F.

I have now traced the evolution of the bookcase from a clumsy contrivance
consisting of two boards set at an angle to each other, to the stately
pieces of furniture which, with but little alteration, are still in use;
and I hope that I have succeeded in shewing that the fifteenth century was
emphatically the library-era throughout Europe. Monasteries, cathedrals,
universities, and secular institutions in general vied with each other in
erecting libraries, in stocking them with books, and in framing liberal
regulations for making them useful to the public.

To this development of study in all directions the sixteenth century
offers a sad and startling contrast. In France the Huguenot movement took
the form of a bitter hostility to the clergy--which, after the fashion of
that day, exhibited itself in a very general destruction of churches,
monasteries, and their contents; while England witnessed the suppression
of the Monastic Orders, and the annihilation, so far as was practicable,
of all that belonged to them. I have shewn that monastic libraries were
the public libraries of the Middle Ages; more than this, the larger
houses were centres of culture and education, maintaining schools for
children, and sending older students to the Universities. In three years,
between 1536 and 1539. the whole system was swept away, as thoroughly as
though it had never existed. The buildings were pulled down, and the
materials sold; the plate was melted; and the books were either burnt, or
put to the vilest uses to which waste literature can be subjected. I will
state the case in another way which will bring out more clearly the result
of this catastrophe. Upwards of eight hundred monasteries were suppressed,
and, as a consequence, eight hundred libraries were done away with,
varying in size and importance from Christ Church, Canterbury, with its
2000 volumes, to small houses with little more than the necessary
service-books. By the year 1540 the only libraries left in England were
those at the two Universities, and in the Cathedrals of the old
foundation. Further, the royal commissioners made no attempt to save any
of the books with which the monasteries were filled. In France in 1789 the
revolutionary leaders sent the libraries of the convents they pillaged to
the nearest town: for instance, that of Citeaux to Dijon; of Clairvaux to
Troyes; of Corbie to Amiens. But in England at the suppression no such
precautions were taken; manu