aly, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere? The
denunciations against robbers of books and libraries date, however,
from the remotest period, and were at first highly necessary as a
means of safeguarding the treasures of monasteries and churches. Isaac
Taylor, in his _History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern
Times_, 1875, p. 246, prints an anathema of this kind: "Whosoever
removeth this volume from this same mentioned convent, may the anger
of the Lord overtake him in this world, and in the next to all
eternity. Amen." Let the energetic explorers who have transferred so
many hundreds of such MSS. to the Vatican and the British Museum look
to it; and what are His Holiness and the Trustees in Great Russell
Street but palpable accessories after, if not before, the fact! A
common peril hangs over them all.

A visit to a library such as the British Museum or the Bodleian, or
even to those of some of the Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, is apt
to instil a feeling of reverential affection for the founders and
benefactors of such institutions; the existing functionaries seem to
withdraw into middle distance, and one enters into communion with the
spirits of the departed.

From the private collector's point of view these great public
libraries are mainly serviceable for purposes of reference and
comparative study. These storehouses of bibliographical and literary
wealth may be classified into--

(i) National or quasi-National Collections:--
The British Museum
Guildhall Library
South Kensington Museum (Dyce and Forster and General Fine Art Collections)
Society of Antiquaries
Dr. William's Library, Gordon Square
Chetham Library, Manchester
Spencer-Rylands Library, Manchester
Bodleian
University Library, Cambridge
University Library, Edinburgh
Advocates' Library, Edinburgh
Signet Library, Edinburgh
Hunterian Library, Glasgow
Trinity College, Dublin

The British Museum readily divides itself, of course very unequally,
into the Printed Book and Manuscript Departments, and each of these
has been periodically enriched by large donations or purchases _en
bloc_, the former more especially by the gift of the Grenville books,
and the latter by the Cottonian, Harleian, Lansdowne, Stowe, and
Hardwicke MSS. The Bodleian would fall far short of what it is, had it
not been for the bequests of Tanner, Selden, Burton, Crynes, Gough,
Malone, and Douce, and so with the University Library at Cambridge,
which owes so much to Bish