"
* * * * *
_The New Tariff-Bill_. Washington. 1860.
We do not propose to submit the English of this new literary effort
of the House of Representatives at Washington to a critical
examination, (though it strikingly reminds us of some of the poems of
Mr. Whitman, and is a very fair piece of descriptive verse in the
_b'hoy_-anergic style,) or to attempt any argument on the vexed
question of Protection. But there is a section of the proposed act
which has a direct interest not only for all scholars, but for that
large and constantly increasing class whose thirst for what may be
called voluminous knowledge prompts them to buy all those
shelf-ornamenting works without which no gentleman's library can be
considered complete. Though in the matter of book-buying the
characters of gentleman and scholar, so seldom united, are
distinguished from each other with remarkable precision,--the desire
of the former being to cover the walls of what he superstitiously
calls his "study," and that of the latter to line his head, while the
resultant wisdom is measured respectively by volume and by mass,--yet
it is equally important to both that the literary furniture of the
one and the intellectual tools of the other should be cheap.
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