RETIRING ALLOWANCES OF PUBLIC OFFICERS. ..... 957 ..... BOOK IV. Chapter III. Internal Administration; and Finance. "Salaries of the Assistants are very low as compared with those given in the Public Offices, such as the Admiralty, the War Office, the Treasury, and other Go- Routine Duties; vernment Establishments, which only require a mere clerk-like duty; ..... while (in them) the increase of Salary goes on during the whole period of service; with retiring allowances and pensions, which are not given in the Museum. ..... The Salaries of the higher Officers are also very small, compared with other establishments. If you compare them with the higher Clerks in the various Public offices, or, indeed, if you compare them with the higher Clerks in private establishments, in the Bank for instance, they are far below them. The Salary of the higher Clerks in the Bank is £1200 a year, and they have residences... ........... I consider a Retiring Pension, when from age and declining health the Officers can no longer fully execute their duties, one of the greatest wants in the Institution..... I believe it has a very injurious effect on the minds and health of the Officers and Assistants; that is to say, that they feel always subject to the danger of want. I need only refer to the fact of the deplorable state of mental disease which has existed among several of the Officers of the Institution. During the time that I have been connected with it, six of the Officers have left or died under mental disease. Being a medical man myself, and paying a good deal of attention to mental diseases, I can state that this is a proportion which is unknown among literary or scientific men in general. It is a question of a very serious nature. There have been more who have died or left under such Retiring Peuannuated Allow sions or super ances. BOOK IV.. Chapter III. Administration; and Finance. a malady than have died from other causes during the period of my service. Almost all the Officers in Public Routine Duties; Offices, whose Salaries, as I have stated, are larger than those in the Museum, have Retiring Pensions at the same time;, this applies also to the Attendants whose Salaries are exceedingly low...... It has always appeared to me that the miserable state of health and mind of several Officers who have so left or died,..... has been in a great degree referrible to this want of some provision for their retirement, without being placed under the necessity of overworking their powers by study at night, and at other times when not engaged in their duties at the Museum, in the hope of making such a provision for themselves."1 This important suggestion has received partial attention within the Museum; and a beginning has been made in the way of remedy. But nothing adequate to meet the evil has yet been provided. Dr. Gray's remarks deserve to be pondered by all men who have a control over our Literary and Scientific Institutions. They point to a course which partakes not a whit more of humane consideration for some of the most valuable servants that a community can have, than it partakes of the most obvious public policy. 1 Evidence of Dr. J. E. Gray;-Minutes, etc., ut supra; Q. 8687-9, 563, 564 (1849). CHAPTER IV. BOOKBINDING. ...... Have a care of keeping your books handsome and PEACHAM (The Complete Gentleman, 55). That Book, in many eyes, doth share the glory, Romeo and Juliet, i, 3. BOOK IV. Chapter IV. JUST as we have to trace the beginnings of our oldest Libraries to the pious labours of Monks, so do we find Bookbinding. in some of the earliest surviving specimens of mediæval 'binding, examples of monkish industry and art. We cannot, indeed, follow the monastic binder through his daily work, so minutely as we may follow the monastic scribe. But its results are still exhibited amongst the choice treasures and favourite show-books of our great Libraries. BOOK IV. Chapter IV. In a noble copy of the Latin Gospels, for example, Bookbinding. written at the beginning of the ninth century, we have a coeval or nearly coeval binding in thick oaken covers. plated with silver and set with gems. On one side is embossed the figure of Christ, with the symbols of the Evangelists in the corners; and, on the other side, the Agnus Dei. Within the covers are some saintly relics. This volume is now in the British Museum, for which it was purchased at the sale of Bishop Butler's MSS., in 1841.1 Mediæval Bind ings in the Im at Paris. In the Imperial Library at Paris are to be seen the perial Library covers of gold of four manuscripts (Fonds St. Victor, No. 366, and Supp. Latin, Nos. 663, 665, 667,) which are fine examples of medieval binding, and are thus described by Labarte: The two first, of large quarto size, represent on one side the Crucifixion, and on the other Christ seated, and giving the benediction; the third, a small folio, represents upon one of the panels, the Crucifixion, and on the other, the Resurrection. These subjects are executed in hammer-work, in high relief. The heads are full of character and expression; the drawing is generally correct, and the execution admirable. The fourth cover encloses a Carlovingian manuscript, which Charles V. caused to be made when gave the volume to the Sainte Chapelle. On the upper panel, the artist has reproduced one of the miniatures of the MS. in a fine nielloed engraving, on a fleurde-lis ground; on the lower panel, he has represented he 1 Madden, List of MSS. exhibited to the Public, etc.. August, 1851, 30. the Crucifixion, in figures of high relief; enclosed in a double frame enriched with precious stones. 1 1 The cover of a fine Book of Hours, written for Charles the Bald, between the years 842 and 869, is also preserved in the Imperial Library. This bookcover, which appears to have been contemporary with the execution of the manuscript, is adorned with two beautiful tablets of ivory, finely sculptured in high relief. The one is surrounded by a large border of carbuncled precious stones, set in little plates of silver of an oval form; the other, with a tracery of filagree, skilfully arranged, and also enriched with precious stones.2 BOOK IV. Chapter IV. Bookbinding. ings in the Royal Library of Munich. The Royal Library of Munich contains an Evangeliary Medieval Bindbrought from the Abbey of St. Emmeran at Ratisbon. It was written in 870, by the brothers Berengarius and Luithardus, and, like the Hours above-mentioned, by order of Charles the Bald, whose portrait appears in one of the miniatures that ornament the book. This precious volume was originally the property of the Abbey of St. Denis, and appears to have been the gift of the Emperor Arnulph to the Community of St. Emmeran, by whom (probably about a century later) it was clothed with its present rich cover of gold, ornamented with figures in hammered work. In the centre is an oblong frame, enriched with carbuncled gems, and fine pearls. Christ is represented in an aureola, with one hand giving the sign of benediction, and in the other holding the Gospels; the rest of the field is covered with well drawn bas-reliefs, remarkable for the fineness of their execu 1 Labarte, Handbook of the Arts of the Middle Ages, etc., 230. 2 Ibid., 215. Vol. II. 61 |