documents.

The preservation of books, framed as they are of materials so
destructible, through a period of twelve, or even fifteen hundred years,
is a fact which might seem almost incredible; especially as the decay of
apparently more durable substances within a much shorter period, is
continually presented to our notice. The massive walls of the
monasteries of the middle ages are often seen prostrate, and fast
mingling with the soil; while manuscripts penned within them, or perhaps
when their stones were yet in the quarry, are still fair and perfect,
glittering with their gold and silver, their cerulean and cinnabar.

But the materials of books, though destructible, are so far from being
in themselves perishable that, while defended from positive injuries,
they appear to suffer scarcely at all from any intrinsic principle of
decay, or to be liable to any perceptible process of decomposition. "No
one," says Father Mabillon,[5] "unless totally unacquainted with what
relates to antiquity, can call in question the great durability of
parchments; since there are extant innumerable books, written on that
material, in the seventh and sixth centuries; and some of a still more
remote antiquity, by which all doubt on that subject might be removed.
It may suffice here to mention the Virgil of the Vatican Library, which
appears to be of more ancient date than the fourth century; and another
in the King's Library little less ancient; also the Prudentius, in the
same library, of equal age; to which you may add several, already
mentioned, as the Psalter of S. Germanus, the book of the councils, and
others, which are all of parchment. Many other instances I might name if
it were proper to dwell upon a matter so well known to every one who is
acquainted with antiquity.