SHARPE'S LONDON MAGAZINE. the following notice of the library which the nation has miles of it, where they were known to be sold. We never There is, to a real lover of books, a charm in the collecting of a library, such as scarcely can be found in the Few There is a very pleasant passage in one of Charles acquisition of any other description of treasure. can indulge the taste in the princely fashion of Mr. Lamb's delightful essays, in which, hovering, as usual Grenville; but, with even the most moderate income, with him, between jest and earnest, he enumerates a small sum may be set aside yearly for the purpose, the disadvantages of coming to be in easy circumwhich, if judiciously employed, in an earnest spirit, and stances in the case of a man who had long struggled with a heart set upon the pursuit, will very soon accumu- with a limited income. He mourns over the loss of late upon the modest book-shelf such a collection of that exquisite relish, with which certain small luxuries curious and valuable treasures of literature, as the col-valued the more that the indulgence in them rather lector, if told of it beforehand, could scarcely have verged upon imprudence-were then enjoyed, as conbelieved possible. To accomplish this there must un- trasted with the languid feeling of gratification they doubtedly be much care and discrimination exercised excited when their acquisition involved no struggle in selection, some self-denial in the indulgence of other between prudence and desire. In particular he recalls to memory the purchase of one quaint old book, bought tastes, and, above all, an earnest devotion to this one pursuit, giving it almost the place of a religion-such in the days of his poverty, Sir Thomas Browne's Works, as will make the expenditure of every shilling on other or Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, or some book of objects of gratification a debated question before the that sort; its price somewhere about sixteen shillings; court of conscience, involving the most scrupulous in- long regarded with covetous eyes as he passed and quiry into the necessity for incurring it. But with repassed day after day the window in which it was disthese qualifications it is wonderful how much can be played ; and, when at last he screwed his courage to the done. Of two men, both enjoying the same income, sticking place, and actually made the purchase, the and with the same apparent demands upon it, we shall tremulous feeling of delight with which he felt, as he find one puzzled enough to make both ends meet, and carried it home under his arm, that he was at last the owner of the long coveted treasure; the affectionate finding the purchase of a newspaper and a cheap magazine quite as much in the way of literary luxury as he tenderness with which he handled it when he got home, can indulge himself with; while the other not only dipping here and there into its pages, and extracting a keeps himself well up with the current literature of the choice morsel from each, but unable from mere agitation day, but quietly adds volume after volume of the rarer and of delight to dwell upon any: and the pride with more curious occupants of the library shelf to an already which he displayed it to his excellent sister, whose tolerably valuable store; because the numberless uncon- gentle smile expressed her full sympathy with his joy, sidered shillings and sixpences which the one pays away while the slightest possible shake of her head intimated her fear that he had been extravagant. The feelings which -he cannot well tell, at the year's end, for what,by the other religiously preserved and held sacred to Lamb thus pourtrays in his own inimitable style-a style which always suggests to us the idea of a smile on the this one object. cheek, and a tear in the eye,'-must be recognised as exquisitely true to nature by almost every poor lover of books. -are We have frequently been struck with it as a remarkable fact, with what speed and certainty books find their way, in spite of the most apparently insurmountable obstacles, to the place where there is a demand for them. We well recollect how, when at school, notwithstanding the utmost vigilance of a sufficiently severe master, who was a determined foe to all contraband contrivances for smoothing the ascent up the hill of learning, there was, among a certain set of boys--not the really good scholars, who would have scorned shirking their difficulties as a foxhunter would scorn riding round a field to avoid a stiff fence, nor the downright dunces, to whom everything was alike difficult and incomprehensible-but those whose deficiency consisted rather in want of relish than want of capacity for learning, and who, though indifferent scholars, were capital hands at finding birds' nests, a continual undercurrent of keys and translations, how procured no one could tell; for there was no shop in the town, nor within many The article in the Quarterly Review to which we have already referred contains a good deal of very interesting information on the subject of libraries, library collectors, and books. On the subject of British libraries the author says, "The Bodleian and other libraries of Oxford, the libraries at Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Dublin, will