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scription of the establishment. 'Your house and library,' says the dedication, 'are a firmament wherein the stars of learning shine: the desks are lit with star-light and the books are in constellations: and you sit like the sun in the midst, embracing and giving light to them all.' Peiresc was anxious to circulate the book, which contained a rare treatise by Hesychius; but he took care to compose another dedication, which was printed and inserted without comment. Notwithstanding his profuse purchases he did not leave a large collection at his death. His friends complained that he lent 'a world of books' that were never returned, and that he was especially lavish of any works that could be replaced by purchase. 'About ten years after his death,' says his friend Lemontey, 'his relations brought his books to Paris, where I saw them in 1647; they formed a great company of volumes, most curiously bound. They ought to have been sold _en bloc_, but as the Genius of the library had fled, the Fates ordained that they should be torn asunder.' Most of the books were purchased for the College de Navarre. A great number of the MSS. were destroyed, though there are still a few volumes in the public library at Carpentras. These were purchased from Louis Thomassin, a member of Peiresc's family, by Don Malachi d'Inguimbert, librarian to Pope Clement XII., who founded the collection of Carpentras when he became Bishop of the diocese. There is a tradition that Peiresc's correspondence, containing many thousands of documents, was destroyed by his grand-niece, 'a kind of female Omar,' who insisted in using the papers for lighting fires and making trays for her silk-worms. Peiresc employed some of the most learned men of his time to collect for him in Italy. Jacques Gaffarel, who had been engaged in similar work for Richelieu, was his principal agent in Rome. At Padua he was so fortunate as to secure the services of the archaeologist Tomasini. But his correspondence shows that the prince of librarians, Gabriel Naude, was at once his agent, his adviser, and his friend; and it is from Naude that we take the words of grief which remain as the scholar's memorial. 'Oh cruel Fate and bitter Death, thrust into the midst of our jollity! Was there ever a man, I pray you, more skilled in history and philology, more ready to assist the student, more endowed with wit and wealth and worth, the equipment of any man who, like Peiresc, is to hold the worl
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