d sixty-four ample
portfolios laid the foundations, and the very catalogues of his
collections, printed by Marolles himself, are rare and high-priced. Our
own national print gallery is growing from its infant establishment.

Mr. Hallam has observed, that in 1440, England had made comparatively
but little progress in learning--and Germany was probably still less
advanced. However, in Germany, Trithemius, the celebrated abbot of
Spanheim, who died in 1516, had amassed about two thousand manuscripts;
a literary treasure which excited such general attention, that princes
and eminent men travelled to visit Trithemius and his library. About
this time, six or eight hundred volumes formed a royal collection, and
their cost could only be furnished by a prince. This was indeed a great
advancement in libraries, for at the beginning of the fourteenth century
the library of Louis IX. contained only four classical authors; and that
of Oxford, in 1300, consisted of "a few tracts kept in chests."

The pleasures of study are classed by Burton among those exercises or
recreations of the mind which pass _within doors_. Looking about this
"world of books," he exclaims, "I could even live and die with such
meditations, and take more delight and true content of mind in them than
in all thy wealth and sport! There is a sweetness, which, as Circe's
cup, bewitcheth a student: he cannot leave off, as well may witness
those many laborious hours, days, and nights, spent in their voluminous
treatises. So sweet is the delight of study. The last day is _prioris
discipulus_. Heinsius was mewed up in the library of Leyden all the year
long, and that which, to my thinking, should have bred a loathing,
caused in him a greater liking. 'I no sooner,' saith he, 'come into the
library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding Lust, Ambition, Avarice,
and all such vices, whose nurse is Idleness, the mother of Ignorance and
Melancholy. In the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I
take my seat with so lofty a spirit, and sweet content, that I pity all
our great ones and rich men, that know not this happiness.'" Such is the
incense of a votary who scatters it on the altar less for the ceremony
than from the devotion.[9]

There is, however, an intemperance in study, incompatible often with our
social or more active duties. The illustrious Grotius exposed himself to
the reproaches of some of his contemporaries for having too warmly
pursued his studie