rank with many of the continental collections. The Harleian library of printed books, formed by Lord Treasurer Oxford, and his son the second earl, has, like the library formed by the Duc de la Vallière The Sunderland in France, been dispersed, but the catalogues of each remain to testify to their merits. Library, so rich in vellum copies of Editiones Principes, is still preserved at Blenheim; and the truly regal collection formed by King George III. out of his privy purse, and so munificently presented to the British nation by The accuracy of these numbers, however, is very uncertain. It is not clear that the numbers of volumes in those libraries have ever been actually counted, nor that the same principles of enumeration have been adopted, so that those libraries to which the largest numbers are attached may not be really so much larger than some of the others as would at first sight appear. It has been calculated that the printed books in the British Museum Library occupy ten miles of shelf. It contains 60,000 pamphlets on the subject of the French Revolution alone. King George IV. is kept intact at the British Museum. | Brera library, at Milan, 200,000; Göttingen 200,000.” Immediately upon his accession to the throne, King William IV. commenced the formation of a new library; various collections belonging to the crown were brought together and amalgamated; many deficiencies have since been supplied by judicious purchases silently and unostentatiously made; and already Her Majesty and her illustrious consort appreciate and enjoy at Windsor Castle a splendid library of 35,000 volumes, occupying the whole of Queen Elizabeth's Gallery, and King Henry the Seventh's and King Charles the Second's rooms; to which library is attached an almost unrivalled collection of drawings by the ancient masters, including that of Cardinal Albani. The Roxburghe collection has, by its dispersion, enriched the noble libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Spencer, and Mr. Grenville, all of them, but particularly the last, formed with regard to the value of the books, and not the number of the volumes, numerous though they be. We doubt if all Europe could produce another individual gentleman who in his ardour for collecting books and manuscripts, has disbursed, like Sir Thomas Phillips £100,000, or 2,500,000 francs." On the effects upon literature of the book-collecting mania, the writer of the article thus remarks:-The passion for collecting books which many individuals have displayed has, all things considered, worked well for literature; to the credit of book-collectors it must be said, that in general their stores have been available to the use of others. Some collections formed by distinguished bibliomaniacs, to use Dr. Dibdin's phrase, yet remain entire; others dispersed after their owner's death, have enabled many a student to obtain some rare volume necessary to the perfection of his subject. Roscoe acknowledges his obligations on this account to the Crevenna and Pinelli sales. Of the libraries so dispersed some are on record in a good catalogue, whilst others perhaps of greater merit are almost forgotten, 'carent quia vate sacro.' The late Mr. Heber accumulated a vast library, or rather, a chaotic mass of books, which, certainly from no want of liberality in the possessor, but from various circumstances, produced in his lifetime little good. He had some few favourite classes of literature which he endeavoured to complete; but in general all books were books to him, and greedily purchased. He stopped not at duplicates, nor triplicates, nor at a tenth copy. Of this library, the labour of a life, the expenditure of a fortune, what remains? Some fifteen auction catalogues, with several alphabets in each, all drawn up in haste for the merely temporary use of vendor and purchasers, and for all purposes of consultation perfectly useless. The late Frederick, Earl of Guildford, began early to collect books, and after his return from the government of Ceylon, indulged his penchant largely in the literature of Southern Europe. During his visits to the Continent he purchased the entire libraries of convents; and his collection was singularly rich both in printed books and manuscripts of Italian and modern Greek literature. His aim was to found a university in Corfu, and to deposit there his library. However, upon the earl's death it was dispersed by auction, and like Mr. Heber's is now known only by three or four meagre and ill-digested sale lists. The greater portion of his MSS. are in the British Museum and in Sir Thomas Phillips's library." We have in the same article an interesting statement of the number of books contained in the principal libraries of Europe. "The number of volumes claimed to be possessed by the twelve greatest libraries of Europe is as follows (quoted from the Appendix to the Parliamentary Report on the British Museum). The Bibliotheque du Roi, at Paris, 650,000; Munich, 500,000 (of which one fifth at the least are duplicates); Copenhagen 400,000; St. Petersburg 400.000; Berlin 320,000; Vienna 300,000; the British Museum 270,000; Dresden 250,000; the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, at Paris, 200,000; the Bibliotheque de St. Genevieve, at Paris, 