he principal librarian.

"Upon examination of this book, Nov. 12, 1764, these
four last leaves were torn out.
"C. MORTON.
"Mem. Nov. 12, sent down to Mrs. Macaulay."

As no memorandum of the name of any student to whom a manuscript is
delivered for his researches was ever made, before or since, or in the
nature of things will ever be, this memorandum must involve our female
historian in the obloquy of this dilapidation.[288] Such dishonest
practices of party feeling, indeed, are not peculiar to any party. In
Roscoe's "Illustrations" of his Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, we discover
that Fabroni, whose character scarcely admits of suspicion, appears to
have known of the existence of an unpublished letter of Sixtus IV.,
which involves that pontiff deeply in the assassination projected by the
Pazzi; but he carefully suppressed its notice: yet, in his conscience,
he could not avoid alluding to such documents, which he concealed by his
silence. Roscoe has apologised for Fabroni overlooking this decisive
evidence of the guilt of the hypocritical pontiff in the mass of
manuscripts; a circumstance not likely to have occurred, however, to
this laborious historical inquirer. All party feeling is the same active
spirit with an opposite direction. We have a remarkable case, where a
most interesting historical production has been silently annihilated by
the consent of _both parties_. There once existed an important diary of
a very extraordinary character, Sir George Saville, afterwards Marquis
of Halifax. This master-spirit, for such I am inclined to consider the
author of the little book of "Maxims and Reflections," with a
philosophical indifference, appears to have held in equal contempt all
the factions of his times, and consequently has often incurred their
severe censures. Among other things, the Marquis of Halifax had noted
down the conversation he had had with Charles the Second, and the great
and busy characters of the age. Of this curious secret history there
existed two copies, and the noble writer imagined that by this means he
had carefully secured their existence; yet both copies were destroyed
from opposite motives; the one at the instigation of Pope, who was
alarmed at finding some of the catholic intrigues of the court
developed; and the other at the suggestion of a noble friend, who was
equally shocked at discovering that his party, the Revolutionists,