forty shillings price: a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied in the stead of grey paper by the space of more than these ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come." All that bought them made not such an ill use of their purchase. God be thanked therefore! Thus a certain Dutchman, by trade a stationer, living in St. Mary's Parish, bought some, which, being handed down by him to his son, were in the end given to the Library when Sir Thomas Bodley did restore it. So much for the past, which I have here written down because I hold it to be not impossible that the like may be done again. For the present, indeed, this fate has been warded off, for when, as I shall hereafter relate, this City of Oxford was delivered up to the Parliament, the Lord-General did straightway set a guard to keep the Library from all harm; and this he did, being a lover of learning, and well knowing that there were in the army many persons who, having a zeal without knowledge, would have utterly destroyed it. And, indeed, I know, not whether these may not yet so prevail as to get the chief regimen of things into their own hand, for, as all history teaches us, the course of things in all such revolutions as this that hath lately overthrown the constitution of this country is this: first, the moderate and discreet have power; next, these either yield to the more violent and extreme or are themselves carried away by their own headway; and last, when the folly and wickedness of this excess has become altogether unendurable, the old order is again set up. Meanwhile, being desirous above all things to follow the truth, and to be just to all men, I must acknowledge that so far more damage was done to the Library by the King's friends while they held the city than has since been done by his enemies, many books having been embezzled, the chains by which the more precious are bound to their places being cut off, and other injuries done. But to come back to my subject. [Illustration: _The Bodleian Library, Oxford._ _HANHART LITH._]