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Dr. Woodward says; "Next to labor, reading is the most valuable and extensive means of improvement adapted to the hospital. By it the mind is quieted, and rendered tranquil; old associations are renewed; matter for rational conversation and reflection is obtained. This influence, daily impressed, is most important for the insane."

The distinguished Dr. Ray declares that defective early education is a fruitful source of disturbed minds, -- unreal wants, hopes and aims are engendered, leading to disappointments, and vexations, and, shipwrecks of mind; and he, with Drs. Bell, Kirkbride, Benedict, Awl, Buttolph, Nichols, and our own Dr. Gray, (who has taken such a deep interest in the establishment of a library here, -- THE OPAL LIBRARY, -- and whose judgment and skill in the selection presents a monument to his tastes as a scholar and a gentleman of great reading himself) these gentlemen, and indeed all the principal superintendents of asylums, recommend the reading of books, and their study as minds permit, and the establishing of libraries for the presence sake, if for nothing more; as books are like good society, reproachful to the uncultivated, and embarrassing unto conviction those who have neglected their manners, their morals, or their minds.

The books that have been read here, by so many, are on compound interest; and even if weak brethren and sisters read pages without remembering one page, they are as well off as a certain graduate of ___ University, who would read Brown's Philosophy, and not know what he had read.

Breaking down -- breaking in, is not for the mind. "Our rule," said an errorist, "is to break down the mind, and build it up after our fashion." But our rule here is, to present the mirrors, hold them up to nature, and, on the suggestive principle, awaken kindred and healthful affinities, presenting to the mind external comforts fresh from the fountains of health and beauty. The simple opening, assorting, and placing in order for the Asyluminans the works Dr. Gray purchased and received during his late tour, produced an electric influence, interrupting old channels, and presenting before the minds, the brazen serpents of Moses to the children of aberrations, bidding them come, look, and be healed.

Asylums are not to be burlesques of the world, but the world too often presents a counterpart of what they are considered to be, not what they are -- arranged in all the form, degree, and perfectness of refined, stern, decided, and yet gentle humanity. Assimilation seeks its kindred in the chemical world, why not in the intellectual? It does, and will; and will prove a powerful aid in the herculean, almost overwhelming, task of restoring the disturbed mind to the tranquil state attendant on useful and independent natural actions.

Arduous duties require constant aid. The reservoirs of sanity belonging to New-York need to be well supplied in order to preserve the equilibrium, lest a preponderance should determine in favor of this Retreat, consecrated to the holy and exalted purpose of relieving agony, comforting and stimulating to good aims, and lawful and becoming action.

The cares and duties of our good Superintendent, and his aids are sufficiently numerous; the barriers to a correct ascertainment of the degree of intellectual healthfulness, sufficiently powerful; the hedge-rows of their spheres as full, or fuller than required for beauty, comfort or use, that we would not urge a single duty further, in the way of promoting the grand objet for which it is founded. God in heaven grant that it may continue sacred to the object for which it was erected, despite the innovations of the curious, the unenlightened or the unsympathizing!

With pleasure, pride and honor, do we view the advancement Opalians have made, by the aid of their Illustrious Chieftains, whose virtue, talent, industry and skill have all been directed to the attainment of so good an object as to establish a Library for the City of Asylumia. The innumerable obligations conferred excites our profoundest gratitude. But "let us pray" for the blessing on the books, and the Curators, and be allowed to beg a favor for the future. Mr. George Peabody, a very eminent gentleman in London, sent some twenty thousand dollars to Danvers, his native town, for a Library and place to put it in. A gentlemen sent to Trenton Asylum, where Dr. Buttolph is Superintendent, some four thousand dollars to erect a Library building, and we hope, yes we hope that soon some liberal son or friend of Asylumia will contribute a mite for a building here. It will be pretty, to have a Hall, so large as the Cliosophic, dedicated to the one purpose of Books and Literature, with a watchful and careful librarian, a Lunatic's Atheneum if you please. When it is so merged in the more active transactions of the Asylum it becomes burdensome, and needs one person, and he a second Cogswell, to watch and promote its interests, understandingly and expansively. The cares of the Superintendent and aids, are sufficiently numerous, and the simpler the way to an exact knowledge of the intellectual state, the more advantageous to the Institution.