200,000; the One of the greatest difficulties connected with the management of a library, is the preparation of proper catalogues. It is somewhat amusing to see how the dif ficulty has been increased by the practice so common among authors of disguising their real names. "Besides the frequent solecisms which are found in alphabetical catalogues, arising from the compiler's misapprehension of the meaning of a title, such as the Relatio felicis agonis' of certain martyrs, being entered as a work by Felix Ago, various difficulties are caused by the fond fancies of authors in translating or euphonising their names. The variety of modes by which names are altered and disguised is great; those which sound harsh or too familiar in their vernacular form are often euphonised by being turned into well sounding Greek: thus, Melancthon, Capnio, Xylander, Ecolampadius, Metastasio, represent Schwartzerd, Reuchlin, Holtzman, Hausschein, and Trapassi; Sophocardius is Wishart, or Wiseheart; and Hylacomylus, who first gave the name of America to the then newly discovered continent, is only Martin Waldseemüller, a schoolmaster at the little town of Saint Die, in the department of the Vosges. But one version does not always suffice: Giovanni Vittorio de Rossi, Johannes Victorius de Rubeis, and Janus Nicius Erythræus, are all one and the same person, who writes under the three names. Sometimes a Latin form is taken, or an equivalent it may be: thus Bevilacqua, or Drinkwater is Abstemius, Bridgewater is Aquepontanus, Torquemada is Turrecremata, Smidt is Vulcanus, Leger Duchesne is Leodegarius a Quercu, or Quercetanus, and Vander Bycken is Torrentius. If without meaning, or almost incapable of being tortured into meaning, the cacophonous name is made to sound like Latin: Van der Does is Dousa, Roscoe is Roscius, Owen is Andoenus, and Wilson Volusenus. In English a somewhat similar process is adopted in order to get rid of an objectionable name: for instance, Abraham is made Braham, Israel d'Israeli, Bernales Bernal—and a total change of name is not unfrequently resorted to for the same purpose. The number of writers of one and the same name is another source of error; it would be no easy task to discriminate accurately between all the John Smiths, the Thomas Browns, and the William Allens. These difficulties have caused some writers, such as Fabricius and Nicolas Antonio, who have cast their works into an alphabetical form, to arrange their matter under Christian or first names; but here a new class of obstacles arises, whether John shall be Johannes, Heri Gratia, Theocharis, Giovanni, Jean, Johann, Juan, Joao, Joan, Jonas, or Hans-whether we shall say Egidius or Giles, Ludovicus or Lewis or Louis, Elizabetha or Isabella, Wilbott or Bilibaldus." Another source of error and confusion in assigning books to their true authors arises from the practice of authors concealing their names in acrostics and similar puzzles. Of these one of the most curious was the following. "Th --s Cls: Midras Iaoeus." This might have puzzled Œdipus himself, had the author not furnished the key to his meaning. The word Midras he says, is to be read by the word Iaoeus: then as i is the third vowel, a the first, o the fourth, e the second, and u the fifth, M. i. d. r. a. s. will be transposed into I. R. M. D. A. S. which initials stand for Johannes Robertson, Medicinæ Doctor, Abredonensis Scotus-the Th- -8 Cls being not Thomas Clowes, nor any relative of our printer, but Theocharis Cleobulides, which purports to be a translation of John Robertson." The article goes on to enumerate other curious sources of mistake arising from the ignorance of editors and bibliographers. One editor, out of King James's Doron Basilicon, creates an author, Dorus Basilicus; Bishop Walton, editor of the Polyglott Bible, out of the title of the great Arabic dictionary, the Kamoos, or "Ocean," makes an author, whom he calls Camus. The Centones Virgiliani of Proba Faleonia, were printed in 1509 at Paris, as by Proba Falconia Centona; and the Catalogue of the Barberini Library, turns the German weiland into an author of the same name. This accident happened several times afterwards; some of the floating pieces of ice, to judge from their height out of the water, must have been seventy feet thick beneath the surface. The 4th of June the gallery, six hundred and eighty feet long, was completed, but, as it was twenty feet higher in the middle. it was necessary still to level it. The weather had been very cold, and the lake had not yet reached the height of the gallery; the labourers, therefore, continued lowering it till the 13th, when, towards ten at night, the water began to flow through. The lake continued to rise during several hours; but the next day, at five o'clock in the evening, it had fallen one foot; the morning on the 15th, ten feet; the 16th, thirty feet. Some ages hence, if the favourites of the present day live so long, similar confusion may arise from the prac- At two o'clock on that day, the length of the lake tice now prevailing of adopting pseudonymes. There was diminished one thousand nine hundred and fifty will be no difficulty about Sir Walter Scott, so long as feet; for the gallery wearing down as fast as the lake our language survives; the most