ich have reposed there since
the room was built in 1729.

The first shelf I lay hands upon contains some ten large folios. Four of
them are a single great compilation, beginning with a survey of the
history of the world and of the Roman Empire, and merging into the
heraldry of the German _noblesse_. It was made, we find, in 1541, and is
dedicated to Henry VIII. Large folding pictures on vellum and portraits
of all the Roman Emperors adorn the first volume. It is a sumptuous
book, supposed to be a present from the Emperor Ferdinand to the King.
How did it come here? A printed label tells us that it was given to the
college by Henry Temple, Viscount Palmerston, in 1750 (he had previously
given it to Sir Richard Ellys on whose death Lady Ellys returned it: so
much in parenthesis). Then, more by luck than anything else, I find
mention of it in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary; his
friend Thomas Jett, F.R.S., owned it and told him about it in 1722: he
had been offered L100 a volume for it; it was his by purchase from one
Mr. Stebbing. It was sold, perhaps to Palmerston, at Jett's auction in
1731. The gap between Henry VIII. and Stebbing remains for the present
unfilled. So much for the first draw.

Next, a yet larger and more ponderous volume, _Decreta Romanorum
Pontificum_--the Papal decretals and the Acts of the Councils. It is
spotlessly clean and magnificently written in a hand of the early part
of the twelfth century, a hand which very much resembles that in use at
Christchurch, Canterbury. I am indeed, tempted to call it a Canterbury
book; only it bears none of the marks which it ought to have if it was
ever in the library of the Cathedral Priory. Was it perhaps written
there and sold or given to a daughter-house, or to some abbey which had
a less skilful school of writers? Not to Rochester, at any rate, though
Rochester did get many books written at Christchurch. If it had belonged
to Rochester there would have been some trace, I think, of an
inscription on the lower margin of the first leaf. No; the only clue to
the history is a title written on the fly-leaf in the fifteenth century,
which says: "The book of the decrees of the Pope of Rome," and it begins
on the second leaf "_tes viii_." That does not tell us much; I do not
recognize the handwriting of the title, though I guess it to have been
written when the book came to Eton College. All I can say is that here
is an example of a large class, dupli