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book called Pliny,' which had been in the custody of the abbot and convent of Reading. The Romance of the History of England,' with other volumes, have also royal receipts. The king had either deposited these volumes for security with the abbot, or, what seems not improbable, had no established collection which could be deemed a library, and, as leisure or curiosity stimulated, commanded the loan of a volume. The borrowing of a volume was a s.rious concern in those days, and heavy was the pledge or the bond required for the loan. One of the regulations of the library of the Abbey of Croyland, Ingulphus has given. It r gards the lending of their books, as well the smaller without pictures as the larger with pictures; any loan is forbidden under no less a penalty than that of excommunication, which might possibly be a severer punishment than the gallows. Long after this period, our English libraries are said to have been smaller than those on the Continent; and yet, one century and a half subsequently to the reign of John, the royal library of France, belonging to a monarch who loved literature, Jean le Bon, did not exceed ten volumes. In those days they had no idea of establishing a library; the few volumes which each monarch collected, at great cost, were always dispersed by gifts or bequests at their death; nothing passed to the successor but the missals, the heurres, and the offices of the chapels. These monarchs of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, amid the prevailing ignorance of the age, had not advanced in their comprehension of the uses of a permanent library beyond their great predecessor of the ninth; for Charlemagne had ordered his books to be sold after his death, and the money given to the poor. Yet among these early French kings there were several who were lovers of books, and were not insensible of the value of a studious intercourse, anxious to procure transcribers and translators. A curious fact has been recorded of St. Louis, that, during his crusade in the East, having learned that a Saracen prince employed scribes to copy the best writings of philosophy for the use of students, on his return to France, he adopted the same practice, and caused the Scriptures and the works of the fathers to be transcribed from copies found in different abbeys. These volumes were desposited in a secure apartment, to which the learned might have access; and he himself passed much of his time there, occupied in his favourite study, the writings of the fathers. Charles le Sage, in 1373, had a considerable library, amounting to nine hundred volumes. He placed this collection in one of the towers of the Louvre, hence denominated the 'Tour de la Librarie; and intrusted it to the custody of his valet-dechambre Gilles Mallet, constituting him his librarian. He was no cominon personage, for, great as was the care and ingenuity required, he drew up an inventory with his own hand of this royal library.

"In that early stage of book-collecting, volumes had not always titles to denote their subjects, or they contained several in one volume; hence they are described by their outsides, their size and their shape, their coverings and their clasps. This library of Charles V. shines in extreme splendour, with its many-coloured silks and velvets, azure and vermeil, green and yellow, and its cloths of silver and of gold, each volume being distinctly described by the colour and the material of its covering. This curious document of the fourteenth century still exists. This library

passed through strange vicissitudes. The volumes in the succeeding reigns were seized on, or purchased at a conqueror's price, by the Duke of Bedford, regent of France. Some he gave to his brother Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester; and they formed a part of the rich collection which that prince presented to Oxford, there finally to be destroyed by a fanatical English mob. Others of the volumes found their way back to the Louvre, repurchased by the French at London. The glorious missal that bears the regent's name remains yet in this country, the property of a wealthy individual. Accident has preserved a few catalogues of libraries of noblemen in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more pleasing than erudite. In the fourteenth century, the volumes consisted for the greater part of those romances of chivalry which so long formed the favourite reading of the noble, the dame, and the damoiselle, and all the lounging damoiseaux in the baronial castle. The private libraries of the fifteenth century were restricted to some French tomes of chivalry, or to 'a merrie tale in Boccacce;' and their science advanced not beyond 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' or 'The Secrets of Albert the Great.' There was an intermixture of legendary lives of saints and apocryphal adventures of Notre Seigneur' in Egypt; with a volume or two of physic, and surgery, and astrology. A few catalogues of our monastic libraries still remain, and these reflect an image of the studies of the middle ages. We find versions of the Scriptures in English and Latin-a Greek or Hebrew manuscript is noted down; a commentator, a father, and some schoolmen ; and a writer on the canon law, and the medieval Christian poets who composed in Latin verse. A romance, an accidental classic, a chronicle and legends, such are the usual contents of these monastic catalogues. But though the subjects seem various, the number of volumes was exceedingly few. Some monasteries had not more than twenty books. little esteem were any writings in the vernacular idiom held, that the library of Glastonbury Abbey, probably the most extensive in England, in 1248, possessed no more than four books in English, on common religious topics; and in the latter days of Henry VIII., when Leland rummaged the monasteries, he did not find a greater number. The library

