required to undertake to give instruction in French, Latin, Italian, and Greek; in history and religion, according to the confessions of faith of the Waldensian church.

3. The commission, or its delegates, are charged with the examination of young persons desirous of admission to "L'Ecole Supérieure," that it may be ascertained whether they are capable of pursuing studies requisite to qualify them for the various professions.

4. The students admitted into the Institution must be capable of attending the first course of lectures, which will resemble those of the first class of the College of Lausanne.

5. For ten students to be elected out of the ten Vaudois parishes most remote from La Torre, there will be exhibitions of one hundred francs each per annum. If any of the parishes which are entitled to an exhibition, should not produce a claimant qualified to receive it, the unappropriated exhibitions will be offered in succession to the parishes less distant from La Torre, according to a cycle predetermined.

6. The exhibitions will be granted, after examination, to the most deserving of the candidates, from the several parishes which are to enjoy the right of nominating claimants.

7.If candidates for the same exhibition should prove equal in merit, it will be awarded to the most necessitous.

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8. All the students and exhibitioners who attend the lectures of the Institution, whether they reside with the professor or not, will be required to submit to the rules which shall be adopted for its regulation.

9. The students must attend public service in church every Sunday; besides which they must be present at a particular service within the Institution, which will be composed and appointed by the commission.

10. Every student must daily attend at the hour of prayer, and must be present in class at a Scripture lecture, which will be given every day, either in the original language of the Old or New Testament, or in the French or Italian tongue, or in copies of the Lingua Valdesa.'

These rules were drawn up with the view of meeting any objections which might be raised by the Sardinian government. They were intended to be a bar to the admission of Roman Catholic students, as otherwise it might have been said that the Institution was established for purposes of proselytism. We have already mentioned that the rulers of the Waldenses have always eyed their scholastic establishments with jealousy; and it was not until after two express treaties with England, which guaranteed the security of their personal and religious privileges to the Waldenses, that the House of Savoy issued

an edict, consenting to recognize their schools as lawful institutions. It was to this effect: It shall be permitted to our subjects of the said Valleys to elect from among themselves masters of schools, provided they do not receive any Catholics into their schools, but only the sons of the said Waldenses.'

Scarcely, however, did the infant establishment open, before the Intendant of the Province went to La Torre, with an order of the Minister of the Interior in his pocket, and by an act of arbitrary authority prohibited the professor from continuing his instructions, dispersed the students, and closed the school. All this happened in March last—the opening of the school and its suppression.

The short-sighted policy, the despotic veto, which has spread such consternation and disappointment among the Waldenses, is the more atrocious because it is in direct violation of one of the most solemn treaties which one country ever made with another. The King of Sardinia is pledged to the King of England, by the obligation of mutual engagements*, to respect the privileges of his Waldensian subjects; and whoever will take the trouble of going to the State Paper Office may see, not a copy, but the very treaty, with the signature and great seal of Victor Amadée attached to it, by which personal and religious liberty, and its inseparable appurtenances, are secured for ever to the Waldenses.

Nothing can be more binding or emphatic than the words of the treaty. Qu'elle remet et conserve eux, leurs enfans et postérité, dans la possession de tous et chacun leurs anciens droits, édits, coutumes, et privilèges, tant pour leurs habitations, négoce, et exercice de leur religion que pour toute autre chose. ... Et finalement les ministres de Sa Majesté Britannique, et de leurs Hautes Puissances, seront instruits et autorisés pour régler selon les anciens édits, droits, et concessions, avec les ministres de S. A. R., le détail des choses et ce que pourroit rester, et être admis pour la sécurité des dits Vaudois dans cet article, comme aussi pour l'exécution d'iceluy, tant à l'égard des choses concernant leur religion, que leurs biens, leurs droits, et toutes autres.'

His Majesty's government have been informed of the transaction by which this treaty has just been so shamefully violated, and it remains to be seen whether the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will quietly submit to such an infraction of sacred stipulations, and such an invasion of

* England guaranteed to the King of Sardinia the possession of some territory, which he still enjoys, adjoining to the Milanese, and ceded by the Emperor, on condition that the Waldenses should be unmolested.

rights, which have been made the subject of a separate article of treaty between Great Britain and the rulers of the Waldenses.

Postscript.-Since the above was written, a petition has been addressed by the Ecclesiastical Authorities of the Vaudois to their new sovereign, Charles Albert, which has been favourably received, and they have been permitted to reestablish the Institution which was suppressed by an arbitrary order under the government of the late King. But this permission has been shackled with restrictions, which it is to be hoped will be removed, when a more just view shall be taken of those treaties between the Crown of England and Sardinia, which were meant to secure to the inhabitants of the valleys of Piemont, among other privileges, the full and uninterrupted right of educating their youth in their own way, and after the best manner within their means.

