ships arrived safely at Naples; but it appears that the new proprietors had little taste for literature. The whole remaining stock was found some years afterwards in a mouldy garret, packed in ninety bales; and it was purchased at last for 3000 crowns by Cardinal Frederic Borromeo, who used it as the basis for the Ambrosian Library which he was at that time establishing in Milan. Another library was afterwards founded at Venice by members of the Pinelli family engaged in the Levantine trade. On the death of its last possessor, Maffeo Pinelli, in 1787, the collection was sold to a firm of English booksellers. It seems by Dibdin's account to have been in a poor condition, though Dr. Harwood declared that, 'there being no dust in Venice,' it had reposed for some centuries in excellent preservation. This immense body of books was re-sold in London two years afterwards at prices which barely covered the expenses incurred, though a large amount was obtained for a copy of the Polyglott Bible of Ximenes in six folio volumes printed upon vellum. The praises of the great Pinelli were spread abroad by Scaliger, De Thou, and Casaubon; but his memory, perhaps, has been best preserved by the ardent friendship of Peiresc. He was visited at Padua by the young philosopher in whose mind he found a reflection of his own; and it was generally agreed that the lamp of learning had passed into safe hands when it was yielded by Pinelli to the student from Provence. Nicolas Fabry de Peiresc belonged to an ancient family established near Aix. His father had been selected by Louis XII. to share the education of the Princess Renee. A man of learning himself, he spared no expense in the boy's instruction, who became celebrated even in his childhood for the strength of his precocious intellect. The most eminent professors in Italy combined to exalt 'the ripe excellence of his unripe years'; and when Pinelli died it was said that Peiresc had taken the helm of knowledge and was guiding the ship as he pleased. He explored at leisure the riches of Florence and Rome, and afterwards watched the rise of the 'Ambrosiana' at Milan. A letter from Joseph Scaliger, who ruled literary Europe like a King, from his chair at Leyden, sent Peiresc off to Verona, where he hunted up evidence in support of the wild story that the Scaligers were the representatives of the Ducal line of La Scala.