editions of Mr. Pickering and Mr. Frowde.[6]

It is in truth difficult to assign dimensions
for the libraries of the future. And it is also
a little touching to look back upon those of
the past. As the history of bodies cannot,
in the long run, be separated from the history
of souls, I make no apology for saying a few
words on the libraries which once were, but
which have passed away.

The time may be approaching when we
shall be able to estimate the quantity of book
knowledge stored in the repositories of those
empires which we call prehistoric. For the
present, no clear estimate even of the great
Alexandrian Libraries has been brought
within the circle of popular knowledge; but it
seems pretty clear that the books they
contained were reckoned, at least in the
aggregate, by hundreds of thousands.[7] The form
of the book, however, has gone through many
variations; and we moderns have a great
advantage in the shape which the exterior
has now taken. It speaks to us symbolically
by the title on its back, as the roll of
parchment could hardly do. It is established that
in Roman times the bad institution of slavery
ministered to a system under which books
were multiplied by simultaneous copying in a