Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/130

 1 1 8 The Library. worm-holes cleverly stopped, and the injured portions re-engraved with great care by an excellent wood cutter, C. T. Thompson. Though Sir Henry Cole took all this care, his edition was not complete, since it lacked the explanatory verses of the monk Chelidonius, while the order of the cuts was disturbed. Later editors, with the fear of the suscepti- bilities of that strange person, the "general reader " before their eyes, omitted several cuts altogether, so that this handsome reprint is the first issued in England which corresponds faithfully with the Nuremberg edition of 1 5 1 1. This is generally reckoned as the second, the honour of an editio princeps being assigned, not quite reasonably, to the set of impressions, without letterpress of any kind, struck off in 1509-10, which perhaps should be more fitly regarded as artist's proofs. To dilate on the excellence of Albert Diirer's cuts, after they have stood the test of nearly four centuries, would be absurd, and Mr. Austin Dobson's name is so genuine a guarantee of sterling work, that to praise his introduction is almost equally superfluous. All lovers of art and of book-illustration will be glad to possess this edition, in which the only defect which can possibly be found is that the paper on which it is printed is unnecessarily thick and heavy. Is it really a fact that the English public measures the value of a book by its weight or bulk, or is this only a bad tradition of English publishers, to be dispelled as soon as one of the race will have the hardihood to abstain from giving to a thin book a thickness not its own ? Una Visita ad alcune Bibliotheche della Svizzera, della Ger- mania e dell 'Austria, per Giulia Sacconi-Ricci, sottobibli- otecaria della Biblioteca Marucelliana di Firenze, Firenze G. Cavnesecchi e figli, 1893, 8vo., pp. 288. Signora Sacconi-Ricci may certainly claim to rank among the most enthusiastic of librarians. This interesting volume, bristling with facts and figures, is the result of a holiday trip, and that holiday trip a honey- moon ! No wonder the Signora everywhere met with a most cordial reception at the various libraries she visited, for such devotion to a very exacting profession is not met with every day and deserves to be met half-way. Some of the details of the histories of the different libraries are derived from the works of Petzholdt (Adressbuch der Bibliotheken, 1875), our own Edward Edwards Memoirs of Libraries, Dr. Dziatzko, and other trustworthy writers, but the Signora has supplemented these with information gained on the spot, so that her work is brought thor- oughly up to date, and must be ranked as the best authority on the libraries of which she treats. These are the Cantonal Libraries of Lucerne and Zurich, the town library of Zurich, the University and Royal Libraries of Munich (the ambiguous name of which, in Italian, Monaco, at first suggests very different associations), the Imperial and University Libraries at Vienna, and the libraries at Graz. Some of these institutions are not very interesting in themselves, but they present many interesting variations in their clienteles and organizations, and together give a valuable conspectus of library work on the continent, especially as regards the lending-out system to which we have no parallel in our older libraries in England, except at Cam- bridge. The Signora's work is crowded with information, and contains numerous plans and schedules showing the systems of cataloguing and the forms of requisitions for books used in the different institutions. Altogether it is an extraordinarily thorough piece of work to have been compiled in so short a time, and can hardly be praised too highly.