"WHEN a man has once resolved upon a | subject then, for a text," says Sterne, "Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, is as good as any in the Bible." Without pretending to be so easily satisfied as that very accommodating divine, we shall choose, for our present text, the London Catalogue; nor shall we be without grave precedents, both in his discourses and in those of much better theologians, if we should ultimately allow the text to play but an insignificant part in the sermon.

Our readers will readily surmise that it is not our intention to criticise this curious volume, or to trouble them with any specimens of its contents. But though we have little to say of it, it has a great deal to say to us; and, in truth, we apprehend there are few productions of the press more suggestive of instructive and profitable reflection. Still, as it only conveys wisdom in broken and stammering accents, we must endeavor, according to our ability, to give clearer utterance to some of the lessons it teaches.

This closely printed book contains 542

pages; and, after all, comprises a catalogue of but a small fraction of the literature of the time; in fact, only the titles of the new works, and new editions of old works, which have issued from the British press between the years 1814 and 1846; and not all of these. To this prodigious mass each day is adding fresh accumulations; and it is impossible not to speculate a little on the probable conse

quences.

Some may perhaps, at first, be inclined to predict that mankind will in time be oppressed by the excess of their intellectual wealth; and that, operating like the gold of Villa Rica, (to which it would seem that we might soon have to add that of California,) the superabundance of the precious metal may lead to the impoverishment and ruin of the countries so equivocally blessed. It may be feared that a superficial and flimsy knowledge, gained by reading a very little on an infinity of subjects, without prolonged and systematic attention to any, will be the result; and such knowledge, it can hardly be disputed, will be in effect much the same as

I pursue these ideas, and quit my proposed | plan of reading."* "I suspended my perusal of any new books on a subject, till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how much the authors added to my original stock."

Perpetual access to a large library, it may be suspected, is often an impediment to a thorough digestion of knowledge, by tempting to an unwise indulgence. There is a story of a man who said he always read borrowed books with double attention as well as profit, because he could not hope to renew his acquaintance with them at pleasure! This of course presupposes that he returned the books he borrowed-an event which, we fear, does not always happen.

It is probable, indeed, that a comparatively small number of well-selected bookseven when our own-would, generally, be likely to form a sounder and more serviceable knowledge than the unlimited range of a large library. Most readers must have been aware of the fastidious mood with which, in moments of leisure, they have stood before a goodly assortment of attractive writers, and instead of making a substantial repast, as they would have done with less to distract their choice, have humored the vagaries of a delicate appetite-toyed with this rich dainty and that-and after all have felt like a school-boy who has dined upon tarts-that they have spoiled their digestion without satisfying their hunger!

But without stopping any longer to examine this paradox-whether the multiplication of books is to produce a diminution of knowledge or not-there are other consequences of the prodigious activity of the modern press far more certain to arise, and which well deserve a little consideration.

One of the most obvious of these consequences will be the disappearance from the world of that always rare animal, the socalled "universal scholar." Even of that ill-defined creature called "a well-informed man" and "general student," it will be perpetually harder to find exemplars; while assuredly the Huets, the Scaligers, the Leibnitzes, must become as extinct as the ichthyosaurus or the megatherium. It is true that,

*Extraits Raisonnées de mes Lectures. He adds, "Si j'avois suivi mon grand chemin, au bout de ma longue carrière, j'aurois à peine pu retrouver les traces de mes idées."

Memoirs; and thought worthy of being twice cited by Mr. D'Israeli.

in the strict sense of the word, such a creature as "the universal scholar" does not, and never did exist. But there as certainly have been men who have traversed a sufficiently large segment of the entire circumference of existing science and literature, to render the name something more than a ridiculous hyperbole. It is commonly indeed, and truly said, to be impossible for the human mind to prosecute researches with accuracy in all, or even many different branches of knowledge; that what is gained in surface is lost in depth; that the principle of the " division of labor" strictly applies here as in arts and manufactures, and that each mind must restrict itself to a very few limited subjects, if any are to be really mastered. All this is most true. Yet it is equally true that in the pursuit of knowledge the principle of the "division of labor finds limits to its application much sooner than in handicrafts. The voracious "helluo librorum" is not more to be suspected of ill-digested and superficial knowledge, than he whom the proverb tells us to avoid, (though for a very different, and as we suspect, less valid reason,) the man "unius libri."* A certain amount of knowledge of several subjects, often of many, is necessary to render the knowledge of any one of these serviceable; and without it, the most minute knowledge of any one alone would be like half a pair of scissors, or a hand with but one finger. What is that amount must be determined by the circumstances of the individual, and the object for which he wants it; the safe maximum will vary in different cases.

