The University Library, thanks to the kindness of an ex-librarian, I was able to explore from top to bottom. The library is a treasure-house of the first order for the historian and antiquarian; it has a better collection of manuscripts than any University library in the world except the Bodleian at Oxford. The most precious of its possessions is the renowned Fourth Century Gothic manuscript known as the "Codex Argenteus," written in gold and silver letters on 187 pages of crimson vellum. This document, the principal source of what modern scholars know of the ancient Gothic language, was brought from Prague in 1648 by Queen Christina's General Kénigs-marek; it was taken to Holland, in circumstances which will never be cleared up, by a Royal librarian, and was there bought by a Swede and returned to the library in 1669. The collection was enriched in the Seventeenth Century by the contents of various libraries in Germany and Poland, picked up by the Swedish armies in their brilliant campaigns. It is probable that in some cases these libraries were saved from a worse fate by being taken to Sweden as war booty. Not long ago a band of Polish scholars came over to study a number of documents taken from Cracow by King Charles X., "Gus-favus"; these contained matter of great historical value, and the Poles expressed their satisfaction thas sey: had thus been "saved. tereatiog documents is the cor-ong the very many other
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.