LIBRARIES. The wont iihrary is used to denote a collection of books, whether large or small, and also the repository in which that collection hi placed, whether a few shelves or a room, a house or a aaloxi. The Engliali term hi derived from the Latin language, but in Latin itself a library la usually expremed by the word " biltiotheca," taken from the Greek. The Greek phrase thus adopted by the Romans has parsed from them not only into every language of the Romanic family, but into almost every other cultivated huiguage hut our own, for strangely enough, though repeated attempts have been made to natnraliee it, it has never taken root in the English vocabulary, which is not usually so laatiilione.
01 late years the study of libraries—their formation, arrangement, management, and history—has been raised to the dignity of a science. Schrettinger in Oerrnsin, Molboch in Devilish, Constantin Hesse in French, have written respectively on" Bilalothekwitimenachaft,"" thekvidenskah," and " Bibliothitconomie," a branch of knowledge for which no English term has yet been invented, In spite of the pro scription of " bibliotheque," some phrase like " bibliothecology " will probably ere long find its way into our dictionaries, to keep company with " ecclesiology," and other modern innovations A mode of representing the German phrase in Err glide is likely to be required, as the science itself has found so lunch favour in German eyes that a periodical was commenced in 1610, which still continues to be pub lished expressly (or the purpose of reviewing books that touch upon it. Dr. Petzlaoldee ' Anzeiger fair Literatur der Bibliothekwissenschaft.' In addition to the circumstances which have always operated to render great libraries objects of interest to enlightened men, the position of libraries in general has been remarkably altered in the course of the present century, and more especially in the course of the last forty years. The operation of the causes which produce these results is rapidly progressive, and the subject appears likely to increase in interest with every succeeding year.
The existence of a library of some kind must date back nearly as far as the existence of writing. The book which is emphatically called "the book "—the Bible—is itself a collection of books of different kinds : poetry, prophecy, and history of different ages, from the time of Moses to the time of Malachi. In Greek its name is not the Bible,' but the ' Bibles' ; and in the middle ages it was often called ' the Library," the Bibliotheca.' It probably constituted among the early Hebrews the whole library of the Synagogue. Its first translation,
the Septuagint, was expressly written to enrich a larger library—the great collection of books which, founded by Greeks on the soil of Egypt, was destined to become the greatest and most famous collection of all antiquity. The book which was first introduced to the Alexan drian library of the successors of Alexander the (Great, as an exotic curiosity, became in the course of centuries the book of the religion of Egypt--till, as we shall see, that noble library finally perished after its varied fortunes of nine hundred years, by command of the Moham medan caliph, who condemned all books as useless or injurious but the Koran. That library must then have embraced thousands of volumes which were a comment on that early translation for which the world was indebted to its founders. At this moment the royal library of Stutt gard contains 8700 editions of the Bible, and that of the British and Foreign Bible Society in London, is almost entirely a collection, and a very imperfect one, of the translations and comments on that single volume.
As one book thus becomes connected with, and even essential to, the understanding of another, so whole libraries of books stand in the same relation. The library just mentioned, that of the British and Foreign Bible Society, contains, as we learn from Mr. George Bullen's valuable catalogue, translations of the Scriptures into upwards of 250 lan guages, many of them languages in which no other book exists. The library is thus of essential importance,not only to the biblical but to the philological student. At the same time the investigator into languages is unable to make full use of the treasures it contains unless he has also access to a large collection of grammars and dictionaries, a library of entirely a different description. it is evident that if a biblical and a philological library existed in different parts of the same city, uncon nected with each other, in great service would be rendered to the frequenters of both by bringing them under the Fame roof, and render ing them accessible at the same times. The collections might remain precisely the same, the expenses of management Might by the blending of the two into one be easily reduced, but the advantages would be great, and they would be mutual. The biblical student and the missionary might make use of the dictionaries to study the Hebrew and Arabic and Tahitian Bibles, the philological student might make use of the Bibles to study the Hebrew and Arabic and Tahitian languages.