belong only the Emperor, the imperial family, and a numerous train of officials, who all have the privilege of borrowing the books from the library: private learned men are not admitted into this class. It is rather disagreeable, in one's own inquiries at the King's or Georgian library at the British Museum, to find that, after all, not every individual book that is inserted in the catalogue has yet been transferred from the shelves of Buckingham House to those of Great Russell Street; but what are these slight checks to those which a student at Vienna must inevitably encounter, every now and then, by finding that the volume he wishes to peruse is actually in the hands of Majesty or of Metternich? "To the second class," say the regulations, " belong all the studious, whether native or foreign, to whom the use of the Court Library is permitted, but only on the premises of the same and with observance of the laws of censorship." The third class consists of non-resident learned men, who are at liberty to address queries to the librarians, request them to make extracts from books, &c. ; it is not stated whether under an obligation to return the compliment with an honorarium or not. It will thus be seen that the second class, which makes use of the reading-room and has not the privilege of taking books out of it, exactly answers to our readers of the British Museum, with but two differences, both in favour of the London student; that here we are under no subjection to the laws of censorship, and that there is no "first class" to annoy us with superior and vexatious privileges. Let us now then endeavour to ascertain to which of the "reading rooms" the superiority of accommodation belongs.

A description of that at Vienna was laid before English readers fourteen years ago by Dr. T. F. Dibdin, in his "Bibliographical Tour through France and Germany," a work which, with all its defects, (and their name is legion) will yet be found to furnish a fuller account of the public libraries the author visited abroad, than the reader will easily obtain from any other source. "Almost the first room which you enter," says Dr. Dibdin, " is the Reading room. This may hold about thirty students comfortably, but I think I saw more than forty on my first entrance, of whom several, with the invincible phlegm of their country, were content to stand leaning against the wall, with their books in their hands. The room is doubtless too small for the object to which it is applied, and, as it is the fashion in this part of the world seldom or never to open the windows, the effect of such an atmosphere of hydrogen is most revolting to sensitive nerves." Steps it appears have since been taken to remedy these inconveniences. The reader who is impressed with an idea of the liberal management of German libraries will not perhaps conjecture a method "identically the same" with that which was actually adopted in the year 1826.

"The reading room of the Court Library," Mr. von Mosel, its head Custos, acknowledges," is neither large enough for its numerous visiters, nor light enough for its purpose. It is an oblong square, which at the two small ends has on one side two windows, on the other only one. In the middle is a long table furnished with writing materials, at which about forty persons find room. Partly in the recesses of the windows, partly against the walls around, are the desks for two librarians (custoden) and four clerks (scriptoren), who, often

disturbed by the readers, must pursue their literary labours. The throng of the reading public was so great, that the seats at the table were no longer sufficient, and many persons were compelled to read standing against the walls or before the desks of the officers; while, owing to this overcrowding, the heat in the room was often insupportable, and it became uncommonly difficult to keep the readers under proper survey. To remedy this unpleasant state of things, the prefect, (the head officer of the library,) had a notice put up at the foot of the staircase, that only so many persons would be admitted as could find room at the table. In addition to this, opportunities were taken to refer the students to the University Library, and to get rid of readers for amusement, while the prefect afforded to distinguished men of learning, either native or foreign, a place in his office, though exceedingly cramped for room. Thus at last the number of visiters was brought into a better proportion to the space at disposal, which must however still be acknowledged very insufficient, when it is considered that many learned men, in the course of their inquiries, have need of several works at once for comparison, that sometimes maps and folios are required for study, and that it is here even that amateurs and artists must inspect the copper-plate engravings, which are generally contained in volumes or portfolios of the largest folio size, all which, from the close neighbourhood of the readers to one another, is hardly possible, and often downright impossible."