The licence granted by the present King, Charles Albert, on the 27th of May, limits the number of students in the first class to fifteen; forbids the use of any books which have not first been submitted to the censorship of the Intendant of the Province; makes the nomination of the masters or professors dependent on the will of the said officer; and appoints him also visitor of the establishment.

But we will hail this royal recognition of a new institution among the Vaudois for the promotion of learning as a good omen, and we will hope for still better things at no very distant period.

THE GÖTTINGEN LIBRARY.

In the establishment and conduct of a public library intended for general use, two objects seem to be of paramount importance first, that the collection of books should be, as far as possible, equally complete in every department; and secondly, that the access to them should be as open and liberal, and the facilities for using them as great as is consistent with their preservation from loss and damage. To attain the first of these objects, the folly of mere book-collecting must be laid aside, and the funds of the institution applied, not to the purchase of expensive rarities, nor to the numerical increase of the collection only, but to the production of a uniform completeness in every part. For the second object, a judicious arrangement of the books, convenient catalogues, and

the constant superintendence of proper librarians are principally necessary.

The University Library at Göttingen has been steadily conducted with a view to these objects for upwards of twothirds of a century; and it is now probably the most extensively useful institution of the kind in Europe. The nucleus of this library was originally formed by a learned Hanoverian nobleman, named Bülow; who with great judgment, labour, and expense, had brought together a very excellent private collection of about ten thousand books, which he bequeathed at his death to the University. By the activity of Münchhausen, the first Curator' of the University after its foundation, the library was rapidly increased; so that when the celebrated Heyne was first called to the University, in 1763, and appointed one of the librarians, it consisted of about sixty thousand volumes,-a number by no means contemptible at that time in comparison with the libraries of other German Universities. At the time of Heyne's death, in 1812, the number had increased to two hundred thousand, and at the present moment the library contains upwards of three hundred thousand volumes. The object constantly kept in view in forming this collection has been the provision of useful books in all languages and in all branches of literature and science; so that it is now, perhaps, the only library in existence in which the literature of all nations and all departments of science are found supplied in equal relative completeness. Of the thousands who have visited and used the library, the great majority probably are unacquainted with its peculiar system of management, and would be surprised to learn the variety and extent of the business involved in its machinery. In the number of books, as well as in manuscripts and curiosities, it is exceeded by many other libraries; but its distinguishing merits consist in the judicious selection of the books purchased, their excellent arrangement, and above all in the liberality of the means adopted for facilitating the use of them.

From circumstances peculiar to the situation of Göttingen, and the course of education pursued there, some parts of the system adopted at the library would be inapplicable to other places; but many useful hints for the organization of libraries may be taken from it; and in this country, where we have so many magnificent libraries, possessing large stores of books and ample funds for increasing them, which are far less used, and far less useful, than they might be, by reason of their incompleteness and the want of system in the management of them, and above all by reason of their inaccessibility,

it may be worth while to direct the attention of our readers to the means by which an institution like the Göttingen library has been brought, from very small beginnings, and with very limited funds, to a state of comparative perfection.

In the Life of Heyne by Professor Heeren, from which we have taken many of the facts in the following account, the machinery of the library is compared to that of the countinghouse of a commercial establishment, and the comparison is fully borne out by the extent of the business and correspondence carried on, the number of books and hands employed, and the order and punctuality with which the whole is conducted. In order to follow up the system originally adopted by Heyne, namely, to render the library as generally complete as possible in every department, the progress of literature and science both at home and in foreign countries is carefully watched; in England, France, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Holland, agents are employed to purchase, under certain limitations and directions as to prices and subjects, all books of general utility and interest which are published in those countries; selections are made from the masses of books published at the great annual fairs of Leipzic; and catalogues of all the considerable book sales in Europe are sent to the library, and examined by the librarians, such lots being marked and priced by them as are to be purchased. Thus the library is constantly progressive, always keeping pace with the advance of knowledge in all parts of the world. The uniform completeness produced by this judicious and discriminating attention in the purchase of books is very remarkable. An Englishman who visits the library is astonished to meet with a more complete collection of books of English history and literature than he will readily find in his own country; whilst the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the Italian, and the Oriental scholar find their respective departments equally well filled.

It is manifest from what we have stated that the selection and purchase of books, and the correspondence required in that department, necessarily furnish a great deal of business; but another most important branch of the labours of the librarians consists in the preparation and continuation of the different catalogues, and as these appear to us to form one of the most original and valuable parts of the institution, it may be useful to describe them.

The catalogues are four in number, each being distinct from the other, but all forming parts of one whole. Every volume brought into the library is entered, in the first instance, in a rough book called the Manual. In this cata

JULY-OCT. 1831.

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