It is difficult to get reliable information as to what is happening on Namoa Island. It seems generally agreed that the Chinese troops who were there have practically all silently stolen away, as they were in danger of being starved out. A large number of houses in the chief town have been burned, specially those of the better class people. A house to house search for weapons was made, and where any were found or alleged to have been found, the house was 'HE rooms which house the great library of the Society of Antiquaries, overlooking the courtyard of Burlington House, were recently renovated, during the painting and cleaning. The library was closed and its 100,000 volumes shrouded.. There rosy be more than 100,000 volumes and pamphlets. The number is an approximation.
At least there can be no doubt that, apart from the books at the British Museum—the invariable reservation -—this is the finest collection of archaeological works in the country and a possession, much prized by the venerable Society which owns it.
Mr. H, S. Kingsford, assistant secretary of the Society, told a representative of "The Observer" that although it seemed as if all the space available were filled, the library still continued to grow. Year by year, archaeological and antiquarian works, bound volumes of periodicals, pamphets, and hundreds of kindred publications added to the bulk of the catalogue and increased the pressure on the shelves.
The main room of the library is a dignified, galleried "hall. Smaller rooms, tributaries as it were of the main stream, also carry their freight of books, many of them extremely rare and valuable.
Printed in 1487
The Society possesses one of the few remaining copies of "The Boke of St. Albans," written by Juliana Berners and printed at St. Albans in 1487. This remarkable work consists of four treatises on Hawking, Hunting, and the Lynage of Coote Armiris and the Blasynge of Armis (which deal with heraldry).
There is, too, a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a history of the world printed at Nuremberg in 1493 and embellished, as the phrase goes, with 2,000 amusing wood-cuts, One of these, which has a certain topicality, is a view of the city of Prague—such a view as few Czechs would recognize today.
The library is rich in manuscripts. Here, for example, is the Winton Domesday, a survey of the city of Winchester, dated 1120, in the original stamped leather binding. Here is the Lindsey Psalter, written between 1220 and 1222 for Robert of Lindsey, Abbot of Peterborough. And here, 100, are some wardrobe accounts, or household expenses, of Edward the First and Edward ihe lection of broadsheets and proclamations from Henry VILL onwards. When one knows something of the Society's history the size of its library is easily understandable, This is one of the oldest of the learned*bodies. "A Society of Antiquaries" Mr. Kingsford said, "was founded in London by Archbishop Matthew Parker in 1572. The early meetings were held for some twenty years near Westminster Abbey, in the house of Sir Robert Cotton, founder of the Cottonian Library. Later they took place at Heralds' College, in the rooms of Sir William Dethick, Garter King of Arms.
Other eminent Fellows at this time were John Stow, the London historian; John Selden, the lawyer; Sir Henry Spelman, historian; and Sir John Dodderidge. During the reign of James the First the Society got into disgrace and was officially sup: pressed. Nevertheless, it continued to exist, and there is evidence that meetings were held down to the end of the Commonwealth. Then the Royal Society was founded, and the Society of Antiquaries remained silent until 1707 when it was revived on the old lines by Humphrey Wanley, librarian to Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.