rary, once filled
with rare and costly works, which taught of the wonderful structure of
plants, from the hyssop on the wall to the cedar of Lebanon. Gone now
are these volumes, and vanished, too, is their collector, whose wide and
generous culture was veiled by the curtain of modesty and quietness. His
collections he bestowed upon a public institution, where the wonders of
God's universe will be a subject of study for all coming time. These he
gave, and then went peacefully away from our sight to learn yet wider
and grander lessons at the feet of that Teacher who, when he was on
earth, bade his followers "consider the lilies of the field." Is not
that library as real to us as when the books filled its shelves, and we
were welcomed by the gentle voice of its master?

The crowds which form the living stream that surges through Washington
Street and eddies around the Old South Church seldom, perhaps, pause to
think of that edifice as one of the links uniting the memorable past of
our country's history with the momentous present. Still less do they who
raise their eyes to the tower to learn the hour of the day imagine that
there is an invisible library connected with the familiar form of the
belfry. Yet a romance of literary and historic interest encircles it. At
the time of the Revolution, Dr. Prince was pastor of the Old South
Church, and in the tower he kept his historical treasures along with the
New England Library. Among these volumes were Governor Bradford's
letter-book and the manuscript of his "History of the Plantation of
Plymouth." During the siege of Boston, the British turned the Old South
into a riding-school, and the troopers had free scope to do what
mischief they pleased. After the evacuation of the town the library was
found in a disordered condition, and the valued manuscripts of Bradford
were missing. Some time after, a person observed that the article he had
bought from a grocer in Halifax was wrapped in paper written over in a
peculiar hand. He deciphered enough to make him earnest to obtain what
remained of the manuscript in the grocer's possession. It proved to be
fragments of the missing letter-book of Governor Bradford. Years passed
on until 1856, when the attention of an historical writer was attracted
by a quotation, in a note to an English work, from "a manuscript history
of the Plantation of Plymouth, in the Fulham Library." As the extract
contained passages not found in any part of that histor