BOOK III, Chap. VI. OTHER BENEFAC TORS OF RECENT DAYS. THE SPECI MENS OF PRINTING AND BIND ING IN THE LECTION. Pefetti, Pietro Anderloni, Raphael Morghen, Giuseppe The specimens of binding from the SLADE Collection (now placed in the Printed Book Department), continues the Report of 1869, are twenty-three in number, chiefly of foreign execution, and afford examples of the style of SLADE COL- PADELOUP, DUSSEUIL, DEROME, and other eminent binders. One of the volumes, an edition of PAULUS AMYLIUS, De gestis Francorum (Paris, 1555, 8vo), is a beautiful specimen of the French style of the period, with the sides and back richly ornamented in the Grolier manner. An Italian translation of the works of Horace (Venice, 1581, 4to), is of French execution, richly tooled, and bears the arms of HENRY III of France. A folio volume of the Reformation der Stadt Nürnberg (Frankfort, 1566), which is a magnificent specimen of contemporary German binding, formerly belonged to the Emperor MAXIMILIAN THE SECOnd, whose arms are painted on the elegantly goffered gilt edges. An edition of PTOLEMY's Geographicæ Narrationis libri octo (Lyons, 1541, fol.) affords a fine illustration of the Italian style of about that date. The copy of a French translation of XENOPHON'S Cyropædia, by Jacques de VINTEMILLE (Paris, 1547, 4to), appears to have been bound for King EDWARD VI, of England, whose arms and cypher are on the sides, while the rose is five times worked in gold on the back. A volume of Bishop HALL'S Contemplations on the Old Testament (London, 1626, 8vo), in olive morocco contemporary English binding, has the Royal arms in the centre of the sides, and appears to have been the dedication copy of King CHARLES THE FIRST.' It is proposed, concludes the Report, to exhibit some of the most beautiful specimens comprised in Mr. SLADE's valuable donation, in one of the select cases in the King's Library. T. Watts, in Returns, as above. Chap. VI. Mr. SLADE also bequeathed three thousand pounds for BOOK III, the augmentation, by his Executors, of his Collection of OTHER Ancient Glass, and five thousand pounds to be by them BENEFACexpended in the restoration of the parish church of Thorn- RECENT ton-in-Lonsdale. TOKS OF DAYS. JAPANESE TIONS OF Philip VON SIEBOLD was born at Wurtzburg, in February, VONSIEBOLD 1796, and in the university of that town he received his AND HIS education. He adopted the profession of medicine, but COLLEC devoted himself largely to the study of natural history. In 1823-8. the joint capacity of physician and naturalist, he accompanied the Dutch Embassy to Japan in the year 1823. He was a true lover of humanity, as well as a lover of science. Many Japanese students were taught by him both the curative arts, and the passion for doing good to their fellowmen, which ought to be the condition of their exercise and practice. He won the respect of the Japanese, but his ardent pursuit of knowledge brought him into great peril. In 1828 he was about to return to Europe, laden with scientific treasures, when he was suddenly seized and imprisoned for having procured access to an official map of the Empire, in order to improve his knowledge of its topography. His imprisonment lasted thirteen months. At last he was liberated, and ordered to do what he was just about to do when arrested. (SIEBOLD, says his biographer, kam mit der Verbannung davon.) But his banishment was not perpetual. In 1859, he returned. He won favour and employment from the then Tycoon. He returned to his birthplace in 1862, and died there in October, 1866. Of his second library, Mr. WATTS wrote thus :-' The collection of Japanese books was one of two formed by Dr. BOOK III, Chap. VI OTHER BENEFAC TORS OF RECENT DAYS. : VON SIEBOLD during his residence in, and visits to, Japan. The first of these collections, which is now at Leyden, and of which a catalogue was published in 1845, was long considered as beyond comparison the finest of its kind out of Japan and China; but the second, now in the Museum, is much superior. That at Leyden comprises five hundred and twenty-five works, that in London one thousand and eighty-eight works, in three thousand four hundred and forty-one volumes. It contains specimens of every class of literature cyclopædias, histories, law-books, political pamphlets, novels, plays, poetry, works on science, on antiquities, on female costume, on cookery, on carpentry, and on dancing. It abounds in works illustrative of the topography of Japan, as, for instance, one, in twenty volumes, on the secular capital Yeddo, and two, in eleven volumes, on the religious capital Miaco; collections of views of Yeddo and of the volcano Fusiyama, &c. &c. There are also several dictionaries of European languages, testifying to the eagerness with which the Japanese now pursue that study. The Museum was already in possession of a second edition of an English dictionary published at Yeddo in 1866, in which the lexicographer, HORI TATSNOSKAY, ohserves in the preface, "As the study of the English language is now becoming general in our country, we have had for some time the desire to publish a pocket dictionary of the English and Japanese languages, as an assistance to our scholars," and adds that the first edition is “entirely sold out." These dictionaries may now assist Europeans to study the language of Japan, and it is believed that the Japanese Library now in the Museum will afford unequalled opportunities for the study of its literature.' This was the last sentence in the last official report which Mr. WATTS lived to write, for the purpose of being He died on the ninth of Sep BOOK III, BENEFAC- DAYS. laid before Parliament. tember, 1869, at the age of fifty-nine. His post was not OTHER filled up until the end of December, when he was succeeded by Mr. William Brenchley RYE, who was then Senior RECENT Assistant-Keeper in the Department of Printed Books. Mr. RYE is well known in literature. He has edited, with great ability, several works of early travel for the useful 'Hakluyt Society,'—an employment which he has often shared with his friends and Museum colleagues Messrs. Winter JONES and Richard Henry MAJOR, and with like honourable distinction in its performance. More recently, he has increased his reputation by a book which has been largely read, and which well deserves its popularity— England as seen by Foreigners. This work was published in 1865. Book III, Chap. VII. RECONSTRUCTORS AND PROJECTORS. GROSLEY'S IDEA OF CHAPTER VII. RECONSTRUCTORS AND PROJECTORS. What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our Libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a mau spends lavishly on his Library, you call him mad,-a Bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a Horse maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their losses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the bookshelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars.' RUSKIN, Sesame and Lilies, pp. 75-77. The various Projects and Plans proposed, at different times, for the Severance, the Partial Dispersion, and the Rearrangement, of the several integral Collections which at present form The British Museum.' THE first reconstructor, in imagination, of the British Museum on the plan of severing the literature from the scientific collections, was a speculative and clever Frenchman, Peter John GROSLEY, who visited it within less than six years of its being first opened to public inspection. GROSLEY expressed great admiration for much that he saw, and he also criticised some of the arrangements that seemed TIONS, 1765. to him defective, with freedom but with courtesy. Some of my readers will probably think that he hit a real blot, at that time, when he said: "The Printed Books are the weakest part of this immense collection. The building cannot contain such a Library as England can form and ought to form for the ornament of its capital. It has a building quite ready in the "Banquetting-House" [at Whitehall], and that building could be enlarged from time to time as occasion might require.' |