should be one leading object of the principal library to gather within its walls the fullest representation possible, of the literature relating to its own State and neighborhood. In every city and large town, the local journals and other periodicals should form an indispensable part of a public library collection. Where the means are wanting to purchase these, the proprietors will frequently furnish them free of expense, for public use; but no occasion should be lost of securing, immediately on its issue from the press, every publication, large or small, which relates to the local history or interests of the place where the library is maintained. While the files of the journals of any period furnish unquestionably the best instruments for the history of that epoch, it is lamentable to reflect that so little care has ever been taken to preserve a fair representation of those of any age. The destiny of nearly all newspapers is swift destruction; and even those which are preserved, commonly survive in a lamentably fragmentary state. The obvious causes of the rapid disappearance of periodical literature, are its great volume, necessarily increasing with every year, the difficulty of lodging the files of any long period in our narrow apartments, and the continual demand for paper for the uses of trade. To these must be added the great cost of binding files of journals, increasing in the direct ratio of the size of the volume. As so formidable an expense can be incurred by very few private subscribers to periodicals, so much the more important is it that the public libraries should not neglect a duty which they owe to their generation, as well as to those that are to follow. These poor journals of to-day, which everybody is willing to stigmatize as trash, not worth the room to store or the money to bind, are the very materials which the man of the future will search for with eagerness, and for some of which he will be ready to pay their weight in gold. These representatives of the commercial, industrial, inventive, social, literary, political, moral and religious life of the times, should be preserved and handed down to posterity with sedulous care. No historian or other writer on any subject who would write conscientiously or with full information, can afford to neglect this fruitful mine of the journals, where his richest materials are frequently to be found. In the absence of any great library of journals, or of that universal library which every nation should possess, it becomes the more important to assemble in the various local libraries all those ephemeral publications, which, if not thus preserved contemporaneously with their issue, will disappear utterly, and elude the search of future historical inquirers. And that library which shall most sedulously gather and preserve such fugitive memorials of the life of the people among which it is situated will be found to have best subserved its purpose to the succeeding generations of men.