and patriotism. If it could be done by no other agency, it was a sort of duty with this body to transfer the literary treasures of Mr. Jefferson to a spot where they would be easily accessible to them and the nation; and stand out as a monument of the national taste and discrimination. There is an absolute obligation on the part of the federal government to provide, in the metropolis, in shape of a library, a great reservoir of instruction in all the departments of human knowledge, for the use of the public as well as of its own members, and the library, certainly, may be so administered as to be open to the one, without at all interfering with the studies or researches of the other. The idea of an establishment of the kind, set apart and peculiar in the character of its materials, for the use of congress, could only spring, either from great poverty of invention as to the discipline of such establishments, or a very imperfect view of the qualifications of an accomplished legislator and statesman.

It is not for congress to presume that there is any branch of human science for which a body, so universal in its possible composition, will not hereafter furnish, in some or others of its members, a cultivated and active taste; or that there is any branch which may not fall within its immense scope of constitutional action, so as to make the possession of all the best means of judgment, that is, the best treatise on it, highly desirable, if not indispensable.

The next generation will, we confidently predict, blush at the objections made in congress to the purchase of Mr. Jefferson's library. Party-spirit, darkling and chafing, spoke the language of an auctioneer or a chapman, and erred egregiously even in its huckstering calculations; for Mr. Jefferson's library was worth, and would, in all likelihood, have brought in market, at least double the sum allotted by congress to the purchase.

We should be at a loss to fix the proportion between the price and the acquisition, if we took into the account the value of the latter in other points of view. This will be one day duly appreciated, without looking to the time when the Bibliomania may rage in the United States; a period which may be descried, although at the end of a long vista.