BOOK V. Chapter I. Library at Paris. never be truly and enduringly favourable to instituThe Imperial tions whose main value. consists in storing and diffusing the free thoughts of the dead. However troublesome it may usually be to turn hard students into good soldiers, Libraries have ever ranked amongst the best arsenals of Liberty. CHAPTER II. THE MINOR LIBRARIES OF PARIS. ..... In the darkest not less than in the brightest was never really ineffectual. .... The husbandry be- STEPHEN, (Lectures on the History of France, ii, 155.) BOOK V. Chapter II. braries of Paris. It would require, I suppose, an unusual share of national pride, (not to say of overweening patriotic The Minor Livanity,) to induce any well-informed Englishman to deny, aforethought, that the "Power of the Pen" has usually been greater, and has reached farther, in France than in England;-greater both for good and for evil;more widely spread over the various classes, the aggregation and the mutual sympathy of which, together, make up a People. BOOK V. Chapter II. braries of Paris. A subsidiary illustration of this phase of internaThe Minor Li- tional contrast, may be afforded by the fact that long before the opening of any English Private Library to students of all ranks, we find several such instances of liberality, coexisting in Paris. The superiority, therefore, in this particular, of the French Metropolis over the English, does not date from the establishment of Libraries strictly public, but is anterior to the earliest of them, I am very far from suggesting that all the causes which may have concurred to this result were without alloy of evil. But, taking the point by itself, and for no more than its worth, it claims recognition. In several cases, the Libraries whose owners liberally opened their doors in early days, were the beginnings of those fine collections which in recent times call every wellconducted visitor their master, whether he be Frenchman or foreigner. The Mazarine Library. Foremost among such stand the Mazarine Library, and the Library of Sainte Geneviève. The very name of the former suggests limitations to eulogy. The gigantic fortune which the astute Cardinal created for himself, out of the misery of France, might well leave margin enough for the formation of a noble collection of books, for its maintenance and accessibility, and for its bequest to public uses, when the eyes of the owner were about to close, reluctantly, upon all the splendours he had amassed! But the old thought will also suggest 1...,,J'étais dans la petite galerie où l'on voyait une tapisserie toute en laine qui représentait Scipion, exécutée sur les dessins de Jules Romain. Je l'entendis venir au bruit que faisaient ses pantoufles qu'il traînait comme un homme fort languissant et qui sort d'une grande maladie. Je me cachai derrière la tapisserie et je l'entendis qui disait: 'Il BOOK V. Chapter II. braries of Paris. itself that the man who founds a Library, even if his means have been unjustly acquired, and his motives The Minor Licorrupt, pays homage to that power which by a Divine appointment strikes corruption and injustice at the root, surely though it be slowly. To Paris, and to Posterity, Mazarin bequeathed a College as well as a Library. It is of some honour to his memory that these kindly legacies to students had been preceded by kindly actions. What portion of that first collection which had been with such difficulty snatched from the grip of the Parliament in 1648, only to be forcibly dispersed by public sale in 1652, the Cardinal had succeeded in recovering, it is difficult even to conjecture. We know that the efforts made in that direction had considerable success, but know little more than this. Naudé tells us that the dispersed Library contained in 1648 upwards of 40,000 volumes; Maichelius, that the Library of the Mazarine College, (after some important augmentations) contained in 1720 but about 37,000 volumes. A century later it numbered 90,000. The collection remained (in charge of the Sorbonne,) at the Mazarine Palace until 1688, when Colbert caused it to be transferred to the new College (now Palais de l'Institut), which bore the Cardinal's name until the time of the Revolution. At that epoch the Librarian was the accomplished Abbé Le Blond, who has been called faut quitter tout cela.' Il s'arrêtait à chaque pas, car il était fort faible, et se tenant tantôt d'un côté, tantôt de l'autre, et jetant les yeux sur l'objet qui lui frappait la vue, il disait du profond du cœur: ‘Il faut quitter tout cela'." Mémoires du Comte de Brienne. Vol. II. 20 BOOK V. Chapter II. braries of Paris. the second founder of the Library. At his death, Abbé The Minor Li Hooke became Librarian, and he was succeeded by the late M. Petit Radel. The present contents of the Library are stated to be, of printed volumes, about 132,000; and nearly 3000 MSS. It includes a noble series of Incunabula, and a vast collection of tracts, commencing with those of the fifteenth century, and many of them of the highest rarity. It is also strong in the literature of the Sciences, and its theological department is noticeable for the extensive series it embraces of the Protestant divines. Its annual maintenance costs about £1300, which is defrayed out of the budget of Public Instruction.1 The Library of Ste. Geneviève. When the Cardinal de Rochefoucauld became Abbot of Ste. Geneviève in 1624, he found, according to the Chroniclers of the Abbey, not a single printed book in its Library. It had once, at all events, possessed a collection of MSS., of which there are traces in its annals; and some fragments of that collection appear to have survived. According to one of the later Chroniclers the ancient codices (some of which, he says, he had seen in the Library of Mazarin,) had been sold to the booksellers,-by a functionary with a turn for 'saving',―at so much a pound, in order to buy new service-books with the proceeds. The Cardinal, by way 1 Naudé, Avis à Nosseigneurs du Parlement, etc. passim; Maichelius, Introductio ad historiam literariam de præcipuis Bibliothecis Parisiensibus, 65-75; De Laborde, Le Palais Mazarin, (Lettres sur l'organisation des Bibliothèques dans Paris, iv, 1-108); Petit Radel, Notice historique sur la Bibliothèque Mazarine, passim; Dibdin, Bibliographical Tour in France, etc., ii, 187-195; Returns relating to Public Libraries abroad, 1850, 91-93. |