Trinity College, Cambridge; but Christ Church books are very widely scattered. The libraries of Peterborough and Ely seem to have well-nigh vanished. Books from either house are, in our experience, rarely to be found; and this, in the case of Peterborough particularly, is the sadder, since we know from its catalogue that the collection was a fine one, and from extant remains that its illuminators were artists of high rank.

Of the larger abbeys, Glastonbury has left us sadly little. Alone among English abbeys, it passed without a convulsion from the Briton to the Saxon; and one or two of the volumes it has left us bear witness to its story. It might have preserved-Leland thought that in his time it did still preserve-records that should have reached back into a shadowy antiquity. But those records have gone, along with the tombs of Arthur and St Indract and St Patrick. With a few notable exceptions our Glastonbury books are late and commonplace. St Albans is by no means without witness; its thirteenth century script and school of painting we know well. But of all the great abbeys, Bury St Edmunds has perhaps the largest number of extant books to show. A fortunate accident threw a large mass of them into the hands of an intelligent alderman of Ipswich, Mr William Smart, whose name we have already mentioned; and he was persuaded by a friend to present them almost all to Pembroke College at Cambridge. To this important nucleus the other great libraries add their quota, and we find, as always, a few waifs and strays further afield: one at Hereford, for instance, two at Douai, and a Psalter in the Vatican.

The mention of these foreign libraries affords an opportunity for saying a little upon the subject of the exportation of books from England at the Dissolution. Bale speaks of whole libraries being shipped overseas, to the great astonishment of foreign nations; and there is no reason to doubt that what he said had at least a basis of fact. Our own inquiries and investigations of catalogues, however, have led us to believe that comparatively few English books are now to be found in foreign libraries. There are collections, such as that of Queen Christina at the Vatican, and that of Isaac Voss at Leyden, to which we may fairly look for some important contributions; but

the libraries of France and Belgium have hitherto proved singularly unproductive.

One curious oasis seems to exist in Germany. The Wolfenbüttel library contains the collection of Mathias Flacius Illyricus, well known in his day as one of the Magdeburg centuriators, and esteemed by lovers of medieval Latin verse as having first collected and printed a number of the poems that pass under the name of Walter Mapes. The manuscripts from which Flacius Illyricus drew these poems are now, as is not generally known, at Wolfenbüttel; and apparently the most important of them came from Scottish monasteries, notably St Andrew's. Here, then, is a library well worth the attention of the pursuer of British books. Where there are half a dozen identifiable in the printed catalogue, there will certainly be more that will yield up their secret upon examination.

Books came into libraries, it seems, if not in battalions, at least in squadrons. Any one who will analyse the catalogue of the Arundel manuscripts, or Laud's 'Codices Miscellanei,' or the old royal library, will repeatedly note the presence of large and small groups of books drafted in from some one place. In the case of the Arundel and Laudian collections, manuscripts from Germany-Würzburg, Eberbach, Mainz-are conspicuous. In the royal collection we find a whole series of strata. First come the books actually written for the sovereigns-chronicles. romances, and so forth; then the traces of the half-hearted attempt to found a library out of the spoils of the monasteries. To this, Rochester Priory contributed nearly a hundred volumes, while Leland seems to have brought in a contingent from St Augustine's, Canterbury, and elsewhere. The next great accretion is that of Lord Lumley's library, bought by Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I. Between three and four hundred choice manuscripts came with this; though some of the choicest that Lumley had passed into Cotton's possession, and a few, among which was the Bible of Gundulph of Rochester, went in quite other directions. A number of Lumley's books had been Cranmer's, and nearly all had passed through the hands of Arundel. The Theyer manuscripts— something over three hundred-were bought by Charles II; their collector, Theyer, lived near Gloucester, and acquired

a large proportion of his treasures in that neighbourhood. To these main groups a number of isolated acquisitions, of course, have to be added; and the result is that this library is full of surprises.

