then, you see is the thing of which I am disposed to complain, that we give comparatively so little attention and money to the Library, which is, after all, the Alpha and Omega of the whole establishment,—that we are mortified and exasperated because we have no learned men, and yet make it _physically_ impossible for our scholars to become such, and that to escape from this reproach we appoint a multitude of professors, but give them a library from which hardly one and _not_ one of them can qualify himself to execute the duties of his office. You will, perhaps, say that these professors do not complain. I can only answer that you find the blind are often as gay and happy as those who are blessed with sight; but take a Cambridge professor, and let him live one year by a library as ample and as liberally administered as this is; let him know what it is to be forever sure of having the very book he wants either to read or to refer to; let him in one word _know_ that he can never be discouraged from pursuing any inquiry for want of means, but on the contrary let him feel what it is to have all the excitements and assistance and encouragements which those who have gone before him in the same pursuits can give him, and then at the end of this year set him down again under the parsimonious administration of the Cambridge library,—and I will promise you that he shall be as discontented and clamorous as my argument can desire. But I will trouble you no more with my argument, though I am persuaded that the further progress of learning among us depends on the entire change of the system against which it is directed. The next extract is from a letter of Cogswell’s, and gives a glimpse at the actual work done by these young men:— GÖTTINGEN, March 8, 1817.