If the arguments of the new school are allowed to be valid in the case of " trash," they are certainly not less forcible with regard to " lumber," of which they no less warmly advocate the collection and preservation. Perhgps the shortest method of arriving at a clear view on the subject of " lumber" will be to examine the bearings of a particular case.
The Times' newspaper is the most effectual organ of publicity that now exists, or has ever existed in England. On the day of its publica tion, an article likely to interest the Queen will probably meet the eye of the Queen,—an article touching on the law will be scanned by the bench and bar ; a paragraph on public houses will come under the notice of twenty thousand licensed victuallers. Myriads of copies are read by hundreds of thousands of readers at the places of public resort. On the day after its publication it has passed into comparative obscurity ; in the week after it is difficult to procure a copy if one is wanted for a particular purpose in the month after, it can only be consulted at particular places ; in a twelvemonth after, of the myriad copies that have been issued, how many remain ? The great majority of its readers have done with it for ever on the day of its publication ; few private individuals think of preserving it, and those .few soon discover that the task is more burdensome than they supposed, that it involves expense and trouble which are continually increasing, and that merely to find room for the volumes is an oppressive tax. Even in coffee-houses and other places where customers are attracted by the announcement that files of newspapers are kept, it is the general practice to destroy them at the end of about ten years, lest the accumulation should drive the accumulator out of house and home. Nothing of a literary kind attracts more universally the reproach conveyed in the appellation " lumber " than the files of an old news paper. The natural results follow. The most insignificant book of which twenty copies are printed is almost certain to be in existence somewhere at the end of twenty years, but it is quite possible that in the muse of that time every copy of one day's edition of the most widely circulated newspaper in Europe may be consigned to destruc tion. There are numerous reasons why the disappearance of nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand copies of the Times' should be looked on without any disfavour whatever, as in fact equally natural and necessary, but there are also numerous reasons why the thousandth should be preserved. It is a record, the possible im portance of which can hardly be overrated. The persons who have to consult a set of the Trees' for a particular piece of information—and who may not suddenly require to consult it ?—for an advertisement for next of kin, for the record of some long past marriage or death—may, if a single number be wanting in a set, throw away all the tedious labour of hunting through the ponderous volumes of years. An old number is sometimes in request for literary purposes. An anec dote told in `Moore's Diary,' that a poetical jeu d'esprit in a number of the Times,' at the period of the Reform Bill, was attributed at Rogers's breakfast-table to Moore, and on being denied by him was acknowledged by Macaulay, has led, since Lord Macaulay's death, to a search after the forgotten poem in the set of the Times' at the British Museum, to be transferred from the unwieldy columns to a place in the posthumous works of its illustrious author, which will find their way in some edition to almost every library in Christendom. If it be granted that it is desirable that a complete set of the `Times' should exist, it can hardly be doubted that it is desirable it should exist in a public library. Such a set in the possession of a private
individual could not well be made available for one-half of its proper purposes, even if with the most transcendent good-nature he should be willing to entertain at his own expense every application made to hire: There must not only be the storerooms or cellars to place it in —and there are now twelve folio volumes a year—but the room to examine it in, the large strong tables to place it on, the attendants to bring and remove the volumes, as they are wanted or done with. But does such a set exist either at the British Museum, the Times' office, or elsewhere? It is no part of the general economy of newspaper offices in London to take such things into account. At the office of the Morning Chronicle,' which is one of the oldest London papers, there is no set of the Morning Chronicle,' and at the office of the Daily Telegraph,' which is one of the newest, there is no set of the 'Daily Telegraph.' Supposing the set to be imperfect at a public library and pains taken to complete it, how thorough an illustration would the process probably afford of the usual joys and sorrows of the management of a library ? In such cases catalogues have to be searched to ascertain when any volumes of the Times' will occur for sale ; when they do, attention is to be given to procure the information, ofteu not easy to be obtained, if "with all faults and errors of description," they really contain the missing numbers. Care must be taken not to let it be known too widely that the numbers are wanted, lest some bookseller should take advantage of the knowledge to secure them for himself, or run up the price. Even under the most favourable circumstances the price may accidentally ascend so high that the librarian may doubt if he is justified in expend ing the money in the purchase ; and those who think his proceedings worth notice, without understanding them, may criticise him for the extravagant style in which he wastes the public money. When the numbers are secured,—when finally the set ie thoroughly complete— comes the tedious task of the incorporation of the new acquisitions, the disposal of the duplicates that have in all probability been necessa rily acquired, and the crowning joy of the alteration of the entry in the catalogue from "` The Times ' from 1788 to 1859, wanting such and such numbers," to the simplicity of "`The Times' from 1788 to 1859 com plete." When this consummation is achieved, the librarian's toils are naturally forgotten, and every subsequent reader assumes, as a matter of course, that the volumes, to use an expressive phrase, "grew on the shelves." It is well for the librarian if the history terminates here ; but the annals of the British Museum inform us that some years ago a writer, admitted to all the privileges of that magnificent institution, being engaged in writing a life of Daniel O'Connell, for which he required some extracts from the newspapers, took his penknife instead of his pen, and to save himself the trouble of copying a few paragraphs, deliberately mutilated every volume of newspapers that was brought for his use. A man of this description may in a few days of undetected villany ruin the labours of years, and defraud centuries to come. Sets of the Times,' it may be observed, are evidently rising in the market. The library of the State of New York has acquired a set, though not a complete one ; and we have heard, on good authority, that 1000/. would be given for a perfect set for the library of Melbourne.