Parliament. In the mean time, This following is humbly offer'd to Consideration.

V. That, as soon as the present Tax of 40 per cent. upon Foreign Paper, and 20 per cent. upon English, shall either expire or be taken off; there be laid a very small Tax of. per cent. (as it shall be judged sufficient for the uses of such a Library) upon Imported Paper only, leaving our own Manufacture free. Which Tax may be collected by His Majesty's Officers of the Customs, and paid to such Person or Persons, as shall be appointed by the Curators.

VI. This being so easie a Tax, and a Burthen scarce to be felt, can create no Damp upon the Stationer's Trade. And whatsoever shall be paid by them upon this foot, being to be laid out in the purchase of books, will return among them again. So that 'tis but giving with one hand, what they will receive with the other.

VII. And whereas our Own White-Paper Manufacture, that was growing up so hopefully, and deserves the greatest Encouragement, being all clear gains to the Kingdom, is now almost quite sunk under the weight of the present Tax; this new one upon Imported Paper, with an Exemption of our Own, will set ours upon the higher Ground, and give it a new Life. For whatsoever is taken from the one, is as good as given to the other. So that even without regard to this design of a Library, the Tax will be a Publick Benefit.

VIII. A Library erected upon this certain and perpetual Fund, may be so contriv'd for Capaciousness and Convenience, that every one that comes there, may have 200,000 volumes, ready for his use and service. And Societies may be formed, that shall meet, and have Conferences there about matters of Learning. The Royal Society is a noble Instance in one Branch of Knowledge; what Advantage and Glory may accrue to the Nation, by such Assemblies not confined to one Subject, but free to all parts of good Learning.

IX. The Wall that shall encompass the Library, may be cased on the inside with Marbles of ancient Inscriptions, Bassò Relievo's, &c., either found in our own Kingdom, or easily and cheaply to be had from the African Coast, and Greece, and Asia the Less. Those few Antiquities procured from the Greek Islands by the Lord Arundel, and since. published both at home and abroad, are an evidence what great advancement of Learning, and honour to the Nation may be acquired by this means.

X. Upon this Parliamentary Fund, the Curators, if occasion be, may take up Money at Interest, so as to lay out two or three years Revenues to buy whole Libraries at once; As at this very time, the incomparable Collections of Thuanus in France, and Marquardus Gardius in Germany, might be purchas'd at a very low value.

XI. And since the Writings of the English Nation have at present that great Reputation abroad that many Persons of all Countries learn our Language, and several travel hither for the advantage of Conversation: 'Tis easie to foresee, how much this Glory will be advanced, by erecting a free Library of all sorts of Books, where every Foreigner will have such convenience of studying.

XII. 'Tis our Publick Interest and Profit, to have the Gentry of Foreign Nations acquainted with England, and have part of their Education here. And more Money will be annually imported and spent here by such Students from abroad, than the whole Charge and Revenue of this Library will amount to.

JOHN MACFARLANE.

45

DISCOVERY OF THE LONG-MISSING PICTURES STOLEN FROM AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT IN THE LIBRARY OF MÂCON.

AST year M. Louis Thuasne called the attention of the readers of the "Revue des Bibliothèques" to a letter of Robert Gaguin, in which that humanist gives an account of the completion of a copy of the "Cité de Dieu" of St. Augustine, translated into French by Raoul de Prêles, a task which had been intrusted to him by Charles de Gaucourt, a wealthy book-lover. It appears from this letter that the subjects of the illuminations had been arranged by Robert Gaguin, and that the artist to whom the work was intrusted was named François: he was, as Gaguin said, a painter of great genius, who would bear comparison with Apelles. The actual words of the letter deserve to be quoted here: "Liniamenta picturarum et imaginum rationes quas libris de Civitate Dei prepingendas jussisti, a nobis accepit egregius pictor Franciscus, easque, ut ceperat, perpolitissime absolvit. Is enim est pingendi tam consumatus artifex ut illi jure cesserit Apelles."

M. Thuasne has demonstrated with great ingenuity that the "Cité de Dieu" of which Robert Gaguin speaks is an enormous and magnificent copy of this work, divided into two volumes, which are preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The arms of Gaucourt can still be distinguished on many of the leaves, in spite of the trouble which was taken at the end of the fifteenth century to cover them with the arms of Admiral Malet de Graville, a book-lover who is better known than Charles de Gaucourt.

In addition, M. Thuasne has put forth a conjecture which

is not lacking in probability. He asked himself whether this great painter, François by name, might not have been François Foucquet, who is mentioned by a jurisconsult of the sixteenth century, Jean Bresche, as an excellent painter, the son of Jean Foucquet, who was immortalized by the miniatures of Josephus of the Bibliothèque Nationale, and by those of Etienne Chevalier of the Condé Museum at Chantilly: "Inter pictores Joannes Foucquettus, atque ejusdem filii Ludovicus et Franciscus."

M. Thuasne did not confine himself to the copy of the "Cité de Dieu" in the Bibliothèque Nationale. He discovered that the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève possessed another copy of the same work, less gorgeously ornamented, but nevertheless very remarkable, the illuminations in which are copies of those executed for Charles de Gaucourt.

As for myself, I demonstrated, in the "Journal des Savants" (1898) that a third copy of the "Cité de Dieu," which belonged to the historian Philippe de Comines, had undoubtedly issued from the same studio as the copies in the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève. Of the two volumes of which it is composed, and which have long been separated, the first is in the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum of the Hague, the second in the municipal library of Nantes. To these three splendid copies of the "Cité de Dieu" we must to-day add a fourth, the history of which is strange enough to be worth relating.

In 1835 the town of Mâcon acquired for its library a sumptuous copy of the "Cité de Dieu," in French, dating from the second half of the fifteenth century. It is composed of two large volumes, in which each of the books of the work is preceded by a large and beautiful illumination. From the shortest comparison of these illuminations and those of the manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, and the one divided between the Meermanno-Westreenianum Museum and the town of Nantes, it is impossible not to recognize that the illumina

tions in the four manuscripts were executed in the same studio and by the same artists, that is, by François (Foucquet?) and by his pupils. Unfortunately nine of the pictures in the Mâcon manuscript have been removed, under circumstances which have not yet been certainly determined, but the majority of the leaves cut out have been recovered. Three of these illuminations had been acquired by the Museum of Lyon; they were restored to the town of Mâcon in virtue of a decree of the Court of Lyon, which decided that leaves cut out of a manuscript belonging to a public library could not have been legally bought and sold.

Two more of these pictures were in the cabinet of an amateur, M. de Quirielle, who hastened to restore them to the town of Mâcon as soon as he learned their origin: he did not consider it honest to keep leaves fraudulently extracted from a manuscript in a public library. After this double restitution there remained to be discovered four leaves of this fine manuscript of the "Cité de Dieu." I recognized three of them while reading the following passage in a catalogue of books sold in London, from the 3rd to the 8th of July last, by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge.

1219. De civitate Dei of St. Augustine, translated into French by Raoul de Presles, three pages on vellum from the above, with illuminations by an artist of the school of François Foucquet, French XVth century; size of each page, 173 in. by 124 in. Page A is divided into three compartments: the upper section represents Alexander on horseback, and before him the semi-nude figures of the Genosophyxes, below Alexander on horseback, and in front of him, Didymus of Alexandria, accompanied by the Brahmanes, wearing costumes of sheepskin; the second compartment represents a feast of the Rechabites; below this, figures of Judith, Romulus,' etc.-B. In the upper

'In place of Judith and of Romulus it should read “Justice” and "Cyrus."