As I am now at the close of my account of ecclesiastical edifices—­and as this last church happens to be closely connected with a building of a different description—­namely, The PUBLIC LIBRARY—­you will allow me to colophonise my first Strasbourg epistle with some account of the contents of this library.

The amiable and excellent younger Schweighaeuser, who is head librarian, and one of the Professors in this Gymnase, was so obliging as to lend me the key of the library, to which I had access at all hours of the day.  The public hours are from two till four, Sundays excepted.  I own that this accommodation was extremely agreeable and convenient to me.  I was under no restraint, and thus left to my own conscience alone not to abuse the privilege conceded.  That conscience has never given me one “prick” since the conclusion of my researches.[215]

My researches were usually carried on above stairs, at the table where the visitors sat.  Of the MSS.  I did not deem it worth while to take any particular account; but there was one, so choice, so splendid, so curious, so interesting, and in such an extraordinary state of preservation, that you may as well know it is called the famous Hortus Deliciarum of Herarde, Abbess of Landsberg.  The subjects are miscellaneous; and most elaborately represented by illuminations.  Battles, sieges, men tumbling from ladders which reach to the sky—­conflagrations, agriculture—­devotion, penitence—­revenge, murder,—­in short, there is hardly a passion, animating the human breast, but what is represented here.  The figures in armour have nasals, and are in quilted mail:  and I think there can be little doubt but that both the text and the decorations are of the latter end of the twelfth century.  It is so perfect in all its parts, and so rich of its particular description, that it not only well merits the labour which has been bestowed upon it by its recent editor Mr. Engleheardt, but it may probably vie with any similar production in Europe.[216]

However, of other MSS. you will I am sure give me credit for having examined the celebrated Depositions in the law-suit between Fust and Gutemberg—­so intimately connected with the history of early printing, and so copiously treated upon by recent bibliographers.[217] I own that I inspected these depositions (in the German language) with no ordinary curiosity.  They are doubtless most precious; yet I cannot help suspecting that the character or letter is not of the time; namely of 1440.  It should rather seem to be of the sixteenth century.  Perhaps at the commencement of it.  These documents are written in a small folio volume, in one uniform hand—­a kind of law-gothic—­from beginning to end.  The volume has the following title on the exterior; “Dicta Testium magni consilij Anno dni m^o. cccc^o.  Tricesimo nono.  The paper is strong and thick, and has a pair of scales for the