CURIOSITIES OF Literature. LIBRARIES. THE passion for forming vast collections of books has necessarily existed in all periods of human curiosity; but long it required royal munificence to found a national library. It is only since the art of multiplying the productions of the mind. has been discovered, that men of letters have been enabled to rival this imperial and patriotic honour. The taste for books, so rare before the fifteenth century, has gradually become general only within these four hundred years in that small space of time the public mind of Europe has been created. Of LIBRARIES, the following anecdotes seem most interesting, as they mark either the affection, or the veneration, which civilized men have ever felt for these perennial repositories of their minds. The first national library founded in VOL. I. B |