NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.
The last number of the Gentleman's Magazine contains a very important paper upon the limited accessibility of the State Paper Office to literary inquirers, and the consequent injury to historical literature. But not only is the present system illiberal; it seems that it has been determined by the Lords of the Treasury that the historical papers anterior to 1714 shall be transferred from the State Paper Office to the new Record Office, which is now rising rapidly on the Rolls Estate. Under present circumstances, this is a transfer from bad to worse. Our contemporary shows the absurdity and injustice to literature of such a determination in a very striking manner. We cannot follow him through his proofs, but are bound as the organ of literary men to direct attention to the subject. It is most important to every one who is interested—and who is not?—in the welfare of historical literature.
The Unpublished Manuscripts on Church Government by Archbishop Laud, stated to have been prepared for the education of Prince Henry, and subsequently presented to Charles I., which we mentioned in our sixty-ninth number, was sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, on the 24th ultimo, for Twenty Guineas. And here we may note that in the Collection of Autographs sold by the same auctioneers on Friday last, among other valuable articles was a Letter of Burke, dated 3rd Oct. 1793, from which we quote the following passage, which will be read with interest at the present time, and furnishes some information respecting Cardinal Erskine—the subject of a recent Query:—"I confess, I would, if the matter rested with me, enter into much more distinct and avowed political connections with the Court of Rome than hitherto we have held. If we decline them, the bigotry will be on our part and not on that of his Holiness. Some mischief has happened, and much good has, I am convinced, been prevented by our unnatural alienation.
... With regard to Monsignor Erskine, I am certain that all his designs are formed upon the most honourable and the most benevolent public principles." One of the most interesting lots at the sale was a proclamation of the "Old Pretender," dated Rome, 23 Dec. 1743, given "under our Sign Manual and Privy Seal," the seal having the inscription "Jacobus III. Rex," which fetched Eleven Pounds.
We believe there are few libraries in this country, however small, in which there is not to be found one shelf devoted to such pet books on Natural History as White's Selborne, the Journal of a Naturalist, and Waterton's Wanderings. The writings of Mr. Knox are obviously destined to take their place in the same honoured spot. Actuated with the same love of nature, and gifted with the same power of patient observation as White, he differs from him in the wider range over which he extends his observation, and in combining the ardour of the sportsman with the scientific spirit of inquiry which distinguishes the naturalist. In his Game Birds and Wild Fowl: their Friends and their Foes, which contains the result of his observations and experience, not only on the birds described in his title-page, but on certain other animals supposed, oftentimes most erroneously, to be injurious to their welfare and increase—we have a work which reflects the highest credit upon the writer, and can scarcely fail to accomplish the great end for which Mr Knox wrote it, that of "adding new votaries to a loving observation of nature."
Books Received.—Desdemona, the Magnifico's Child; the Fourth of Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Stories of The Girlhood of Shakspeare's Heroines, is devoted to the history of
"a maid
That paragons description and wild fame."
Gilbert's Popular Narrative of the Origin, History, Progress, and Prospects Of the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851, by Peter Berlyn,—a little volume apparently carefully compiled from authentic sources of information upon the several points set forth in its ample title-page.