There are opposite dangers. The knowledge of each particular thing that a man can study will always be imperfect. The most "minute philosopher" cannot pretend perfection of knowledge even in his little domain; and if it were perfect to-day, the leakage of memory would make it imperfect by to-morrow. No subject can be named, which is not inexhaustible to the spirit of man. Whether he looks at nature through the microscope or the telescope, he sees wonders disclosed on either side which extend into infinity-the infinitely great or the

For what can be suggested in favor of the "Man of One Book," the reader may profitably consult the observations of Mr. D'Israeli on that subject in his "Curiosities of Literature." There is truth in what he says; but if the proverb is to be taken at all literally, we are convinced that it has less than the usual average of proverbial wisdom, and that the "man of one book" will prove but a shallow fellow.

infinitely little-and can set no limits to the approximate perfection with which he may study them. It is the same also with languages and with any branch of moral or metaphysical science. A man may, if he will, be all his life long employed upon a single language, and never absolutely master its vocabulary, much less its idioms; but, like the ancient, after many years of solitary application, have still to proclaim himself a foreigner to the first apple-woman he meets, by some solecism too subtle for any but a native ear to detect it.

The limits within which any subject is to be pursued must therefore be determined by utility; meantime, it is certain that one cannot be profitably pursued alone. Such, it has been well observed, is the strict connection and interdependence of all branches of science, that the best way of obtaining a useful knowledge of any one, is to combine it with more. The true limit between too minute and too wide a survey may be often difficult to find; nevertheless such a limit always exists; and he who should pause over any one subject, however minute, till he had absolutely mastered it, would be as far from that limit with regard to all the practical ends of knowledge, as if he had suffered his mind to dissipate itself in a vague attempt at encyclopædic attainments. The statement of Maclaurin on this point, expressed in a characteristically mathematical form, is well worthy of attention. "Our knowledge," says he, "is vastly greater than the sum of what all its objects separately could afford; and when a new object comes within our reach, the addition to our knowledge is the greater, the more we already know; so that it increases not as the new objects increase, but in a much higher proportion.*"

At all events, it ill becomes us to speak slightingly of the various, and for all practical purposes, solid attainments of superior minds. There is a piece of self-flattery by which little minds often try to reduce great minds to their own level. "True," it is said, "such men have very various knowledge, but it is all superficial; they have not surrendered themselves to any one branch sufficiently;" and all this, perhaps, because they have not cultivated with the most elaborate industry every little corner of it, and because they have had some conception of the relative

value of the parts of a large subject! The minute antiquary (if he be nothing more) talks in this style if he finds you ignorant of the shape of an old buckle of such a date! "You know nothing of antiquities." The minute geographer, if he discovers that you have never heard of some obscure town at the antipodes, will tell you, you know nothing of geography. The minute historian, if he finds that you never knew, or perhaps have known twenty times, and never cared to remember, some event utterly insignificant to all real or imaginable purposes of history, will tell you that you know nothing of history. And yet, discerning the limits within which the several branches of knowledge should be pursued, you may after all, for all important objects, have attained a more serviceable and prompt command over those very branches in which your complacent censor flatters himself that he excels.

But to return to the prospects of the socalled "universal scholar." There have been in every age men who, gifted with gigantic powers, prodigious memory, and peculiar modes of arranging and retaining knowledge, have aspired to a comprehensive acquaintance with all the chief productions of the human intellect in all time; who have made extensive incursions into every branch of human learning; and whose knowledge has borne something like an appreciable ratio to the sum total of literature and science; who, as Fontenelle expressively says of Leibnitz, have managed to drive all the sciences. abreast." Such minds have always been rare; but, as we have observed, they must soon become extinct. For what is to become of them, in after ages, as the domain of human knowledge indefinitely widens, and the creations of human genius indefinitely multiply? Not that there will not be men who will then know absolutely more, and with far greater accuracy, than their less favored predecessors; nevertheless, their knowledge must bear a continually diminishing ratio to the sum of human science and literature; they must traverse a smaller and smaller segment of the ever-widening circle! Nay, it may well be, that the accumulations of even one science (chemistry, or astronomy for instance) may be too vast, for one brief life to master.* Or, since that thought is really

p. 392.

names of more than a thousand German authors, we