is return. Don Ferdinand established a large
library in his house at Seville. Clenard helped to arrange the books, and
Vasee became librarian. The volumes amounted at least to fifteen thousand
in number, though the exact amount remains unknown owing to discrepancies
in the earliest catalogues.

Don Ferdinand hoped that the library would be kept up by the family of
Columbus. With that object he left it to his great-nephew Don Luis, with
an annuity to provide for the expenses; if the legacy were refused, it
was to pass to the Chapter of the Cathedral at Seville, with alternative
provisions in favour of the Monastery of San Pablo. As events turned out,
the succession was not taken up on behalf of his young kinsman, and after
some litigation the Fernandina, or 'La Colombina' as it was afterwards
called, was adjudged to the Chapter of Seville and placed in a room by
the Moorish Aisle at the Giralda. Owing chiefly to the generosity of
Queen Isabella and the Duc de Montpensier the library of 'La Colombina'
has been restored to prosperity, although according to Mr. Ford it was
long abandoned to 'the canons and book-worms.' It appears that in the
middle of the last century three-quarters of the MSS. had been destroyed
by rough usage or by the water dripping in from the gutters; the books
were in charge of the men who swept the Church, and they allowed the
school-children to play with the illustrated volumes and to tear out the
miniatures and woodcuts. Mr. Harrisse has described with much detail the
grandeur and the decline of this celebrated institution, and he gives
reasons for supposing that it may have suffered even in recent years from
the negligence of its guardians. It is satisfactory, however, to find
that its most precious contents have passed safely through every period
of danger; the library still contains some of the books of Christopher
Columbus, and especially the _Imago Mundi_ with his marginal notes about
the Portuguese discoveries, 'in all which things,' he writes 'I had my
share.'

[Illustration: J. A. DE THOU.]

CHAPTER XIV.

DE THOU--PINELLI--PEIRESC.

It was long a saying among the French that a man had never seen Paris who
had not looked upon the books of Thuanus. The historian Jacques-Auguste
de Thou held a leading place in literature, without pretending in any way
to rival the greatness of Joseph Scaliger or the erudition of Isaac
Casaubon. He was the master of a great store of personal and se