Page:Address on the opening of the Free Public Library of Ballarat East, on Friday, 1st. January, 1869.djvu/25

 19 the narrow area of our own Britain—fertile as it is in great names—but those which adorn the history of all lands represented amongst us. "We may disown a heritage in the deeds of oppression, cruelty, and crime, which, local in their influences, may be relegated to the spots in which they were enacted, and claim a purer, holier endowment in the love of freedom, of order, and self-respect—in all that is exalted, great and good which antiquity has bequeathed to us.

And where can the testimony of these virtues be preserved more suitably than in Public Libraries, free of access to all who esteem such recollections, who desire that their minds may be refreshed and their principles confirmed by intercourse with the great exemplars, in which

In entering on the threshold of which you feel conscious of the thoroughness of the poet's sentiment—

And in which the copious stores of accumulated instruction which modern ingenuity, sagacity and discernment give to the world almost daily, find an appropriate place.