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of the monastery of Bretton, which, owing to its isolated site, was among the last dissolved, and which may have enlarged its stores with the spoils of other collections which the times offered, when it was dissolved in 1558, could only boast of having possessed one hundred and fifty distinct works. In this primitive state of book-collecting, a singular evidence of their bibliographical passion was sometimes apparent in the monastic libraries. Not deeming a written catalogue, which might not often be opened, sufficiently attractive to remind them of their lettered stores, they inscribed verses on their windows to indicate the books they possessed, and over these inscriptions they placed the portraits of the authors. Thus they could not look through their windows without being reminded of their volumes; and the very portraits of authors, illuminated by the light of heaven, might rouse the curiosity which many a barren title would repel."

One of the passages that has pleased us much, in regard to

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thought and sagacity, concerns the young Josiah of England, as he has been named, Edward the Sixth. Mr. D'Israeli, instituting a strict account of the boy-king's character, whom he also calls a 'puppet-prince," and taking note of his promise for the future, as drawn from his literary displays, has produced a striking, but far from an engaging picture. It has been usual to look upon Edward's laborious diary with strong prepossessions in his favour; for "a nation's hope has always been the flattering painter of every youthful prince who dies immaturely in the royal youth is lamented the irreparable loss of the future great monarch. But our author also remarks that Edward's father had been the most glorious youthful prince who ever adorned a throne. The much admired diary, however, exhibits extraordinary heartlessness; for whether it be the decapitation of his two uncles, the burning of Joan of Kent, or how a live goose suspended had its head sliced off by those who run at the ring,-all seems to be jotted down equally as matters of course; so that such an imperturbable spirit was as likely to have turned out a Nero as a Titus. "Had the reign of Edward the Sixth been prolonged, we should have had a polemical monarch, if we may judge by a collection of texts of Scripture, in proof of the doctrine of justification by faith, which exists in his own hand-writing." Again, Again, "Edward and Mary were opposite bigots; and both alike presumed that they were appointed to the work of sanctity." "The bigotry, as well as the puerile taste of the Prince, appeared when he composed a comedy or interlude against The Whore of Babylon,' and 'The False Gods.'" Such is our author's severe representation.

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But before we conclude, we must again invite our readers to mark some extraordinary assertions, loose and hasty conclusions, that are opposed to facts and evidence, which we cannot suppose the author to have overlooked or forgotten, and therefore we must impugn his logic, or accuse him of dealing in paradoxes and antitheses to catch the uninformed ear. He says, "Shakspere was destined to have his dramatic faculty contested by many successful rivals; to fall into neglect; to be rarely acted, and less read; to appear barbarous and unintelligible; to be even discarded from the glorious file of dramatists by the anathemas of hostile criticism; and finally, in the resurrection of genius (a rare occurrence!) to emerge into universal celebrity." Again," the universal celebrity of Shakspere is comparatively of recent origin." Hear ye this, you who have made yourselves acquainted with the testimonies of a series of our greatest poets, from Shakspere's time downwards-including Ben Jonson, who had also been a rival! And how many others, critics, essayists, and general writers, have paid tribute to the dramatist's marvellous genius, from the time of Charles the Second, whose ill-starred father appreciated the poet! It may be that the

