dry humour. "At Sunbury, we brake down ten mighty great angels in glass. At Barham, brake down the twelve apostles in the chancel, and six superstitious pictures more there; and eight in the church, one a lamb with a cross (+) on the back; and digged down the steps and took up four superstitious inscriptions in brass," &c. “ Lady Bruce's house, the chapel, a picture of God the Father, of the Trinity, of Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the cloven tongues, which we gave orders to take down, and the lady promised to do it." At another place they "brake six hundred superstitious pictures, eight Holy Ghosts, and three of the Son." And in this manner he and his deputies scoured one hundred and fifty parishes! It has been humorously conjectured, that from this ruthless devastator originated the phrase to give a Dowsing. Bishop Hall saved the windows of his chapel at Norwich from destruction, by taking out the heads of the figures; and this accounts for the many faces in church windows which we see supplied by white glass.

In the various civil wars in our country, numerous libraries have suffered both in Mss. and printed books. "I dare maintain," says Fuller, "that the wars betwixt York and Lancaster, which lasted sixty years, were not so destructive as our modern wars in six years." He alludes to the parliamentary feuds in the reign of Charles I. "For during the former their differences agreed

in the same religion, impressing them with reverence to all allowed muniments; whilst our civil wars, founded in faction and variety of pretended religions, exposed all naked church records a prey to armed violence; a sad vacuum, which will be sensible in our English historie."

The scarcity of books concerning the catholics in this country is owing to two circumstances; the destruction of catholic books and documents by the pursuivants in the reign of Charles I., and the destruction of them by the catholics themselves, from the dread of the heavy penalties in which their mere possession involved their owners.

When it was proposed to the great Gustavus of Sweden to destroy the palace of the Dukes of Bavaria, that hero nobly refused, observing, "Let us not copy the example of our unlettered ancestors, who, by waging war against every production of genius, have rendered the name of GOTH universally proverbial of the rudest state of barbarity."

Even the civilization of the eighteenth century could not preserve from the savage and destructive fury of a disorderly mob, in the most polished city of Europe, the valuable Mss. of the great Earl Mansfield, which were madly consigned to the flames during the riots of 1780.

In the year 1599, the hall of the stationers underwent as great a purgation as was carried

on in Don Quixote's library. Warton gives a list of the best writers who were ordered for immediate conflagration by the prelates Whitgift and Bancroft, urged by the puritanic and calvinistic factions. Like thieves and outlaws, they were ordered to be taken wheresoever they may be found." It was also decreed that no satires or epigrams should be printed for the future. No plays were to be printed without the inspection and permission of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London; nor any English historyes, I suppose novels and romances, without the sanction of the privy council. Any pieces of this nature, unlicensed, or now at large and wandering abroad, were to be diligently sought, recalled, and delivered over to the ecclesiastical arm at London-house."

At a later period, and by an opposite party, among other extravagant motions made in the parliament, one was to destroy all the records in the Tower, and to settle the nation on a new foundation. The very same principle was attempted to be acted on in the French revolution by the "true sans-culottes." With us Sir Matthew Hale showed the weakness of the proposal, and while he drew on his side "all sober persons, stopped even the mouths of the frantic people themselves."

To descend to the losses incurred by individuals, whose names ought to have served as an

amulet to charm away the demons of literary destruction. One of the most interesting is the fate of Aristotle's library; he who by a Greek term was first saluted as a collector of books! His works have come down to us accidentally, but not without irreparable injuries, and with no slight suspicion respecting their authenticity. The story is told by Strabo, in his thirteenth book. The books of Aristotle came from his scholar Theophrastus to Neleus, whose posterity, an illiterate race, kept them locked up without using them, buried in the earth! One Apellion, a curious collector, purchased them, but finding the мss. injured by age and moisture, conjecturally supplied their deficiencies. It is impossible to know how far Apellion has corrupted and obscured the text. But the mischief did not end here; when Sylla at the taking of Athens brought them to Rome, he consigned them to the care of one Tyrannio, a grammarian, who employed scribes to copy them; he suffered them to pass through his hands without corrections, and took great freedoms with them; the words of Strabo are strong: "Ibique Tyrannionem grammaticum iis vsum atque (ut fama est) intercidisse, aut invertisse." He gives it indeed as a report; but the fact seems confirmed by the state in which we find these works: Averroes declared that he read Aristotle forty times over before he succeeded in perfectly understanding

him; he pretends he did at the one and fortieth time! And to prove this has published five folios of commentary.

We have lost much valuable literature by the illiterate or malignant descendants of learned and ingenious persons. Many of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters have been destroyed, I am informed, by her mother, who did not approve that she should disgrace her family by adding to it literary honours; and a few of her best letters, recently published, were found buried in an old family chest. It would have mortified her ladyship's mother, to have heard that her daughter was the Sevigné of Britain.

At the death of the learned Peiresc, a chamber in his house filled with letters from the most eminent scholars of the age was discovered: the learned in Europe had addressed Peiresc in their difficulties, who was hence called "the Avocat general" of the republic of letters. Such was the disposition of his niece, that although repeatedly entreated to permit them to be published, she preferred to regale herself occasionally with burning these learned epistles to save the expense of fire-wood!

The MSS. of Leonardo da Vinci have equally suffered from his relatives. When a curious collector discovered some; he generously brought them to a descendant of the great painter, who coldly observed, that " he had a great deal more

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