y-leaf the ensuing little family story: "Ces Heures
apartiennent a Damoyselle Michelle Du Dere Femme de M. Loys Dorleans
Advocat en la Court du Parlement et lesquelles luy sont echeues par la
succession de feu son pere M. Jehan Dudere Conseiller du Roy &
Auditeur en sa chambre des comptes 1577. Amour & Humilite sont les
deux liens de nostre mariage." A St. Jerome's _Epistolae_, printed at
Mainz about 1470, is accompanied by the dated book-plate, 1595, of
Christophorus Baro a Wolckhenstain.

In the French series the number of interesting items from a personal
or historical point of view, if not both, is of course great,
although, as a rule, French collectors have been rather sparing as
annotators of their literary possessions. In a copy of De Bure's Sale
Catalogue, 1786, now in the Huth Library, occurs a peculiarly striking
exception, however, in the shape of a MS. note in the handwriting of
Louis XVI., only three years prior to the fall of the Bastille,
"Marquer les livres que je desire pour moi."

In the Duke of Sussex's Library was a New Testament in French
presented by Josephine before her second marriage to Napoleon. She had
inscribed on the spare leaf preceding title: "Au General Bonaparte ce
Testament Lutherain est presente de part la veuve Beauharnois," and
below occurs in the illustrious recipient's hand, _Buonaparte_. An
association fully as historically and personally significant
appertains to the Voltaire's _Henriade_, 1770, in one of the volumes
of which the to-be Empress writes: "Donne part Madame la Viscontesse
de Beauharnois: pensez a elle, aimez-la, n'oubliez jamais qu'elle est
votre amie la plus attachee." Was this an oblation at the same shrine?
But this is a slight digression, warranted by the twofold circumstance
that all these examples have belonged to English collectors, and are
of a class quite as interesting to us as to those with whom they are
more immediately associated by origin. The same may perhaps be said of
the MS. sold in London in 1899, formerly belonging to two persons so
widely different as Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, of the latter of
whom it possessed the autograph. The interest seemed to centre in the
signature of the Revolutionary leader.

The interest and respect with which the presence of handwriting in
books is regarded are indefinitely varied. But the preponderance of
worshippers is no doubt on the side of those who have shone in the
_belles lettres_ and in society. Sov