France, and was dead in Italy or elsewhere before his
crimes had been atoned for. A great mass of his accumulations was bought
from the Ashburnhams by the Italians and is now at Florence. Madame
Libri survived, like Madame Fosco, to defend his memory.

To return. In spite of the long history and great wealth of Bordeaux,
Marseilles, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, you will not trace many famous
books to those places. The city which, on the whole, has preserved its
early manuscripts best is Albi, but it was never a great centre of
learning, and its library, though extremely interesting, is not large.

However, we need not be surprised at the poverty of a region which has
had to undergo Albigensian crusades, English occupation, wars of
religion, and a revolution.

Some of the great early libraries of Germany were mentioned in our
historical survey. Fulda and Lorsch were as remarkable as any. At the
present day Fulda retains only the few Bonifacian MSS. which rank as
relics of the saint--the blood-stained volume of Ambrose which was on
Boniface when the pagans killed him, his pocket copy of the Gospels,
the MS. written for Victor of Capua. The bulk of its abbey library,
which remained together until the close of the sixteenth century, is
dispersed and gone, no one knows where. Some books are at Cassel in the
ducal library. Lorsch has nothing _in situ_, but a good deal in the
Vatican. Both houses were instrumental in preserving the classics; we
owe to them Suetonius, Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and part of Livy.

The Thirty Years' War was responsible for a good deal of dispersion.
Cargoes of books made their way to England, and Archbishop Laud bought
and gave to the Bodleian many from Wuerzburg and Erfuert; in the Arundel
collection at the British Museum the German contingent is large. Sweden
also profited at this time, and got its lovely _Codex Aureus_ (once at
Canterbury), its _Codex Argenteus_ (the Gothic Gospels at Upsala), and
its _Gigas_, or Devil's Bible, which came from Prague.

In the Revolutionary period there was extensive secularization of
abbeys, and whole libraries passed into central depots, as at Munich,
which has the MSS. of St. Emmeram of Ratisbon and of Tegernsee,
Benedictbeuern, Schaeftlarn, and many other houses. Those of the old and
rich foundation of Reichenau passed to Carlsruhe. Precious books, like
the gold-covered Gospels of Lindau, were exported. This particular gem
was bought by Lord Ashburnh