as if every monastery throughout Bavaria had emptied itself of its
book-treasures ... to be poured into this enormous reservoir.

But I will now begin my labours in good earnest. An oblong, narrow,
boudoir-sort of apartment, contains the more precious MSS., the block
books, and works printed upon vellum. This room is connected with another,
at right angles, (if I remember well) which receives the more valuable
works of the fifteenth century--the number of which latter, alone, are said
to amount to nearly _twenty thousand_. In such a farrago, there must
necessarily be an abundance of trash. These, however, are how under a
strict assortment, or classification; and I think that I saw not fewer than
half a dozen assistants, under the direction of M. Bernhard, hard at work
in the execution of this desirable task.

LATIN MS. OF THE GOSPELS; _in small folio_. I have no hesitation in
ascribing this MS. to the ninth century. It is replete with evidences of
this, or even of an earlier, period. It is executed in capital letters of
silver and gold, about a quarter of an inch in height, upon a purple
ground. Of course the MS. is upon vellum. The beginning of the text is
entirely obliterated; but on the recto of the XVth leaf we read "_Explt
Breuiarium_."

LATIN MS. of the GOSPELS; in _large folio_. This is a more superb, but more
recent, MS. than the preceding. Yet I suspect it to be not much later than
the very early part of the eleventh century. It is executed in a large,
lower-case, roman letter: somewhat bordering upon the Gothic. But the
binding, at the very outset, is too singular and too resplendent to be
overlooked. The first side of it has the crucifixion, in a sort of
parallelogram frame work--in the centre: surrounded by a double arabesque,
or Greek border, of a most beautiful form. The whole is in ivory, of a