y of the Grisons, in Lithuania, Bohemia, Finland,
and Iceland.

With regard to the attempts of the same kind made in our own country,
there are few whose expectations will not be exceeded by the number of
English Bibles, of which not one is forgotten, whether valuable for the
pomp and beauty of the impression, or for the notes with which the text
is accompanied, or for any controversy or persecution that it produced,
or for the peculiarity of any single passage. With the same care have
the various editions of the book of Common Prayer been selected, from
which all the alterations which have been made in it may be easily
remarked.

Amongst a great number of Roman missals and breviaries, remarkable for
the beauty of their cuts and illuminations, will be found the Mosarabick
missal and breviary, that raised such commotions in the kingdom of
Spain.

The controversial treatises written in England, about the time of the
Reformation, have been diligently collected, with a multitude of
remarkable tracts, single sermons, and small treatises; which, however
worthy to be preserved, are, perhaps, to be found in no other place.

The regard which was always paid, by the collectors of this library, to
that remarkable period of time, in which the art of printing was
invented, determined them to accumulate the ancient impressions of the
fathers of the church; to which the later editions are added, lest
antiquity should have seemed more worthy of esteem than accuracy.

History has been considered with the regard due to that study by which
the manners are most easily formed, and from which the most efficacious
instruction is received; nor will the most extensive curiosity fail of
gratification in this library, from which no writers have been excluded,
that relate either the religious, or civil affairs of any nation.

Not only those authors of ecclesiastical history have been procured,
that treat of the state of religion in general, or deliver accounts of
sects or nations, but those, likewise, who have confined themselves to
particular orders of men in every church; who have related the original,
and the rules of every society, or recounted the lives of its founder
and its members; those who have deduced in every country the succession
of bishops, and those who have employed their abilities in celebrating
the piety of particular saints, or martyrs, or monks, or nuns.

The civil history of all nations has been amassed together; nor i