ion of about
600 portraits, maps and views relating to Birmingham, Warwickshire and
the neighbourhood, including sixty portraits of Shakespeare. The
Manchester Town Council sent us from their Public Library about 300
volumes, among which may be named the edition of Barclay's Apology
printed by Baskerville (1765); a fine copy of the folio edition of Ben
Johnson (1640); the Duke of Newcastle's New Method to Dress Horses
(1667); several volumes of the Maitland Club books, the catalogue of the
Harleian MSS (1759); two tracts of Socinus (1618); the Foundations of
Manchester (4 vols.); Daulby's Rembrandt Catalogue; Weever's Funeral
Monuments (1631); Visconti's Egyptian Antiquities (1837); Heylyn's
History of St. George (1633), and Nicholl's History of English Poor Law.
There are also a considerable number of works of science and general
literature of a more modern date. The trustees of the British Museum
gave about 150 works, relating to Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, Phoenician,
and other antiquities, to various departments of natural science, and
other interesting matters, the whole constituting a valuable
contribution towards the restored library. The Science and Art
Department of South Kensington sent a selection of catalogues,
chromo-lithographs, books of etchings, photographs, &c. Dr. F.A. Leo, of
Berlin, sent a splendid copy of his valuable _fac-simile_ of "Four
Chapters of North's Plutarch," illustrating Shakespeare's Roman plays,
to replace his former gift-volume lost in the calamitous fire. The
volume is one of twenty-four copies, and the learned Professor added a
printed dedication as a record of the fire and the loss. Dr. Delius, of
Bonn, Herr Wilhelm Oechelhaueser, of Dessau, and other German Shakespeare
authors sent copies of their works. Mr. J. Payne Collier offered copies
of his rare quarto reprints of Elizabethan books, to replace those which
had been lost. Mr. Gerald Massey offered a copy of his rare volume on
Shakespeare's Sonnets, "because it is a Free Library." Mr. H. Reader
Lack offered a set of the Patent Office volumes from the limited number
at his disposal as Chief of the Patent Office. Dr. Kaines, of Trinder
Road, London, selected 100 volumes from his library for acceptance; Mrs.
and Miss L. Toulmin Smith sent all they could make up of the works of
Mr. J. Toulmin Smith, and of his father, Mr. W. Hawkes Smith, both
natives of our town; Messrs. Low, Son, and Co., gave 120 excellent
volumes; Messrs. W. and R.