ignorant catalogue- lowered, the water ran freely, but without the Dranse maker will scarcely attribute any of his works to Waver- overflowing; and a very few days would have sufficed ley, Dr. Dryasdust, or Jedediah Cleishbotham; but we to drain this great reservoir. Loud explosions, howshould not wonder, if some difficulty did arise in adjust-ever, announced that large masses of ice were loosened ing the respective claims of Wilson and Christopher from the dyke by their specific lightness diminishing North, Dickens and Boz, Procter and Barry Cornwall, its thickness towards the lake, while the current, as it or Thackeray and Michael Angelo Titmarsh. flowed from the gallery, wore away this same barrier on the opposite side, and threatened a sudden rupture. The danger increasing, the engineer sent, from time to time, to warn the inhabitants to be on their guard. As the water began to make its way under the ice, the crisis appeared inevitable, and not far distant. At halfpast four in the evening a terrible explosion announced the breaking up of the dyke; and the waters of the lake rushing through, ali at once formed a torrent, one hundred feet in depth, which traversed the first eighteen miles in the space of forty minutes, carrying away one hundred and thirty chalets, a whole forest, and an immense quantity of earth and stone. When it reached Bagne, the ruins of all descriptions carried along with it formed a moving mountain, three hundred feet high, from which a column of thick vapour arose, like the smoke of a great fire. An English traveller, accompanied by a young artist, Mr. P. of Lausanne, and a guide, had been visiting the works, and on his return was approaching Bagne, when, turning round by chance, he saw the frightful object just described coming down, the distant noise of which had been lost in the nearer roar of the Dranse; he clapt spurs to his horse to warn his companion, as well as three other travellers who had joined them; all dismounting, scrambled up the mountain precipitately, and arrived in safety beyond the reach of the deluge, which, in an instant, filled the valley beneath; however, Mr. P. was no longer to be found; during several hours they believed him lost, but they learned afterwards that his restive mule, turning at the sight of an uprooted tree, perceived all at once a still more threatening sight, and dashing at once up the mountain, had carried him beyond the reach of danger. INUNDATION OF THE VALLEY OF BAGNE.1 THE valley of Bagne, long, narrow, unequal in breadth, and confined by high mountains, is situated in the canton of Valais, on the left side of the Rhone; and it is remarked of the simple and industrious race who inhabit it, that for a century past there has not been a punishable crime committed among them, nor even a law suit. The torrent of the Dranse, issuing from the glacier of Chermontane, at the upper extremity of this valley, forms one of the outlets of that series of glaciers, forty leagues in length, which extend from Mont Blanc to the sources of the Rhone; almost dry in winter, it becomes swollen during the spring, by the melting of the snow. The people of the valley, surprised to see it always so low during the month of April last, and suspecting something extraordinary, ascended to its source, and found that an unusual quantity of ice, fallen from the glacier of Getroz, on Mount Pleureur, blocked up the valley. and that the waters of the Dranse, accumulated behind this dyke, already formed a large lake. Upon their report, the alarm was spread, not only throughout the canton of Valais, but even in Italy; travellers feared to take the route of the Simplon, being aware that when the ice gave way there would be a sudden inundation, which would overflow the whole country. The government sent an engineer, who found that the dyke across the valley was six or seven hundred feet in length, four hundred feet high, and three thousand feet broad at its base; the lake was seven thousand two hundred feet in length, and six hundred in breadth, and had already risen to half the height of the dyke, that is, to two hundred feet. He decided upon opening a gallery through the ice, beginning fifty-four feet above the actual level, to give himself time to finish the work before the lake rose up to it; its daily increase being from four to five feet, according to the temperature. On the 11th of May he began to work at the two extremities of the gallery, fifty men, relieving each other alternately, laboured night and day, in continual danger of being buried alive in their gallery by some of the avalanches, which fell at short intervals; several were wounded by pieces of ice, others had their feet frozen, and the ice was so hard as to break their tools. But, notwithstanding all these difficulties, the work advanced rapidly. On the 27th of May, a large portion of the dyke rose upwards, with such a frightful noise, that the workmen believed the whole was giving way, and fled precipitately, but soon returned to their labour. (1) From Simond's Switzerland. From Bagne the inundation reached Martigny, four leagues in fifty minutes, bearing away in that space thirty-five houses, eight wind-mills, ninety-five barns, but only nine persons, and very few cattle; most of the