orkshire. He was born on the 20th
of August 1771, and in his seventeenth year was sent to Brasenose
College, Oxford. In 1795 he served the office of High Sheriff of
Yorkshire, and on the death of his father in 1801 he succeeded to the
title and estates. He was elected Member of Parliament for the city of
York in 1807; was again returned in 1812 and 1813, and retired on
account of ill health in 1820. Sir M. Masterman Sykes was twice married.
His first wife was Henrietta, daughter and heiress of Henry Masterman of
Settrington, Yorkshire, and on his union with her in 1795 he assumed the
additional name of Masterman. She died in 1813, and in the following
year he married Mary Elizabeth, daughter of William Tatton Egerton, and
sister of Wilbraham Tatton Egerton, of Tatton Park, who survived him.
Sir Mark died at Weymouth, on his way to London, on the 16th of February
1823. He had no children, and was succeeded by his brother, Sir Tatton
Sykes.

Sir M. Masterman Sykes early developed a love for books, and the
magnificent library which he formed, one of the finest private
collections in England, was the result of upwards of thirty years'
unremitting and careful work. Some of the rare volumes it contained, we
are informed in the preface to the sale catalogue of his library written
by the Rev. H.J. Todd, 'were procured during the collector's travels
abroad, but many of them were acquired at the dispersion of the
libraries of Major Pearson, Dr. Farmer, Steevens, Reed, the Rev. Mr.
Brand, the Duke of Roxburghe and others, but especially of that of the
late Mr. Edwards, from whom the celebrated Livy of 1469 was
obtained--the only known copy of the first edition of Livy on vellum.'

Among the principal treasures of the collection were the Gutenberg
Bible; the Psalter of 1459, on vellum; the _Rationale Divinorum
Officiorum_ of Durandus, on vellum, 1459; the _Catholicon_ of Joannes
Balbus de Janua, 1460; the Latin Bible of 1462, on vellum; and the
Epistles of St. Jerome, on vellum, 1470: all printed at Mentz.

The library was especially rich in early editions of the Greek and Latin
Classics, and on its shelves were to be found the only copy known to
exist on vellum of the first edition of Livy, printed at Rome by
Sweynheym and Pannartz about 1469, to which we have already referred;
the first edition of Pliny, printed by Joannes de Spira at Venice in
1469; that printed at Rome by Sweynheym and Pannartz in 1470; a copy on
vellum of t