rather perhaps to show, the relationship of all
languages to each other. Nor was it only distinct languages he included
in his plan, but their dialects, their corruptions, even slang, thieves'
slang--slang of all kinds. In carrying out his idea the Prince had of
course the advantages of exceptional abilities, and, until the fall of
the Empire, of unlimited money. Some of the bindings are very beautiful.
As to the printing, the Prince for long had a fully-fitted
printing-office on the basement floor of his house in Norfolk Terrace,
Bayswater. The Prince being a Senator of France, a cousin of Louis
Napoleon, and a well-known philologist, people brought him all sorts of
interesting books. Therefore it is not surprising to find that the
library includes rare works not present, for instance, in the British
Museum. There are three early German Bibles which Mr. Gladstone,
visiting the Prince once, thought should be presented to the British
Museum. To the best of Mr. Gladstone's knowledge, one of the three did
not exist anywhere else, and either of the three would be worth about
L500. They are remarkable specimens of early German printing, and are
profusely illustrated.' Mr. Collins calculates that there are at least
25,000 volumes in the collection, and that fully thirty alphabets are
spread through them. This extraordinary collection, like the
Shakespearian one formed by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, is still awaiting a
purchaser (see the _Times_, July 25, 1895).

The collection, also a special one, of a recently-deceased
book-collector may be mentioned here, and for the following particulars
we are indebted to Mr. Elliot Stock: 'Edmund Waterton, the son of
Charles Waterton, the naturalist, lived at first at Walton Hall, his
father's residence. He sold this, and bought a house at Deeping,
Waterton, where his ancestors formerly lived. He had a large old
library, a great part of which he inherited from his father. His great
pleasure was in his "Imitatio Christi" collection. He succeeded in
gathering together some 1,500 different editions, printed and MS. He had
given commissions to booksellers all over Europe to send him any edition
they might meet with, and one of the pleasures of his life was to see
the foreign packets come by post. I sent him a seventeenth-century
edition which I came across accidentally for his acceptance on "spec."
It turned out it was one he had been looking for for a long time, and
his letter describing his