This reducing the number of visiters to a proportion with the space at disposal seems to us but a very sorry method of making both ends meet. At the British Museum, although accommodation is there provided for one hundred and twenty readers, the same complaint of want of room is beginning to be made, and is about to be remedied, not by depriving those desirous of knowledge of the means of acquiring it, not by decreasing the numbers, but, simple expedient, by increasing the room! As to the second inconvenience complained of by Mr. von Mosel, the difficulty of keeping under survey some forty students whose elbows touched, we cannot but regard his mention of it as a very left-handed compliment to the learned of Vienna. In such close. contact, they might, one would think, survey one another; and, unless a large proportion of them consisted of downright abandoned characters, there would be very little danger of theft. As Mr. von Mosel speaks of learned men in their inquiries often having need of several works at once, we were rather surprised to find, in the regulations, that to each reader only one work can be allowed at a time, with merely such auxiliary books as may be necessary. At the British Museum the number of works that may be had at a time is altogether unlimited.

We have no doubt that our readers have now come to the same conclusion to which this work has led ourselves, that admission to the reading room in Great Russell Street is much more desirable than to that at the Imperial Palace of Vienna. We are obliged to add, that in other points the comparison is not so much in our favour;-the Imperial Library, which contains about 300,000 volumes, acknowledges but three equals in Europe, that of the Vatican at Rome, and the Royal Libraries at Paris and Munich. Our own great national collection is not only inferior to that of the capital of Bavaria, but to that of the University of Göttingen; and ranks but eighth or ninth among

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Von Mosel's History of the Court Library at Vienna.

the distinguished libraries of this quarter of the world. The number of books contained in it, even with the addition of the late king's munificent present, does not amount to more than about two hundred and twenty thousand, or little more than half that of the great depositary of knowledge at Munich.

We hope that one result of the labours of the recently appointed Committee will be to direct a vigorous augmentation of the stores of foreign literature at the Museum, so as to place our national library a little more on a level with our national pretensions. Several of the most distinguished works which have issued from the press on the continent have not yet found their way to it, but we suspect that, after all, foreign public libraries may even be as censurable on this score. It appears, by the work under notice, that Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens did not make its appearance at the Imperial Library till 1814, some twenty years at least after it ought. Be that as it may, we cannot help regarding it as a national disgrace, that the richest and most populous capital in Europe should not boast one library at least of the very first rank; and we are encouraged to hope by the signs of the times that many years will not pass before it does so. Within the last few years, much has indeed been done towards this desirable object. The splendid library-hall at the Museum has been added to the too scanty catalogue of the "Lions of London." Mr. von Mosel speaks of that at Vienna as declared by all the learned men of Germany, England, France, and Italy, as without its equal in Europe. It is true that Dr. Dibdin spoke of it in 1821 as beyond comparison, but we suspect that in our own it has since found its rival. Dr. William Horn, who recently published an account of his travels in Germany and England, speaks of the library at the Museum as the most splendid building of the kind he ever saw, though he had been at Vienna not many months previously.

We have hardly left ourselves room to add that Mr. von Mosel's work is less of a description, and more of a history, than we could have wished it, a fuller account of the works contained in the library might perhaps have usefully occupied the place of rather uninteresting biographical accounts of its various librarians, many of whom did nothing worthy of especial notice. A view and a plan of the library are given, which we should not have mentioned, as thinking the reader would take it for granted, had they not been unaccountably omitted in Wilken's otherwise commendable history of the library of Berlin.

ART. XIII.-Des Meisters Godefrit Hagen, der Zeit Stadtschreibers, Reimchronik der Stadt Cöln aus dem dreizehnten Jahrhundert. Mit Anmerkungen und Wörterbuch; nach der einzigen alten Handschrift zum erstenmale vollständig herausgegeben von E. von Groote, Stadtrath, (The Rhyming Chronicle of the City of Cologne, during the thirteenth century, by Master Godefrit Hagen, Town Clerk at the time. Now first published, with Notes and Glossary, &c., by E. von Groote.) Cöln am Rhein. 1834. 8vo.

THERE is no class of books to which we are disposed to extend a more ready welcome than those productions of the days that are past, whether they consist of the chronicles of the historian, or of the fables of the poet, in which are shadowed forth, as in a mirror, the spirit and tendency of the age in which they were composed. They are the only trustworthy authorities to whom we can apply, when we would learn the animus which influenced the doughty actors of those stirring times. In the imaginative details of the minstrel, and in the quaint records of the annalist, the charms of their narrations are heightened by casual and accessory touches, unwittingly copied by the writers from the busy scenes acting before them, which serve to give an increased interest to their pages, and make those pages faithful pictures of the era in which they were composed, by exhibiting of the very age and body of that time. its form and pressure.

