The last number of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ contains a very important
paper upon the limited accessibility of the State Paper Office to literary
inquirers, and the consequent injury to historical literature. But not only
is the present system illiberal; it seems that it has been determined by
the Lords of the Treasury that the historical papers anterior to 1714 shall
be transferred from the State Paper Office to the new Record Office, which
is now rising rapidly on the Rolls Estate. Under present circumstances,
this is a transfer from bad to worse. Our contemporary shows the absurdity
and injustice to literature of such a determination in a very striking
manner. We cannot follow him through his proofs, but are bound as the organ
of literary men to direct attention to the subject. It is most important to
every one who is interested--and who is not?--in the welfare of historical
literature. {199}
The _Unpublished Manuscripts on Church Government_ by Archbishop Laud,
stated to have been prepared for the education of Prince Henry, and
subsequently presented to Charles I., which we mentioned in our sixty-ninth
number, was sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, on the 24th ultimo, for
Twenty Guineas. And here we may note that in the Collection of Autographs
sold by the same auctioneers on Friday last, among other valuable articles
was a Letter of Burke, dated 3rd Oct. 1793, from which we quote the
following passage, which will be read with interest at the present time,
and furnishes some information respecting Cardinal Erskine--the subject of
a recent Query:--"I confess, I would, if the matter rested with me, enter
into much more distinct and avowed political connections with the Court of
Rome than hitherto we have held. If we decline them, the bigotry will be on
our part and not on that of his Holiness. Some mischief has happened, and
much good has, I am convinced, been prevented by our unnatural alienation.
... With regard to Monsignor Erskine, I am certain that all his designs are
formed upon the most honourable and the most benevolent public principles."
One of the most interesting lots at the sale was a proclamation of the "Old
Pretender," dated Rome, 23 Dec. 1743, given "under our Sign Manual and
Privy Seal," the seal having the inscription "JACOBUS III. REX," which
fetched Eleven Pounds.
We believe there are few libraries in this country, however small, in which
there is not to be found one shelf devoted to such pet books on Natural
History as White's _Selborne_, the _Journal of a Naturalist_, and
Waterton's _Wanderings_. The writings of Mr. Knox are obviously destined to
take their place in the same honoured spot. Actuated with the same love of
nature, and gifted with the same power of patient observation as White, he
differs from him in the wider range over which he extends his observation,
and in combining the ardour of the sportsman with the scientific spirit of
inquiry which distinguishes the naturalist. In his _Game Birds and Wild
Fowl: their Friends and their Foes_, which contains the result of his
observations and experience, not only on the birds described in his
title-page, but on certain other animals supposed, oftentimes most
erroneously, to be injurious to their welfare and increase--we have a work
which reflects the highest credit upon the writer, and can scarcely fail to
accomplish the great end for which Mr Knox wrote it, that of "adding new
votaries to a loving observation of nature."
BOOKS RECEIVED.--_Desdemona, the Magnifico's Child_; the Fourth of Mrs.
Cowden Clarke's Stories of _The Girlhood of Shakspeare's Heroines_, is
devoted to the history of
"a maid
That paragons description and wild fame."
_Gilbert's Popular Narrative of the Origin, History, Progress, and
Prospects Of the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851, by Peter Berlyn_,--a
little volume apparently carefully compiled from authentic sources of
information upon the several points set forth in its ample title-page.
* * * * *