Cotton and Parker were collectors of a different type. They did not purchase whole libraries; they picked their books carefully with strict reference to their intrinsic interest. The result is that a coherent group of books from a single source is of rare occurrence in their libraries. Both of them, but especially Cotton, were in the habit of binding up a plurality of small tracts-gathered from the most diverse quarters-into a single volume; a proceeding which, intelligible and excusable as it is, does not tend to elucidate the history of the books thus treated. We should have been exceedingly grateful, for instance, if Cotton had let the Beowulf manuscript stand by itself. Yet let no considerations of the kind obscure for one moment our feelings of piety towards these two men, but for whose labours almost all that is of the greatest price in our ancient literature and art, to say nothing of history, must have perished.

We are sorely tempted to dwell longer on this topic of the analysis of collections of ancient books; yet, wishing as we do, to attract readers to the study and not to warn them off, we must desist. Let us end with one word to the intending researcher. Patience, sympathy, imagination, and a fair visual memory will be the best qualifications he can bring with him to the work. To the inquirer so equipped the books will tell their secrets; before the hasty and incurious, relying upon text-books, and prolific in conjecture, they will hold their peace.

Art. VII. THE ART OF LEGISLATION.

1. Studies in History and Jurisprudence. By the Right Hon. James Bryce, M.P., D.C.L. Two vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901. 2. Legislative Methods and Forms. By Sir Courtenay Ilbert, K.C.S.I., C.I.E. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901. 3. The Working Constitution of the United Kingdom and its Outgrowths. By Leonard Courtney. London: Dent, 1901.

EFFICIENCY is the political catchword of the day. Lord Rosebery has for some months made it the text of his discourses. It is the first word he wrote upon his clean slate. Instead of the old cry, Codlin's the friend, not Short,' it seems that at the next election voters will be invited to support Codlin and Efficiency,' while Short, if he be in a humble mood, will perhaps be content to advise them not to go further, lest they fare worse.' Lord Rosebery, whatever else may be thought about him, has admittedly a nice sense in saying what everybody thinks; and his present catchword responds to a real mood in the thought of the nation.

The South African war has dispelled many illusions and disclosed many weaknesses. It has impressed even on the least thoughtful minds the burdens of Empire, and revealed to the most indifferent the jealousies and hatreds which Empire inspires. In the pursuit of a Weltpolitik there are now many competitors. The United States has entered the lists as a world Power'; and the German Emperor has announced that the future of his people is to be on the water. In the economic sphere the 'invasion of America' has brought home to the most complacent the possibility of a struggle, keener than any that has yet been known, for the markets of the world. At all points, indeed, commercial as well as political, it is beginning to be recognised that this country has (in a phrase used by the present Viceroy of India) to maintain in an age of competition positions won in an age of monopoly. In these struggles success will be to the most efficient; and the standard of efficiency is constantly rising. A perception of these facts and factors has induced in the nation a mood of critical self-examination. Lord Rose

bery says on the platform what Mr Kipling sings in uncouth lines which befit, perhaps, the rudeness of 'The Lesson':

'For remember (this our children shall know: we are too near for the knowledge)

Not our mere astonied camps, but Council and Creed and College

All the obese, unchallenged old things that stifle and overlie us

Have felt the effect of the lesson we got an advantage no money could buy us.'

To Council and Creed and College we may add the Constitution itself. These are not days in which facile cheers are evoked by references either to the 'glorious British Constitution' or to the majestic example of the Mother of Parliaments.' The party which has gone to the Constitution for its distinguishing epithet is as much inclined as any other to question, to doubt, to reconsider. For some time past a feature of the Times' newspaper has been the appearance of large-print letters in which the partysystem is pronounced extinct, and the Constitution is figured as suffering from senile decay. The House of Commons is devoting much labour during the present session to the reform of its procedure. Nobody suggests that reform is not needed; the general criticism is rather in the direction of a doubt whether the actual proposals are radical enough to effect an adequate cure.

In this critical and introspective mood, special interest attaches to a group of books of which the titles are set forth at the head of this article, and which all deal, in whole or in part, with one aspect or another of the theory and practice of the Constitution. Each is by an author who is an expert in some branch of the subject. Mr Bryce was for twenty-three years Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. The comparative study of Constitutions is a subject which the author of 'The American Commonwealth' has made peculiarly his own. As a practical politician and an ex-Cabinet-Minister, he brings to his present volumes of 'Studies' a facility of apposite illustration which adds to their freshness and point. Sir Courtenay Ilbert for more than thirty years has had personal experience of Legislative Methods and Forms,'