My first walk was to the Ratcliffe Library; a round and modern building,—erected, that is, in the last century, at Dr. Ratcliffe’s cost,—nearly in the centre of the town. The interior is simply a rotunda in three stages or stories, with a cupola and two open galleries, whence side-rooms radiate from the inner, to the outer circles. Below are casts of the best antiques. A small winding staircase leads to a side tower, from the roof of which you have a splendid view of the Gothic palaces pointing to heaven with their hundred spires. The surrounding country is cheerful, fertile, and well wooded. There are four-and-twenty colleges (a sort of cloister for education,) and thirteen churches in this small town, containing only sixteen thousand inhabitants.
From hence we proceeded to Henry the Eighth’s Library, preserved, externally and internally, in nearly its original state, and containing not less than three hundred thousand volumes. The ‘locale’ is like no other of the kind, and transports one completely into past ages. The cruciform room; the strange shelves; the iron gratings, half blue, half gilded, and of a form no longer seen; the enormous windows, as broad as three church windows together and ornamented with beautiful coloured glass; the gay gilded ceiling, with numberless panels, each containing the picture of an open Bible with four crowns; even the Doctors sitting at the tables in the dress of Luther, which they still wear,—how strangely is the fancy excited by such a scene! A gallery runs round midway of the high shelves, for the purpose of reaching the books above. On the railing of this gallery are hung the portraits of the various librarians, from the first to the last; some, unhappily, in modern dresses, who look like apes among their venerable predecessors. In the middle of the room the shelves are so arranged on either side, that they form a long alley of enclosed closets, in which every man who wishes to use the library can work completely undisturbed,—an old and most exemplary arrangement. There are also books in the rooms which occupy the whole ground-floor of this quadrangular edifice. Here are some very curious manuscripts and specimens of early printing. I saw with sorrow how large a tribute the poverty of Germany has been compelled to pay to the wealth of England; among other things, a magnificent copy of Faust’s first Bible, of the year 1440, which I think belonged to our Doctor Barth, and is inscribed with a number of notes in his handwriting. I was delighted to find a manuscript so exactly like a volume of Froissart in our library, (that with the miniatures in every leaf,) embellished with the same arabesques of fruit and flowers on a gold ground, the style and colouring of the figures so precisely the same, that it is scarcely to be doubted they are by the same painter. Unfortunately there is neither name nor date. The text is Quintus Curtius,—all the figures exactly in the costume of the time of the illuminator: Alexander, cased in iron from head to foot, breaks a lance with Darius, and throws him from his saddle, just in the style of the French and English Knights in Froissart.
A very curious French manuscript, the subject of which is an heroic poem, contains the name of the writer with the date 1340, (an extremely rare occurrence,) and under it the name of the painter with the date 1346; this gives reason to conclude that the latter had spent six years in the illuminating, which is almost all executed on a very unusual design, in gold, blue and red in squares, like a carpet. This manuscript is peculiarly interesting from the circumstance that the painter, instead of enclosing the text within a border or arabesque, has surrounded it with a representation of the trades, sports, and pastimes of his time. A cursory glance showed me, together with many games and occupations which we have lost, so many which are still so precisely the same, that I was really surprised. For instance, a masked-ball; Kammerchen vermiethen;[39] the Handespiel, or ‘gioco di villano;’ the same with the feet, which we boys often used to play in winter to warm ourselves; throwing at cocks, and cockfighting; rope-dancers and conjurors; horse-riders and trained horses, whose feats are more wonderful than ours; rifle-shooting at a man who (‘mille pardons’) turns himself in unseemly wise to the company, like one still existing on a gate at Lausitz; a smithy, where a horse is shoeing; a wagon, with three large cart-horses harnessed out at length, with harness, &c. all in the present form, even the driver’s costume,—a blue slop—the very same; and many other things which I have not time to notice,—showed that though many things change, yet an infinite deal remains unaltered, and perhaps, ‘à tout prendre,’ human life is more the same in different ages than we generally imagine.
A Boccacio, with exquisitely beautiful miniatures, is one of the show-pieces of the library. A copy of the Acts of the Apostles, of the seventh century, in Greek and Latin, is shown as a great curiosity: each line contains only one word in each language. Considering its great antiquity, it is in very good preservation.
In the beautiful court of All Souls College—which moreover is carpeted with the finest turf—there is a spot whence you have a most magnificent view of spires, towers, and façades of ancient buildings, rising in unbroken series, one behind another, without the least mixture of modern houses. Here is another noble library. In the middle is an orrery, which illustrates our solar system very clearly, and keeps equal course with the sun and planets through the year.
Christ’s College is a beautiful building of modern times; a part of it only is very old. The church is of Saxon architecture; round and pointed arches intermingle, but do not at all offend the eye. Here is the famous shrine of St. Frisdewilde, a most magnificent and tasteful Gothic monument of the beginning of the eighth century, and still in good preservation. It was enriched with silver Apostles and other ornaments, which were plundered in Cromwell’s time. That unhappy religious war did irreparable damage to the antiquities of England; till then, all these sacred relics were in perfect preservation.
Attached to this college is that most charming walk I described to you above. It leads us to Magdalen College, which has been in part newly restored. The restoration is perfectly in the ancient style, and renders this part of the building secure for five hundred years to come; it has already cost forty thousand pounds, though but a small part is completed:—it may be imagined what enormous sums the execution of such works from the foundation would cost. Nothing great in art can be executed now, for the money it would cost is absolutely unattainable. The sum which formerly purchased a god-like work of Raphael’s, would now (even allowing for the difference in the value of money) scarcely buy a moderate portrait by Lawrence. The Botanic Garden, which closed our walk, contains nothing worth describing. I therefore release you for the present, my dear Julia; ‘mais c’est á y revenir demain.’
Buckingham, Jan. 10th.
It is a sin how long my private journal has been neglected. The more my letters to you swell, the more does my unhappy journal shrink. If you were to burn these letters, I should have no trace of what had become of me all this time. Imagine how unpleasant to vanish from one’s own memory!
My imagination is so ‘montée’ by the many vestiges and echoes of past times, that I dream of a distant future, in which even ruins will be no more,—in which we shall lose not only these shadows of humanity, but human nature itself, and begin a new life in new spheres. For in remembrance, say what you will, we entirely lose that which we actually were;—even here, the old man nearly loses himself as a child. We may indeed find ourselves again, my best friend, and then will the tie that binds us necessarily re-unite. Let this satisfy us.