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- The recent purchase of the great historical library of Dr. Leopold von Ranke by an American suggests some reflections. There is no doubt that this library, which numbers many thousands of books, pamphlets, manuscripts and documents of all times and all languages, is the finest historical collection in the world.... But this great and invaluable collection, which should have gone to one of the large cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago, or to one of the university towns like Cambridge, New Haven, Ithaca or Ann Arbor, is going to Syracuse, which is neither a large city nor a university town, but a place principally devoted to the manufacture of salt and the supply of provisions to through railroad travellers. The question immediately arises: What do the Syracuse salt boilers want of von Ranke's historical library? Had it been a collection of saline treatises, the purchase might have been understood. (en)
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