The benefit to be drawn from the amalgamation of libraries, so far from decreasing, seems to increase, the farther that amalgamation is carried. It is both theoretically and practically impossible to draw any strict limitation to the bounds of any extensive study. To pursue the instance of the Biblical student, how many sciences fall within his range. The ecclesiastical law is founded on the Scriptures, and in every church and country there are different forms of ecclesiastical law. The history of the Church is inextricably connected with the history of every Christian state. The geography of the Holy Land has been for ages a theme of research, and the natural history of the Scriptures another. Church architecture is one of the moat prominent forms of the art, painting has had its highest triumphs in scriptural subject.. On all those sciences, arts, and studies, whole libraries have been written, and there is hardly a book of those libraries which the student of any of theme subjects may not have occasion to consult. If a missionary, the field of iris inquiry becomes still more widely extended. A missionary to Mohammedan countries ought to be acquainted with the Koran, to India with tho Vedas, to China with the books of the Budd hists and the works of Confucius and laiou-Tsze. The historian of 'Christian mistsioum, the historian of religion in general, should have some knowledge of all the creed, of the heathen.
It would seem to follow from these considerations that the union of whole libraries is as essential for the purposes of study as the bringing together of single books, and that it should be an object with all who wish to cultivate the progress of knowledge, to frivoler the formation of at least one library of the largest possible extent, to contain all printed books of value.
This view may be supported by the authority of one who, when his passions were not concerted, was perhaps the most clear-sighted man of genius who ever dealt with practical subjects. In the report presented in 1860 to the Emperor of the French on the state of ,the imperial library at Paris, reference is made to the opinion expressed by his uncle, the first Napoleon, in a note dictated on the 10th of February, 1805—" many ancient and modern works are wanting in the great library," said Napoleon, " which are found in the other libraries of Paris, and of the departments. A list should be made of these books, and they should be taken from the minor establishments, to which should be given in exchange works which they do not possess of which the great library has duplicates. The result of this operation would be, that when a book was not found in the imperial library it would be known for certain that it did not exist in France." The notion of a central and universal library of this kind has the advantage of being, not only philosophical, but popular. It has been a prevalent belief in several countries that this ideal library actually existed. The Vatican at Rome was long supposed to be such a collection, and to contain an enormous quantity of volumes. The Rev. Mr. Eustace, an English Catholic priest, who published a
' Classical Tour in Italy,' in 1813, said, in speaking of the printed books of the Vatican library, "Their number has never been accu rately stated ; some confine it to 200,000, others raise it to 400,000, and many swell it to a million—the mean is probably the most accurate." The most recent historian of the collection, Zanelli, in 1857, speaks of it as "holding the first place among the libraries of the world, both by its antiquity and the value and number of its volumes and manuscripts." At Oxford, in the early part of the present century, it was almost an article of faith with the under-graduates that the Bodleian library was only second to the Vatican, and further, that it contained every printed book. The number of volumes in it was usually stated to visitors at half a million : a German statistician, Schnabel, on the faith of the assertion in the ' Oxford Guide' of its near approach to the Vatican, raised the number in print to 700,000. The same notion of its containing every printed book was current in 4 London at the same time respecting the British Museum. In all three cases the belief was a most egregious error.
Two German writers of reputation, Denis, in 1775, in his ' Introduc tion to Bibliography,' and Blume, in 1824, in his' Iter Italieum ' reduce the number of printed volumes in the Vatican to 30,000. Valery the Frenchman, in 1826, speaks of it as 80,000. The marquis Melchiori in his ' Guida Metodica,' printed at Rome in 1836, gives the number at 100,000; and as Zanelli twenty-one years after does not venture to correct him and gives no number at all, it may be assumed that Melchiori was near the mark. An official return of the Bodleian librarians to the House of Commons in 1849 stated the number of their volumes then, after all the increase of half a century, at 220,000 only ; and the British Museum in 1820, contained less than 116,000, while though it has now in 1860, attained to more than five times that number, and more than doubles the Bodleian, it is still far indeed from a state of even tolerable completeness.
It is remarkable at how recent a date the period of really exten sive libraries commenced. Adriano Balbi, the Italian statistician, who in his ingenious essay on the library of Vienna, published in 1835, furnished a large body of information on the subject critically sifted, gives an estimate of the number of books in several of the great libraries of Europe in 1789, at the commencement of the French Revolution. The Imperial Library at Vienna was then in his judg ment the largest collection in Europe, and contained 196,000 volumes. Three other libraries in Germany stand nearest to it in his estimate. To the royal library at Dresden he assigns 190,000 ; to the royal library at Berlin 160,000; to the university library at Gottingen also 160.000 volumes. To the Zaluski library at Warsaw he gives 150,000; to the royal library at Paris 149,000, only. The only English library he mentions is the Bodleian, to which he assigns 135,000 volumes in 1789.