inhabitants having been on their guard. The village of Beauvernier was saved by a projecting rock, which diverted the torrent; it was seen passing like an arrow by the side of the village without touching it, though much higher than the roofs of the houses. The fragments of rocks and stones deposited before reaching Martigny, entirely covered a vast extent of meadows and fields. Here it was divided, but eighty buildings of this town were destroyed and many were injured; the streets were filled with trees and rubbish, but only thirty-four persons appear to have lost their lives at Martigny, the inhabitants having retired to the mountains. Below Martigny, the inundation spreading wide, deposited a quantity of slime and mud, so considerable, as it is hoped will redeem an extensive swamp. The Rhone received it by degrees, and at different points, without overflowing, till it reached the lake of Geneva at eleven o'clock at night, and was lost in its vast expanse, having gone over eighteen Swiss leagues in six hours and a half, with a gradually retarded move ment. The bridges having been carried away, all intercourse was interrupted during several days, between the inhabitants of the opposite banks of the Dranse, whose only means of conveying intelligence of their misfortunes to one another, was by throwing letters fastened to stones. This is not the first accident of the kind; there are traces of others, and one is supposed to have taken place in the year 1595, a beam in the ceiling of a house at Martigny, bears the following initial inscription:- M. O. F. F. 1595, L. Q. B. F. I. P. L. G. D. G. of which the following ingenious explanation was given :— Maurice Olliot fit faire, 1595, lorsque Bagne fut inondé par le glacier de Getroz. It is somewhat remarkable that an old man, ninetytwo years of age, saved himself by ascending a mound, supposed to have been formed by the former inundation; the present one pursued him to the summit, where he maintained himself by the aid of a tree, which was not carried away. Poetry. [In Original Poetry, the Name, real or assumed, of the Author, is printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is printed in Italics at the end.] THE DEAD MAIDEN. W. BRAILSFORD. STREW flowers here, Never mourn beside her bier; For this angel so asleep! It was best that she should die; From these cold remains, but learn Of all sweetest natures, blent Miscellaneous. 66 was WHEN the British finally took possession of Kandy, in February 1815, shortly after the tents had been pitched, in the immediate vicinity of the capital, Mr. Marshall, who was staff-surgeon with the army, addressed in English by a brown-coloured man in the native costume. Upon inquiry, it was ascertained that his name was Thomas Thoen, a German by birth; that he belonged to the Bengal artillery, and accompanied the expedition to Kandy in 1803, and that he was a patient in the hospital when Major Davie capitulated to the Kandyans, on the 24th June. When he was asked how he had retained a knowledge of the English language, having for such a number of years associated with Kandyans only, I being a foreigner,' said he, never could speak the English language correctly; but having found a few leaves of an English Bible belonging to one of the soldiers, I read them occasionally, and by that means preserved some acquaintance with the lan guage.' The writer conducted him to Major Hook, by whom he was conveyed to head-quarters, and introduced to his Excellency. 6 The "Of the sick who were left in the hospital on the capitulation of Kandy, in June 1803, Thomas Thoen was the only one who escaped with his life. Along with the other patients, he received a blow with the butt-end of a musket, which felled him senseless to the ground, and he was thrown among the dead. Having recovered from the effects of the blow, he crawled to a place of concealment in the neighbourhood, but being discovered next day, was hung up to the branch of a tree. rope, however, broke, and he fell to the ground; he was again suspended, the people left him, and again the rope broke. He contrived to find his way to a hut at no great distance, where he continued for ten days, with no other sustenance than the grass which grew near the door of the hut, and the rain which dropped through apertures of the roof. At the expiration of the above period, an old woman entered the hut, but, seeing Thoen, instantly disappeared. To his great surprise she soon after returned, bringing with her a dish containing a quantity of dressed rice, which she left on the ground, and went away. Next morning Thoen was taken before the king, who, struck with the singularity of his fate, observed, that it was not for man to injure one who was so evidently the favourite of Heaven. The king then ordered that he should be supplied with food, giving him at the same time in charge of one of the chiefs, with strict injunctions to treat him with kindness and attention. A house was allotted to him in Kandy; and he, after some time, married the daughter of a Moorman, a circumstance which, he told the writer, contributed greatly to his comfort. General Brownrigg appointed Thoen to a suitable situation in Galle, where he soon after died."- Marshall's Description and Conquest of Ceylon, p. 155. |