This Rhyming Chronicle, from the pen of the worthy Town Clerk of Cologne, Master Godefrit Hagen, who perhaps wrote himself Master from his connection as master-singer with one of the good old guilds of poetry, is one which will justify to the fullest the remarks which we have just made, and to all who admit their justice the publication of this volume cannot but be highly acceptable. Those readers, on the other hand, who would estimate it only in proportion to the amount of exact historical information which may be found in it, must also be under obligations to its editor for bringing before the public an account written by an eyewitness, and one, too, who was enabled by his public situation of Syndicus to collect information from every source, on some of the most important events in the history of Cologne. This chronicle, the value of which is sufficiently proved by the fact that the editors of the "Monumenta Germania Historica" purpose including it in that Collection, contains nearly 7000 lines, and is, with the exception of about 700 lines at the commencement, in which the writer, in accordance with the fashion of his times, narrates the introduction of Christianity into Cologne, and sundry wonderful circumstances which attended and followed that event, devoted to a history of the affairs of that short but eventful period in the history of the city, which intervened between the years 1250 and 1270.

"One of the most important periods in the history of Cologne," says the editor," is indisputably that during which the writer of this rhyming chronicle flourished, and the events of which he describes, for the most part, as an eyewitness. It is the time in which the city, contending against the reVOL. XVII. No. XXXIII.

Q

peated assaults of the archbishop and nobles of the archbishopric of Cologne, not only gained its freedom, but fortunately maintained and established it, while many of the neighbouring German cities failed in similar attempts; in which, moreover, the class of artizans and tradesmen endeavoured by increasing industry and wealth to diminish the ancient, for the most part benevolent, but also oftentimes misused, authority of the aristocratic party; and in which, although not until after many fruitless contests and bloody discomfitures, they still by degrees accomplished their object. Already, in preceding times, had the archbishops frequently endeavoured to bring this rich, and, from its extensive population, powerful, city under their dominion; but even the vigorous Anno failed in this, partly for that the doughty burghers knew how to protect themselves, partly for that the jealousy of the neighbouring princes, and even of the emperor himself, would not allow them to look on indifferently, and suffer the power of the archbishop to receive such an important accession of strength."-Preface, p. 1.

This is the language of the editor with regard to the state of parties when the dissensions here described broke out between the archbishop and the city on the right of coinage. At a time when the quantity of currency in circulation was but small, but an active commerce introduced coins of most various degrees of value, there arose in the city of Cologne an officially constituted guild under the name of Husgenossen, whose duty it was not only to superintend the coinage of the city, but to ascertain the relative value which all foreign money introduced into it bore to the standard of Cologne, and to make the same known. And, for the more ready discovery of fraud or error, the money of Cologne was always impressed with the same stamp, and a pattern piece was deposited in the sacrarium of the cathedral, with which the coin in circulation might at all times be compared. The archbishop had, on the other hand, mints at several places, but the city authorities refused to receive money of his coinage, if it differed in stamp and standard from their own. By an arrangement entered into by Cardinal Hugo and Albertus Magnus, in April, 1252, on the occasion of a dispute between the archbishop and the city, it was agreed that the archbishop should be allowed to coin money of different impress and value, upon three occasions only, namely, when a new archbishop was elected and confirmed; secondly, when he followed the host of the emperor beyond the Alps (against the infidels); and lastly, which is, however, not to be found in the document referred to, although expressly mentioned by the chronicler

"Dar na als hie zo Rome komet in die stat

Umb syn pallium ind brengit dat,

Dan so maich hie die ander muntze maichen"-v. 714, &c.

when the archbishop should go to Rome to bear his pall there. The archbishop, who had frequently attempted to alter the impress of his coinage and impair its standard, could not forgive the city for the perseverance with which they maintained their ancient rights and privileges; and hence arose those feuds between them and him, which led to his removal from Cologne, and thereby to a long series of disputes and hostile measures.

It is not our intention to analyse the progress of the dissensions here