RY.

IGNORANCE, though not in the same category as fire and water, is a great
destroyer of books. At the Reformation so strong was the antagonism of
the people generally to anything like the old idolatry of the Romish
Church, that they destroyed by thousands books, secular as well as
sacred, if they contained but illuminated letters. Unable to read, they
saw no difference between romance and a psalter, between King Arthur
and King David; and so the paper books with all their artistic ornaments
went to the bakers to heat their ovens, and the parchment manuscripts,
however beautifully illuminated, to the binders and boot makers.

There is another kind of ignorance which has often worked destruction,
as shown by the following anecdote, which is extracted from a
letter written in 1862 by M. Philarete Chasles to Mr. B. Beedham, of
Kimbolton:--

"Ten years ago, when turning out an old closet in the Mazarin Library,
of which I am librarian, I discovered at the bottom, under a lot of old
rags and rubbish, a large volume. It had no cover nor title-page, and
had been used to light the fires of the librarians. This shows how great
was the negligence towards our literary treasure before the Revolution;
for the pariah volume, which, 60 years before, had been placed in the
Invalides, and which had certainly formed part of the original Mazarin
collections, turned out to be a fine and genuine Caxton."

I saw this identical volume in the Mazarin Library in April, 1880. It is
a noble copy of the First Edition of the "Golden Legend," 1483, but of
course very imperfect.

Among the millions of events in this world which cross and re-cross one
another, remarkable coincidences must often occur; and a case exactly
similar to that at the Mazarin Library, happened about the same time
in London, at the French Protestant Church, St. Martin's-le-Grand. Many
years ago I discovered there, in a dirty pigeon hole close to the grate
in the vestry, a fearfully mutilated copy of Caxton's edition of the
Canterbury Tales, with woodcuts. Like the book at Paris, it had long
been used, leaf by leaf, in utter ignorance of its value, to light the
vestry fire. Originally worth at least L800, it was then worth half,
and, of course, I energetically drew the attention of the minister in
charge to it, as well as to another grand Folio by Rood and Hunte, 1480.
Some years elapsed, and then the Ecclesiastical Commissioners took the
foundation in hand, but when