they were enabled
therefore to send to Bollandus, by sea, a second consignment of three
chests of manuscripts, in addition to a large store which they carried
home themselves.

On their return journey they visited Florence and Milan, spending more
than half a year in these libraries, and then proceeded through France
to Paris, where they met scholars like Du Cange, Combefis, and Labbe.
They finally arrived at home December 21, 1661, to find Bollandus in a
very precarious state of health, which terminated in his death in 1665.
The life of Bolland is a type of the lives led by all his disciples and
successors. Devout, retired, studious, they gave themselves up,
generation after generation, to their appointed task, the elders
continually assuming to themselves one or two younger assistants, so as
to preserve their traditions unimpaired. And what a work was theirs! How
it dwarfed all modern publications! Bollandus worked at eight of those
folios, Henschenius at twenty-four, Papebrock at nineteen, Janningus his
successor at thirteen; and so the work went on, aided by a subsidy from
the Imperial House of Austria, till the suppression of the Jesuits,
which was followed soon after by the dissolution of the Bollandists in
1788. Their library became then an object of desire to many foreigners,
who would undoubtedly have purchased it, had it not been for the
opposition of the local government, and of several Belgian abbeys. It
was finally bought by Godfrey Hermans, a Praemonstratensian abbat, under
whose auspices the publication of the work continued for seven years
longer, till, on the outburst of the wars of the French Revolution, the
library was dispersed, part burnt, part hidden, part hurried into
Westphalia. At length, after various chances, a great part of the
manuscripts was obtained for the ancient library of the House of
Burgundy, now forming part of the Royal Library at Brussels, while
others of them were reclaimed for the library of the New Bollandists at
Louvain, where the work is now carried on. After the dissolution of the
old Company, two attempts at least, one in 1801 and the other in
1810--this last under the all-powerful patronage of Napoleon--were made,
though without success, to revive the work. Better fortune attended a
proposal made in 1838 by four members of the Jesuit Society--viz., J. B.
Boone, J. Vandermocre, P. Coppens, and J. van Hecke. Since that time the
publication of the volumes has steadily procee