had been destroyed
by rough usage or by the water dripping in from the gutters; the books
were in charge of the men who swept the Church, and they allowed the
school-children to play with the illustrated volumes and to tear out the
miniatures and woodcuts. Mr. Harrisse has described with much detail the
grandeur and the decline of this celebrated institution, and he gives
reasons for supposing that it may have suffered even in recent years from
the negligence of its guardians. It is satisfactory, however, to find
that its most precious contents have passed safely through every period
of danger; the library still contains some of the books of Christopher
Columbus, and especially the _Imago Mundi_ with his marginal notes about
the Portuguese discoveries, 'in all which things,' he writes 'I had my
share.'
[Illustration: J. A. DE THOU.]
CHAPTER XIV.
DE THOU--PINELLI--PEIRESC.
It was long a saying among the French that a man had never seen Paris who
had not looked upon the books of Thuanus. The historian Jacques-Auguste
de Thou held a leading place in literature, without pretending in any way
to rival the greatness of Joseph Scaliger or the erudition of Isaac
Casaubon. He was the master of a great store of personal and secret
history collected in state papers and records; but he was also famous for
the extent of his general scholarship, and for the patronage which he
manifested towards all who laboured about books. He was himself a most
fastidious collector.
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