its twin sister, so closely do the mosaics follow the
compositions in the MS.

In somewhat similar fashion, by gift from the reformer Theodore de Beze,
the University of Cambridge acquired its greatest Greek treasure, the
Codex Bezae (D) of the Gospels and Acts in Elizabeth's reign. The riddles
which its text presents have exercised many brains, and I do not know
who would allow that they are finally solved. Another famous MS., the
unique Lexicon of Photius, was acquired by Thomas Gale, Dean of York,
early in the eighteenth century--one would like to know where. To my eye
it bears signs of having been long in Western Europe, if not in England.
Roger Gale gave it, with his own and his father's other MSS., to Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1738. On the whole, however, Cambridge has not
been nearly so fortunate as Oxford in accumulating Greek books. Oxford
had a magnificent present in 1629 from its Chancellor, the Earl of
Pembroke, of 240 MSS. purchased in block from the Venetian Barocci, and
in 1817 made a great and wise purchase of 128 more, contained in the
collection of another Venetian, the Abate Canonici. In the interval such
diverse benefactors as Laud and Cromwell had enriched it with some very
notable gifts. The pedigree of one of Laud's MSS. may be familiar, but
is too illuminating to be omitted. It is a seventh-century copy of the
Acts of the Apostles in Greek and Latin. The earliest home to which we
can trace it is Sardinia; a document connected with that island is
written on a fly-leaf. Then we find indisputable evidence that Bede,
writing early in the eighth century, had access to it; he quotes in his
_Retractations_ on the Acts readings which are characteristic of it; and
as he never left his monastery in the North, we may be sure that the
book was at Jarrow or Wearmouth in his time. After that it disappears
until Laud buys it. Like many of his books, it came to him from Germany,
a spoil of the Thirty Years' War. These various _data_ are best linked
up if we suppose (1) that the MS. was brought from Italy to England by
Theodore of Tarsus or his companion Abbot Hadrian in 668; (2) that it
was taken from England to Germany after Bede's death by one of the
companions of St. Boniface, the apostle of that country, and remained
there, in or near Fulda, perhaps, until the convulsion which threw it
back upon our shores.

Take another illustration. When John Leland, in Henry VIII.'s reign,
visited the library of Ca