DEPARTMENT OF FEINTED BOOKS. 25 



tares relating to General Boulanger. A highly interesting 

 collection of tracts on Napoleon L, chiefly about 1814 and 

 1815, has been purchased ; as also 21 volumes of miscellaneous 

 excerpts by Henry Southgate, compiler of " Many Thoughts 

 upon Many Things." Among curiosities, the first place is 

 due to some very remarkable acquisitions connected with 

 Charles I., one being a copy of the secret instructions to the 

 commissioners appointed for raising a forced loan in 1626. 

 No other printed copy is at present known to exist ; and 

 Mr. Gardiner, while writing his history of the time, was 

 obliged to refer to a manuscript in the State Paper Office. 

 The interest of this copy is much enhanced by its being- 

 addressed to the county of Nottingham, where Charles was 

 destined to commence the civil war 16 years afterwards, and by 

 its bearing his signature on the first page of the text. With 

 this is to be mentioned a copy of the 1633 edition of Sternhold 

 and Hopkins' Psalter, bound in silk richly embroidered with 

 silver, with portraits of Charles and Henrietta Maria worked 

 on the covers, and a bookmark with the motto, " Your 

 captive King from prison bring " ; it is enclosed in an 

 embroidered silk sachet, and accompanied by a pair of richly 

 worked kid gloves. The freshness of the objects, which are 

 said to have belonged to Mrs. Osborn, one of Queen 

 Henrietta's ladies in waiting, is surprising. Another acqui- 

 sition connected in some measure with Charles I., is one 

 of the seven extant Scriptural Harmonies, prepared by the 

 Community of Little Gidding, another of which, executed for 

 the King at his own request, was already in the Museum. 

 This is also a Harmony of the Gospels, and is that described 

 by Captain Acland-Troyte in the Transactions of the Society 

 of Antiquaries, for December, 1888. It is of special interest 

 from having been prepared and bound by Mary Collet herself, 

 and from the peculiarity of the binding. 



Among books enriched with manuscript notes the most 

 remarkable are the copy of Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," given 

 by him to his friend M. Severy, of Lausanne, with several 

 highly interesting notes in Gibbon's handwriting near the 

 beginning ; the copy of Southey's " History of Brazil," given 

 by him to Coleridge, with the autographs of both, and 

 marginal notes by Coleridge in the first volume ; the American 

 edition of Tennyson's " Maud," 185-5, with the last stanza of the 

 poem as now printed, which did not exist in the earlier editions, 

 in the poet's handwriting, and preceded by the commence- 

 ments of two cancelled versions, proving that it was there 

 written down for the first time ; Pignatelli, " Quanto piu 

 alletti la bellezza dell' anima," etc., Rome, 1680, the copy of 

 Queen Christina of Sweden, to whom it was dedicated, with 

 copious and highly characteristic notes in her handwriting ; 

 Bishop Squire's Inquiry into the foundation of the English 

 Constitution, with copious manuscript additions for a second 



0.97. edition. 



