Don Ferdinand hoped that the library would be kept up by the family of Columbus. With that object he left it to his great-nephew Don Luis, with an annuity to provide for the expenses; if the legacy were refused, it was to pass to the Chapter of the Cathedral at Seville, with alternative provisions in favour of the Monastery of San Pablo. As events turned out, the succession was not taken up on behalf of his young kinsman, and after some litigation the Fernandina, or 'La Colombina' as it was afterwards called, was adjudged to the Chapter of Seville and placed in a room by the Moorish Aisle at the Giralda. Owing chiefly to the generosity of Queen Isabella and the Duc de Montpensier the library of 'La Colombina' has been restored to prosperity, although according to Mr. Ford it was long abandoned to 'the canons and book-worms.' It appears that in the middle of the last century three-quarters of the MSS. had been destroyed by rough usage or by the water dripping in from the gutters; the books were in charge of the men who swept the Church, and they allowed the school-children to play with the illustrated volumes and to tear out the miniatures and woodcuts. Mr. Harrisse has described with much detail the grandeur and the decline of this celebrated institution, and he gives reasons for supposing that it may have suffered even in recent years from the negligence of its guardians. It is satisfactory, however, to find that its most precious contents have passed safely through every period of danger; the library still contains some of the books of Christopher Columbus, and especially the _Imago Mundi_ with his marginal notes about the Portuguese discoveries, 'in all which things,' he writes 'I had my share.' [Illustration: J. A. DE THOU.] CHAPTER XIV. DE THOU--PINELLI--PEIRESC.