ol of Collecting--The
Roxburghe sale in 1812--Richard Heber and his vast library--His
services to literature--His scholarship--The Britwell Library.

IT hardly falls within the province of a manual for the book-collector
to dwell on the character and relative merits of the purely public
libraries at home and abroad, or even on the bibliographical
possessions of private personages which are not available for
purchase. Recent experience, however, teaches us that we are not
entitled to count any longer on the intact preservation of the books
of any individual or family, as the sale by auction has almost become
fashionable. At any rate, there can be no harm in introducing a few
remarks on this aspect and branch of our subject, particularly seeing
that the effect of throwing on the market thousands of rare books,
which were once thought to be hopelessly unattainable, has contributed
to improve the prospects and opportunities of purchasers.

The spoliation of public libraries at home and abroad is an aspect of
the question or subject neither very agreeable nor very flattering. In
England and other parts of the Empire, within the last century,
numerous examples have occurred where valuable or unique books have
been stolen or mutilated. The national collection in Great Russell
Street has perhaps suffered the least, and whatever may be said about
the system on which it was formerly conducted and managed, sufficient
care seems always to have been exercised to guard against depredators
of various kinds. So far as is publicly known, petty thefts of
articles more or less easily replaceable are all that we have to
regret. It is notorious that the Bodleian has lost several important
volumes, and no one will probably ever arrive at any definite
information of the extent to which the libraries at Cambridge and the
other minor collections at the sister Universities of Oxford,
Edinburgh, and Dublin have been pillaged and impoverished.

It has been the same all over the Continent. The Bibliotheque
Nationale at Paris, and many of the leading provincial libraries of
France, have been robbed wholesale in former times, and in some cases
annihilated. One has only to read the observations and evidence of M.
Achille Jubinal accompanying a (then) inedited letter of Montaigne
(8vo, Paris, 1850), to form an idea of the ravages which have been
made through neglect of officials and dishonesty of visitors; and what
must the fact be in It