sly from the curiosity of scholars; these treasures have since
been divided among four different national institutions. The same
phenomenon has been more recently observed, on a smaller scale, in
Germany, Spain, and Italy.

The confiscations of the revolutionary period, as well as the
collections of the period which preceded it, have both been productive
of serious damage. The collector is, or rather often was, a barbarian
who did not hesitate, when he saw a chance of adding to his collection
of specimens and rare remains, to mutilate monuments, to dissect
manuscripts, to break up whole archives, in order to possess himself of
the fragments. On this score many acts of vandalism were perpetrated
before the Revolution. Naturally, the revolutionary procedure of
confiscation and transference was also productive of lamentable
consequences; besides the destruction which was the result of negligence
and that which was due to the mere pleasure of destroying, the
unfortunate idea arose that collections might be systematically
_weeded_, those documents only to be preserved which were "interesting"
or "useful," the rest to be got rid of. The task of weeding was
entrusted to well-meaning but incompetent and overworked men, who were
thus led to commit irreparable havoc in our ancient archives. At the
present day there are workers engaged in the task, one requiring an
extraordinary amount of time, patience, and care, of restoring the
dismembered collections, and replacing the fragments which were then
isolated in so brutal a manner by these zealous but unreflecting
manipulators of historical documents. It must be recognised, moreover,
that the mutilations due to revolutionary activity and the
pre-revolutionary collectors are insignificant in comparison with those
which are the result of accident and the destructive work of time. But
had they been ten times as serious, they would have been amply
compensated by two advantages of the first importance, on which we
cannot lay too much stress: (1) the concentration, in a relatively small
number of depositories, of documents which were formerly scattered, and,
as it were, lost, in a hundred different places; (2) the opening of
these depositories to the public. The remnant of historical documents
which has survived the destructive effects of accident and vandalism is
now at last safely housed, classified, made accessible, and treated as
public property.

Ancient historical documents are no