nd
underground, having been forgotten; what escaped the flames were
obliterated by the damp: such is the deplorable fate of books during a
persecution!

The puritans burned everything they found which bore the vestige of
popish origin. We have on record many curious accounts of their pious
depredations, of their maiming images and erasing pictures. The heroic
expeditions of one Dowsing are journalised by himself: a fanatical
Quixote, to whose intrepid arm many of our noseless saints, sculptured
on our Cathedrals, owe their misfortunes.

The following are some details from the diary of this redoubtable Goth,
during his rage for reformation. His entries are expressed with a
laconic conciseness, and it would seem with a little dry humour. "At
_Sunbury_, we brake down ten mighty great angels in glass. At _Barham_,
brake down the twelve apostles in the chancel, and six superstitious
pictures more there; and eight in the church, one a lamb with a cross
(+) on the back; and digged down the steps and took up four
superstitious inscriptions in brass," &c. "_Lady Bruce's house_, the
chapel, a picture of God the Father, of the Trinity, of Christ, the Holy
Ghost, and the cloven tongues, which we gave orders to take down, and
the lady promised to do it." At another place they "brake six hundred
superstitious pictures, eight Holy Ghosts, and three of the Son." And in
this manner he and his deputies scoured one hundred and fifty parishes!
It has been humorously conjectured, that from this ruthless devastator
originated the phrase to _give a Dowsing_. Bishop Hall saved the windows
of his chapel at Norwich from destruction, by taking out the heads of
the figures; and this accounts for the many faces in church windows
which we see supplied by white glass.

In the various civil wars in our country, numerous libraries have
suffered both in MSS. and printed books. "I dare maintain," says Fuller,
"that the wars betwixt York and Lancaster, which lasted sixty years,
were not so destructive as our modern wars in six years." He alludes to
the parliamentary feuds in the reign of Charles I. "For during the
former their differences agreed in the _same religion_, impressing them
with reverence to all allowed muniments! whilst our _civil wars_,
founded in _faction_ and _variety_ of pretended _religions_, exposed all
naked church records a prey to armed violence; a sad vacuum, which will
be sensible in our _English historie_."

When it was propos