People, who profess belief in Religion, Country, Home, Themselves, and Humanity at large. [Illustration: (decorative archway)] THE FUNCTION OF A NATIONAL LIBRARY. BY AINSWORTH R. SPOFFORD. The uses of a great national collection of books are so manifold and far-reaching that it is difficult to sum them up in any succinct statement. The Library at Washington, steadily growing for generations, was founded primarily for the use and reference of Congress. As the library of our national legislature, whose responsible labors cover the wide field of domestic welfare and foreign relations; it should contain all that can contribute to their service and information. This being its primary function, and a great and comprehensive library having been thus gathered, a far wider field of usefulness is found in opening its treasures freely to the public. Gathered as it has been by appropriations of public money, supplemented for more than a quarter of a century by the steady acquisitions coming in under copyright law, it has become to a degree the representative of American science, and the conservatory of the Nation’s literature. As the only Government library of comprehensive range, every year of its existence should be marked by incessant progress toward completeness in every department. In the new and splendid home for the Nation’s books provided by the far-sighted liberality of Congress, readers whose pursuits are endlessly varied should be assured of finding the best literature of all lands. It is a fact pregnant with meaning that the nations which possess the most extensive libraries maintain the foremost rank in civilization.