Ancient Libraries.

past . We begin to see that we have taken too much for granted , that we have listened often far too credulously to the unverified assertions of unreliahle chroniclers , or that twisted evidence which party spirit or religious antagonism have offered to us abundantly and dogmatically in lieu of historical accuracy and evidential truth . Like the sleeper awakened , we rub our eyes , we scratch our heads , and we wake up from a pleasant if deceptive dream . In nothing is this statement so true as regards the libraries

of ancient times . We have a general hazy tradition on the subject , but we know nothing distinctly , and accept nothing certainly . We fix upon certain epochs , so to say , of national , of cosmopolitan life , and we decline to travel beyond their " record , " to move out of the " groove " which prejudice , or custom , or perversity of individualism have made us accept as the one true path ; and thus it comes to pass that even in 1878 in many things we have to go hack to first principles , to lay down carefully-attested facts , if we wish to find truth instead of error , honesty instead of prejudice , reality instead of moonshine .

We quite agree with the able reviewer in the Times , when he uses the words which follow : " The brunt of the question is contained in the title M . Cahier gives to the essay with which he opens the subject of Libraries— ' Le Christianisme a t-il nui au developpement des connaissances humains , ou du moins it certaines Sciences V We may he excused from following our very erudite author into his discussion of a polemic , so long passed away , upon such matters as the speculations of the Fathers of the Church ,

and other ecclesiastical writers after them , as to the form of the heavens and the number of them , whether the earth is an illimitable plain , a disc , or a sphere , and what was meant hy the " waters under the earth . " Curious as are these gropings of the dark ages in regions which science has long made clear to us , and involving necessarily a vast expenditure of learned research , it is not to them that we look for the merits of the Middle Ages , but rather to the fostering of art , poetry , and literature , which was so largely clue to the Church and to those schools which grew up around the cathedrals and convents . It would be ignoble in those who have since come to differ in matters

of faith and conviction from " the Fathers ' ' and their successors , to repudiate the debt or withhold the fullest esteem for the care and love of books which led them to collect and preserve the classics both of Pagan and ecclesiastical literature . It is true that Pagan civilisation did furnish such examples , among others , as the famous Ptolemaic library of Alexandria , with its 700 , 000 manuscri pts , the plan of arrangement for which is said to have been given to one of the Ptolemies by Aristotle himself ; but M . Cahier claims with justice that it was not the State but the Christian Church which first made

the library a centre of instruction and education . In heathen days there were no schools connected with the public libraries , and the use of the library was not in the education of the people , but for the reference of eminent scholars . Of course , the word " schola " does not always mean a place where teaching is carried on ; thus , the "English school " at Rome —founded by the Saxon king Ina , and which Alfred endowed or destroyed by

fire in 816—was simply a college or hospital for the resort of English pilgrims . Still , M . Cahier points to the fact that such was the system of instruction in England , as far as it went , carried on by the monasteries , that the Norman conquerors took advantage of it to teach the French language to the people . The vast amount of copying that went on in these places under the clergy was very different from that of the ancient Roman scribes—it was not mechanical , but to a great extent required the knowledge of languages in translating and collating . Thus it was constantl y followed by tho

greatest scholars as a labour of love , and by such eminent churchmen as St . Jerome and St . Dunstan , and especially by those remarkable men of the Ancient Christian Church in Ireland to whom we owe some of the most precious and beautiful works of pakeographic art—St . Columba , St . Gall , founder of the monastery of the name , St . Kilian , the apostle of Franconia , and many others . M . Cahier calls ancient Erin the depositary of Druidical science , and whatever that may have been , there is no doubt as to the great antiquity and originality of the Celtic style of ornamented writings , and it 3 distinction from anything in the early Italian manuscripts ; while the MSS . of two centuries later , at least , sent by Gregory through St . Augustine—one in the Bodleian , the