Try he exdamei me tay, gasping a volume, For this only am I imai. The intelectual architect who had nodelet his house of Scicmon, and should have been for ever the ideal habitant of that palace of the mind, was the tenant of an abode of disorder, where every one was master but is over, a maculated man seeking to shelter himself in dejection and in shade. Whisperers, surmisers, evil eyes and evil tongues, the domestic asp, whose bite sends poison into the veins of him on whom it hangs-these were his familiars, while his abstracted mind was dictating to his chaplain the laws and economy of nature.

Yet there were some better spirits in the mansion of Gorhambury, and even in the obscurity of Gray's Inn, who have left testimonies of their devotion to the great man long after his death. In the psychological history of Lord Bacon, we must not pass by the psychological monument which the affectionate Sir Thomas Meautys, who, by his desire, lies buried at his feet, raised to his The design is as original as it is grand, and is said to have been the invention of Sir Henry Wotton, who, in his long residence abroad, had formed a refined taste for the arts which were yet strangers in England. The simplicity of our ancestors had placed their sculptured figures recumbent on their tombs; the taste of Wotton raised the marble figure to imitate life itself,

and to give the mind of the original to its image. The monument of Bacon exhibits the great philosopher seated in profound contemplation in his habitual attitude, for the inscription records for posterity, Sic sedebat*.

*See "Curiosities of Literature," art. "Bacon at Home."

THE FIRST FOUNDER OF A PUBLIC LIBRARY.

THE first marked advancement in the progress of the national understanding was made by a new race of public benefactors, who, in their munificence, no longer endowing obsolete superstitions, and inefficient or misplaced charities, erected libraries and opened academies ; founders of those habitations of knowledge whose doors open to the bidding of all comers.

To the privacy and the silent labours of some men of letters and some lovers of the arts, usually classed under the general designation of COLLECTORS, literary Europe, for the great part, owes its public museums and its public libraries. It was their ripe knowledge only which could have created them, their opulence only which could render them worthy of a nation's purchase, or of its acceptance, when in their generous enthusiasm they consecrated the intellectual gift for their countrymen.

These collections could only have acquired their strength by their growth, for gradual were their acquisitions and innumerable were their details; they claimed the sleepless vigilance of a whole life, the devotion of a whole fortune, and often that moral

intrepidity which wrestled with insurmountable difficulties. We may admire the generous enthusiasm whose opulence was solely directed to enrich what hereafter was to be consecrated as public property; but it has not always received the notice and the eulogy so largely its due. It is but bare justice to distinguish these men from their numerous brothers whose collections have terminated with themselves, known only to posterity by their posthumous catalogues-the sole record that these collectors were great buyers and more famous sellers. Of many of the FOUNDERS of public collections the names are not familiar to the reader, though some have sometimes been identified with their more celebrated collections, from the gratitude of a succeeding age.

A collection formed by a single mind, skilled in its favourite pursuit, becomes the tangible depository of the thoughts of its owner; there is a unity in this labour of love, and a secret connexion through its dependent parts. Thus we are told that Cecil's library was the best for history; Walsingham's for policy; Arundel's for heraldry; Cotton's for antiquity; and Usher's for divinity. The completion of such a collection reflects the perfect image of the mind of the philosopher, the philologist, the antiquary, the naturalist, the scientific or the legal character, who into one

locality has gathered together and arranged this furniture of the human intellect.

To disperse their collections would be, to these elect spirits, to resolve them back into their first elements— to scatter them in the air, or to mingle them with the dust *. Happily for mankind, these have been men to whom the perpetuity of their intellectual associations was a future existence. Conscious that their hands had fastened links in the unbroken chain of human inquiry, they left the legacy to the world. The creators of these collections have often betrayed their anxiety to preserve them distinct and entire. Confident I am that such was the real feeling of a recent celebrated collector. The rich and peculiar collection of manuscripts, and of rare and chosen volumes, of FRANCIS DOUCE, from his earliest days had been the objects of his incessant cares. With means extremely restricted, but with a mind which no obstructions could swerve from its direct course, through many years he accomplished a glorious design. Our modest antiquary startled the most curi

* Sir Simonds d'Ewes feelingly describes in his will, his "precious library." "It is my inviolable injunction that it be kept entire, and not sold, divided, or dissipated." It was not, however, to be locked up from the public good. Such was the feeling of an eminent antiquary.

A later Sir Simonds d'Ewes was an extravagant man, and seems to have sold everything about 1716, when the collection passed into the possession of the Earl of Oxford.