public generally did not for a long time understand the character of Shakspere's works, or perceive their beauties, so as to make them the subject of study or of private reading. Even in this age of books, of cheap publications, when the schoolmaster is abroad, and when almost every one in our large towns purchases and peruses writings of some sort, we question if any great number know more of England's chiefest pride than what they may have learned within the walls of a theatre, or from the current reports of him. They believe in him because it is the belief of the country. It cannot, however, be questioned that Shakspere's dramas in his own day, and in his own theatre, were popular and stock plays; and future managers of no very recent period found their gain in giving them a preference. These are facts that become the more manifest by every scarce tract or publication concerning the Elizabethan drama which antiquaries and antiquarian societies are continuing to bring before the public; and we can only wonder at Mr. D'Israeli's ignorance of their contents, or rather his contempt of them, his adherence to some crotchet of his own, and the love of rhetorical flourish.

But we are far from desiring to underrate our author's services to the literature of his country, or the merits of the publication before us. His works have not only afforded much positive information and intellectual pleasure, but they have stimulated and widely propagated, we believe, a taste for literature as well as literary researches. He has also awakened many proper sympathies towards authors and the author's craft. And the Amenities, with all the writer's former style of gossiping, conjecture, and rambling, will be perhaps as suggestive as any thing he has ever published; and therefore these volumes must be regarded as a valuable contribution, a pleasant offering.

ART. VII.—A History of Harvard University; from its Foundation in the Year 1636, to the Period of the American Revolution. By BENJAMIN PEIRCE. Cambridge, U. S.

THE history of the literary institutions of any country must, to a considerable extent, be the history of that country. It cannot but embrace an interesting portion of the lives of most of the distinguished men in it, whether churchmen or civilians; a portion, at least, when the powers of the mind are pliant, and may be moulded by wise direction to future valuable purposes. The pupils go forth prepared in part to sustain the duties of professional and active existence, under the influences which the establishment lent and fostered from which they proceed, and to reflect back upon the place of their education the character and distinction of riper years.

The quality of instruction is a measure of the general intelligence and refinement of the community; for no seminary of learning can be sustained, that lags in the rear of an improved condition of literature, science, and the arts in the public around. Hence the higher institutions, in their combination of learning and distinguished men, with the means of knowledge abundantly within their reach, form an important part of the great whole, and become of indispensable and incalculable value to the permanency of national welfare and the progress of national character. Such an aggregation of men embraces the aspiring of every rank and condition in life, and therefore lend impulses even to the most enterprising.

With these views of the importance of literary institutions, we can never but take pleasure in noticing any attempt to sketch their history, whatever be the country to which they belong, especially if it be one which may be regarded as a mighty offshoot of our own, morally as well as naturally speaking; and therefore we seize the present opportunity of introducing some instructive and also entertaining account of, we believe, the most celebrated university in the United States of America; the period embraced enabling us to obtain striking glimpses of a young and rapidly rising nation, and also of the indications it offered of the time to come.

The late Mr. Peirce was librarian of the University, and an educated man; and he also possessed the other qualifications (as Mr. Pickering, the editor of the posthumous publication, informs us, and as the volume itself demonstrates) essential to the successful execution of a work of this kind. We are told that he had an industry and an accuracy which steadily and faithfully carry us back to the scholars of another age. Thorough research into a subject in which he was interested, was to him a pleasure and not a task, as a catalogue of the library is said abundantly to testify. He never rested content with second-hand information, but went always to the original sources. He scrupulously weighed and sifted evidence, and never formed nor changed his opinions upon slight grounds. He was always a lover of books. In his youth he was a distinguished scholar; and in the midst of his daily business he found some time for the gratification and the assiduous cultivation of his mind by study. His modest and retiring habits prevented him from offering his acquisitions to the public view; but the present work was found at his death, nearly ready for the press, and supports the eulogy bestowed on the author. It is thorough, exact, lucid, and learned. Not a stone seems to have been left unturned; not a scrap of information, useful or amusing, relating to the first one hundred and thirty years of the history of the University, has been left ungathered. It is evidently, in short, the production of one whose heart was in what he was doing. He must have taken a deep interest in the institution, for he has traced with

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