The Baron commenced the work of incantation by informing me that he was once in possession of the journal, or day-book, of Albert Durer:—­written in the German language—­and replete with the most curious information respecting the manner of his own operations, and of those of his workmen.  From this journal, it appeared that Albert Durer was in the habit of drawing upon the blocks, and that his men performed the remaining operation of cutting away the wood.  I frankly confessed that I had long suspected this:  and still suspect the same process to have been used in regard to the wood cuts supposed to have been executed by Hans Holbein.  On my eagerly enquiring what had become of this precious journal, the Baron replied with a sigh—­which seemed to come from the very bottom of his heart—­that “it had perished in the flames of a house, in the neighbourhood of one of the battles fought between Bonaparte and the Prussians!!” The Baron is both a man of veracity and virtu.  In confirmation of the latter, he gave all his very extraordinary collection of original blocks of wood, containing specimens of art of the most remote period of wood engraving, to the Royal University at Berlin—­from which collection has been regularly published, those livraisons, of an atlas form, which contain impressions of the old blocks in question.[173] It is hardly possible for a graphic antiquary to possess a more completely characteristic and beguiling publication than this.

On expressing a desire to purchase any little curiosity or antiquity, in the shape of book or print, for which the Baron had no immediate use, I was shewn several rarities of this kind; which I did not scruple to request might be laid aside for me—­for the purpose of purchasing.  Of these, in the book way, the principal were a Compendium Morale:  a Latin folio, PRINTED UPON VELLUM, without date or name of printer—­and so completely unknown to bibliographers, that Panzer, who had frequently had this very volume in his hands, was meditating the writing of a little treatise on it; and was interrupted only by death from carrying his design into execution.  It is in the most perfect state of preservation.  A volume of Hours, and a Breviary of Cracow, for the winter part, PRINTED UPON VELLUM—­in the German language, exceedingly fair and beautiful.  A TERENCE of 1496 (for 9 florins), and the first edition of Erasmus’s Greek Testament, 1516, for 18 florins.  The “Compendium" was charged by the Baron at about 5_l_. sterling.  These, with the Austrian historians, Pez, Schard, and Nidanus, formed a tolerably fair acquisition.[174] In the print way, I was fortunate in purchasing a singularly ancient wood-cut of St. Catherine, in the peculiarly dotted manner of the fifteenth century.  This wood-cut was said to be UNIQUE.  At any rate it is very curious and rare; and on my return to England, M. Du Chesne, who is the active director in the department