Grecian library, Ptolemy laid an embargo on papyrus, and prevented its exportation. This compelled the Grecians to find a substitute, and parchment was prepared. Necessity is the mother of invention. This Pergamean library was carried off by Anthony and presented to his mistress Cleopatra.

In what esteem must books have been held in those days, when kings prized them as their crown jewels, and royal lovers laid musty parchments at the feet of beauty, in whose charms the diadem of the world was lost!

The received opinion is, that the famous Alexandrian Library was destroyed by the Saracens at the command of the Calif Omar A. D. 642, and that for six months it furnished fuel to 4000 baths at Alexandria. This account is doubted; it is more probable that the part of it in the Serapion, or temple of Jupiter Serapis, was preserved until the time of Theodosius the Great, who caused all the heathen temples in the Roman Empire to be destroyed, 380 years after Christ. "A crowd of fanatic christians rushed into the temple and consigned this magnificent collection of pagan literature to the flames and winds." A sad termination truly of a noble monument of letters.

It is impossible to form an adequate conception of what the world of letters has lost by the destruction of these literary treasures of Greece and Egypt. We mourn the decay of temples and towers whose architectural ruins stand as melancholy memorials of ancient skill that has no parallel in modern times. But what is the body to the soul that dwells in it: what the temple of Jupiter Serapis to the books it enshrined? These libraries were the glory of the nations that possessed them; and when, as yet, the art of printing had not been wrought out by the wit of man, the sons

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of genius gathered around the masters of philosophy and history and song, and learned lessons of wisdom from their lips; or frequented the halls of these magnificent libraries and studied the written page to gather knowledge which they might, in their turn, impart to others who could not resort to these fountains. Thus the libraries became the richest treasures of the Eastern world.

Nor do we know how much of what was written has been lost; even of the works of those who stand on the summit of intellectual fame. Perhaps no other Homer ever lived: but the songs which have come down to us are not the only songs of that prince of bards, whose art gives law to verse as a monarch in his realm. Where are the lost books of Livy, themselves a library worthy of kingly care? Gibbon and Bolingbroke agreed in the opinion, that what we have of Livy, might well be given for what we have not, and doubtless the same may be affirmed of other lights that shone in early times, a few only of whose rays have travelled down to us. The researches of the learned may yet be rewarded with discoveries. Many curious facts in reference to lost books and the probabilities of their being found, are mentioned in Dr. Clarke's travels, communicated by Mr. Walpole. We have not time to recite them now. On this subject, Dr. Covell says, "I have seen vast heaps of manuscripts (for I never found them on shelves or in good order) of the Fathers and other learned authors, in the monasteries at Mount Athos, and elsewhere, all covered over with dust and dirt, and many of them rotted and spoiled." A manuscript of Quintilian, the prince of Latin rhetoricians, was rescued from the counter of a pickling shop; several of the works of Cicero and the whole of Ovid were found in the garret of a monastery.

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The Romans caught the taste for books from Greece, and emulated their rivals in the pursuit of literature. Libraries were part of the trophies which their victorious generals brought home to grace their triumphs ; and "manuscripts were more valued than vases of gold." Trajan founded the Ulpian library for the benefit of the public, and filled it with books from plundered cities. Perseus, the Macedonian king, was defeated by Paulus Emilius, and his rich collections of books were transferred by the conqueror from Greece to Italy. Cato demanded the destruction of Carthage, and when it fell, the books that were found in the doomed city were presented by the Roman Senate to the family of the incorruptible Regulus. The wealthiest Romans lavished their gold to buy books, with a profusion that denotes a lust of literature more than the love of it. The greatest of military men, Julius Cæsar, is so stained with blood, and his fame so blended with martial renown, that we seldom recall the fact that he was a student of delicate health and solitary habits, writing or reading in his chariot while pursuing his enemies, and preferring the society of his books to that of his generals.

Cicero celebrated the praises of books in periods that never will cease to vibrate. rapturously on the ear of every scholar. Recall his oration for Archias the Poet: what admiration of genius does the man of genius display: how he honors his own taste by extolling his client, who would have been forgotten, before this, but for the splended sarcophagus in which his lawyer entombed his remains. Plutarch tells us of the library of Lucullus, that "its walks, galleries, and cabinets, were open to all visiters, and the ingenious Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses, to hold literary conversations in which Lucullus loved to join."

Augustus Cæsar has given his name to literature. Under his genial auspices, Roman letters flourished as in the sunshine of England's virgin queen. And in the palmy days of that world-wide empire, the noblest man was the most learned: knowledge, not gold, was the measure of a man's greatness.

One day a stranger, in a strange dress, who had travelled from a far distant land, entered the "eternal city" and enquired for the great historian, LIvy: he was directed to the palace of the Emperor Augustus, under whose roof the man of letters had his home. The stranger had no eye for the grandeur of the proud city whose magnificence then was at the acme of its unexampled splendor: he did not pause to look at its pillars or temples that rose before him, though these were sights that had never met his eyes before: he entered the halls of the Cæsars, and was permitted to look upon the historian whose pages he had perused in his solitude at the ends of the earth; and turning away, he said, "it is enough," and sought his distant home.

Nothing in those days was too costly for the ornament and preservation of these libraries. Emperors gave to them their own names, or the names of those they loved. Augustus loved his sister Octavia, and his Octavian library was exquisitely appointed with porticoes, galleries, shady walks, and every embellishment that taste could suggest and art produce, to make it the abode of rational and pure enjoyment for intellectual minds.

We might follow this history down through the middle ages, though we should find less of interest to repay us for the investigation. "Cassiodorus, minister of Theodore, king of the Goths, retired to a monastery which he had built, and founded a library there for the

use of the monks, about the year 550. Somewhat later, Charlemagne founded a library near Lyons."— From this time we should have to search these monasteries for books, and in those days so truly characterized as the dark ages, books were preserved but not read. Lights under a bushel, they shed scarcely a glimmer in the midnight of the world. Father Andre, a facetious monk, whether in irony or in earnest I will not say, very happily hits off the prevailing distate of himself and his brethren for the use of books, and their decided preference for the pleasures of the table over those of the study in the manner following:

"Preaching in a monastery which had recently been struck by lightning, Father Andre expatiated upon the goodness of God, who took, as he would shew, special care of his creatures. For, said he, among other evidences, consider what has happened to this holy house in which I am preaching. The lightning struck the library and consumed it, but injured not a single monk, If, however, it had unfortunately fallen upon the diningroom, or buttery, how many brethren would have been killed! how many tears shed! what desolation would have ensued!"

But I prefer to hasten over this period and come down to another era. For the facts which I omit, and a better history of those which I have cited, my young hearers are referred to the Encyclopedias, to the Curiosities of Literature by D'Israeli, and to their Classical Dictionaries.

With the art of printing we might begin the history of books. True, there were great men before Agamemnon-there were books before printing, as there is light before sunrise. But that was the creation of a sun to diffuse and rule the light of the world. Given of God at a period when religion and commerce werè prepared with this art to go forth on a mission of