Volterra in 1472, and for which the Jews in Venice offered its weight in gold; a sketch of the first three cantos of the Gerusalemme Liberata in the handwriting of Tasso; a copy of Dante in the handwriting of Boccaccio; and several of Petrarch’s autograph sonnets.  In the other cabinet is the great gem and glory of the Library—­the Codex Vaticanus, in strange association with a number of the love-letters of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, in French and English.  This curious correspondence—­which, after all that subsequently happened between the English monarch and the Papal Court, we are very much surprised to see in such a place—­is in wonderful preservation.  But though perfectly legible, the archaic form of the characters and the numerous abbreviations make it extremely difficult to decipher them.  The tragic ending of this most inauspicious love-making invests with a deep pathos these faded yellow records of it that seem like the cold, gray ashes of a once glowing fire.  In the same cabinet is seen another and altogether different production of this royal author—­namely, the dedication copy of the “Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martinum Luther,” written in Latin by Henry VIII. in defence of the seven Roman Catholic Sacraments against Luther, and sent to Leo X., with the original presentation address and royal autograph.  The book is a good thick octavo volume, printed in London, in clear type, on vellum, with a broad margin.  Only two copies are in existence, one in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the other in the Vatican.  For this theological dissertation Henry VIII. received from the Pope the title of “Defender of the Faith,” which has descended to the Protestant monarchs of England ever since, and is now inscribed on our coinage.  Luther, several of whose manuscripts are in the Library, published a vigorous reply, in which he treated his royal opponent with scant ceremony.  The author himself had no scruple in setting it aside when his personal passions were aroused.  And Rome has put this inconsistent book beside the letters to Anne Boleyn, as it were in the pillory here for the condemnation of the world.

But deeply interesting as were these literary curiosities, I soon turned from them and became engrossed with the priceless manuscript of the Greek Scriptures.  I had very little time to inspect it, for I was afraid to exhaust the patience of the librarian.  In appearance the manuscript is a quarto volume bound in red morocco; each of the pages being about eleven inches long, and the same in breadth.  This is the usual size of the greater number of ancient manuscripts, very few being in folio or octavo, and in this particular resembling printed books.  Each page has three columns, containing seventeen or eighteen letters in a line.  It is supposed that this arrangement of the writing was borrowed directly from the most primitive scrolls, whose leaves were joined together lengthwise, so that their contents always appeared in parallel columns, as we see in the papyrus rolls that have recently been discovered.  This peculiarity in the two or three manuscripts which possess it, is regarded as a proof of their very high antiquity.  The writing on almost every page is so clear and distinct that it can be read with the greatest ease.