putrefaction. Decay and damp had rendered a large quantity so fragile as hardly to admit of being touched; others, particularly those in the form of rolls, were so coagulated together that they could not be uncoiled. Six or seven perfect skeletons of rats (exhibited by the witness to the Committee) were found imbedded, and bones of these vermin. were generally distributed throughout the mass' (Report, p. 427). After so racy a description, our readers will be prepared to hear of the minor evils of dirt, soot, neglect, and disorder. 'Sackfuls of records' are described by one witness as tumbling on the floor, others literally covered with filth.' Another witness produces a mass of documents in a state of actual fusion.' The doors and cases were insecure, the depositories 'dirty as a chimney-sweeper's room.' Large quantities of parchments were purloined and sold to the glue manufacturers.'

Such were the results of a system when the public were jealously excluded from the use of the national records, and the custodians of them were answerable to no regulations except to those of their own devising. Nor were these isolated instances confined to the last generation. Century after century reveals the same story of dirt, waste, and destruction, of inefficient keepers, of careless and penurious governments, of spasmodic attempts at reform, followed by long intervals of inactivity and neglect. Complaints of the disorderly condition of the public records and the want of proper Calendars date as far back as the Chancellorship of Bishop Stapleton, in the reign of Edward II. In the days of Elizabeth numerous documents had disappeared for years, until they were accidentally discovered by Master Hobby searching for a place to put gunpowder in.' When Charles II., in a fit of politic good humour, appointed Prynne, whose ears had been cropped for the freedom of his satire in the days of Charles I., Keeper of his Majesty's Records in the

6

...

Tower, the following pungent account was rendered by the new Custodian to his royal benefactor: No sooner received I your royal patent for the custody of your ancient Records in your Tower of London . . . but I designed and endeavoured to rescue the greatest part of them from that desolation and corruption in which . . . they had for many years, for a large part, lain bound together in one confused chaos, under corroding putrefying cobwebs, dust and filth, in the darkest corner of Cæsar's Chapel in the White Tower, as mere useless relics not worthy to be calendared or brought down thence into the office amongst other Records of use. In order thereunto I employed many soldiers and women to remove and cleanse them from their filthiness, who, soon growing weary of this noisome work, left them almost as foul as they found them.' In raking up this dunghill,' continues Prynne, according to my expectation I found many rare, ancient, precious pearls and golden Records . . . with many original Bulls of Popes (some of them under seal), letters to and from Popes, Cardinals, and the Court of Rome, besides sundry rare antiquities, specially relating to the Parliaments of England.' Even as late as the reign of George III. large masses of public papers had so effectually disappeared that their very existence was forgotten. In 1763, Mr. Edwards tells us, an officer of the Board of Trade had occasion to refer to certain documents of the age of Charles I., and applied for that purpose to the Privy Council office. Nothing was known there of the papers or even of the office to which they belonged; but a venerable clerk had a dim recollection that he had heard, in his youth, of the existence of some old books in the room near the gateway of Whitehall, and suggested a search, which, after many adventures with decayed staircases, locksmiths, flocks of pigeons, and accumulations of filth, proved eventually to be successful.'

So much for the way in which our Governments had settled to their own satisfaction, until very recently, one question of paramount importance, the preservation of our national papers, or, to adopt the euphuistic phraseology of Mr. Charles Buller's Committee, had manifested their solicitude for the safety of the Public Records.'

6

But it is time to turn to another branch of our inquiry, and examine what attempts have been made by the Government of this country to render its imperial muniments more generally accessible. Towards this result a most important preliminary step has been taken within the last few years. Formerly dispersed in twenty or thirty different localities, all the public papers of the nation have now been happily concentrated in one spot. They are no longer exposed to the perils of decay or mildew; neither rats nor mice' find harbour now among royal letters or accounts of the wardrobe ; efficient precautions have been taken against theft, negligence, and disorder. Another reform not less important and beneficial to literary inquirers has been recently introduced. Under the old system, the public property of the nation, by some extraordinary delusion, had come to be regarded as the private property of its custodians, and as held by them for their exclusive emolument. Indexes and Calendars, made in official hours, were considered as the private and marketable property' of the clerks and keepers. It was their object, naturally enough, to sell their services at the highest possible rate; to exclude the public from consulting the Records except through the one accredited channel; to keep all information to themselves, or so overlay it with extraneous matter that their own emoluments might experience no diminution. The fees for searches,' says Mr. Edwards, 'ranged in amount from two guineas to ten. The Calendars were usually worded in an equivocal and misleading way,

↑ P. 299.

6

expressly to whet the searcher's appetite. Fresh searches brought new fees. If a paragraph of a few words only in the long-sought document would fully answer the patient searcher's purpose, he could not have it. To the essential line or two were united, with Mezentian rigour, hundreds or perhaps thousands of dreary lines, that brought no information to the searcher, but brought in some cases a hundred guineas or so to the officer. It is still remembered that on one such occasion, when, after payment of multitudinous fees, caused by the ingenious construction of the Calendars, and by other cognate circumstances, the precious paragraph was at length disinterred and the weary and well-nigh disheartened fee-payer asked, finally, how much a copy of that paragraph would cost, the obliging functionary turned over the membranes, made his mental calculation, and in a gravely official tone replied, "One hundred and forty-five pounds, Sir!""

These extortionate and vexatious regulations have now been swept away. Access to the State Papers and public muniments is as free and unfettered as to the manuscripts of the British Museum. Every inquirer may inspect whatever papers or parchments he pleases. He may take whatever copies he requires without restriction. On presenting his card to the Deputy Keeper, the treasures of the Record Office are thrown open to his use and inspection. In all these respects the liberal regulations at the new repository present a striking contrast to those of any other country. In France, the papers of the Foreign Office (Archives des Affaires Étrangères) cannot be approached, except through the medium of numerous rigid formalities. No copies are allowed, not even pencil memoranda, of any documents, however remote, or however disconnected with modern politics. The visitor might as well request permission to examine the sacred volumes of the Imperial correspondence, in its green

velvet and gold bindings, as extort permission from the rigid archivist to take an extract from the despatches of Marillac or Chatillon, whose ambassadorial functions date from the Reformation. At Brussels it is not much better. At Vienna, at least until a recent period, the correspondence relating to Wallenstein and the Thirty Years' War was jealously withheld. At Madrid the chance of pursuing historical inquiries is precarious and capricious. Nowhere is the privilege of reading or copying the national State Papers and correspondence so full and unreserved as in England. Nowhere is the reader more at his ease, less fettered by restrictions, or made less painfully sensible of the obligations conferred upon him. In all these respects Lord Romilly has left nothing to be desired.

Here, then, it must be admitted that a great advance has been made, with the sanction of the Government, in the direction pointed out by Mr. Buller's committee; far greater, perhaps, than the most sanguine member of that committee could ever have anticipated. For the preservation of the public records all has been done that was required. For making those records useful and accessible to the nation, we have something more than a beginning. And yet not more than a good beginning. For imagine a reader turned adrift without handbook, catalogue, or index of any kind, into a library of half a million of manuscripts of which he knows neither the titles nor the contents. By what intuition, by what prophetical insight, can he expect to discover what he wants? How is he to select from the vast and heterogeneous masses such papers as immediately bear upon his own researches? Without guide or index it is impossible for him to know whether further inquiry will be rewarded with success, or further examination will confirm or contradict his previous impressions. Catalogues are therefore indispensable, were it for no other reason than that of giving efficiency to the privilege of consulting these collections,