when first penned. The operatic section is represented by most of the great names connected with the musical drama, and comprises works by Arne, Auber, Beethoven, Bellini, Benedict, Bishop, Boieldieu, Boyce, Campra, Cherubini, Cimarosa, Donizetti, Gluck, Gounod, Grétry, Handel, Hérold, Isouard, Lampe, Linley, Lully, Macfarren, Marschner, Mercadante, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Nicolai, Pacini, Paër, Purcell, Rossini, Rousseau, Shield, Spohr, Spontini, Storace, Verdi, Wallace, Weber, Winter, etc. The absence of Wagner, Balfe, Barnett, and a few others is a surprising circumstance, when the catholicity of Mr. Euing's taste is taken into account. The collection of glees and catches is almost complete, and contains nearly every composer of importance from the middle of last century. Most of those are present in the original editions, which adds greatly to the value of the whole. Among more modern collections of songs are an "American Musical Miscellany" of date

1798.

Berggreen's Danish Anthology, 1869, is a valuable national collection. Bickham's "Musical Entertainer" is a handsomely engraved work by a once celebrated writing-master. The Scottish songs are represented in the collections of Bremner, Butler, Campbell, Dale, Dun and Thomson, Elouis, Graham, Hamilton, Johnson, Maver, Oswald, Parry, Ritson, Smith, George Thomson, W. Thomson, Turnbull, and others; while the national collections of Germany, France, England, Wales, Ireland, Spain, and Switzerland, are well represented in various valuable compilations.

It now remains before concluding this chapter to notice two other divisions, namely, Instrumental Music and Miscellaneous, which form the two last in the classification fixed on a former page. The instrumental division is not marked by any special wealth one way or another, and contains few examples of the more modern composers. Music for the organ and pianoforte, including some very valuable works of

Frescobaldi, bulks largely, but the number of full scores is not great. Beethoven is represented by a collection of full scores of his symphonies, and by his pianoforte works. Corelli's concertos for two violins, viola, and violoncello, with obligato, are present in seven quarto volumes, as edited by Geminiani, with several of his other works. Couperin, that rarest of harpsichord composers, is inadequately represented in a work of no great value. There are arrangements of the orchestral works of various masters for pianoforte, including Handel, Haydn, Vanhall, and the Earl of Westmoreland, but the collection is on the whole much inferior to what might have been expected. The string quartets of Mozart, Haydn, and Mendelssohn are present entire, but the works in the same class by Boccherini and succeeding masters are not in the library at all. The whole of the instrumental division bears evidence of Mr. Euing's want of sympathy with this form of music, and its presence seems more due to accident than design. The Miscellaneous contents of the library include sets of valuable musical journals, a set of the Musical Antiquarian Society publications, and a number of manuscript works, including autographs of great musicians, etc. In this section must also be included a large number of works on musical aesthetics and collections of musical anecdotes and gossip, not properly coming under any of the headings we have used.

Taken as a whole, the library is of surpassing interest and value to the musician, and should its treasures ever be made accessible to the public, it will no doubt prove of much influence, both in an educational and artistic sense, in the future musical history of Glasgow. The shortcomings which must necessarily be apparent in this paper are in part due to the limited opportunities given the writer of making personal examination of the books, and the catalogue proved but a poor substitute. What has been attempted will perhaps

serve to give interested persons a notion of the great value of a library which is virtually decaying in their midst; while liberal-minded persons, whether musical or not, will perhaps be brought to think that an effort should be made to recover for the public benefit a treasury of musical lore at present withheld on not over-reasonable grounds.

CHAPTER XIII.

LIBRARY OF JOHN FERGUSON, ESQ., M.A., PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.

Character and growth of the Collection Volumes from great Libraries, by famous Printers and Binders, and with the Autographs of Great MenFifteenth Century Books-Volume from the Press of Machlinia Vincent de Beauvais' Speculum, the largest Book printed in the Fifteenth Century --English Literature-Foreign Literature-Gipsy Books--Scotland-Darien Tracts-Scottish Topography-Scottish Prose Writers—Works from the Press of Raban, Aberdeen's first Printer-Scottish Poets-Copy of the first Work printed in GlasgowWorks of Glasgow Men-Boyd's "Last Battell of the Soule in Death"-Early Scottish Scientific Writers -Fine Art-Chemistry, Manuscripts, Histories and Bibliographies-Alchemy and Early Chemistry— Works on Phosphorus, Assaying and Analysis, Distillation, Minerals and Metals-Demonology, Witchcraft, Magic, Mysticism-Bibliography-ClassicsConclusion.

THIS is in many respects a remarkable library, and while it stands undoubtedly by itself among the libraries of

Glasgow, there are probably few exactly similar to it among the private libraries of the country, if not of even a wider area. This is due no doubt, in the first place, to the unusual nature of the chief collection, but also in a marked degree to the accurate knowledge of what to look for, and the unwearied watchfulness of the owner. So rare are some of the works it contains that they hardly occur for sale twice in a lifetime. Especially is this so in regard to many of the early works on alchemy, in English and other languages.

Professor Ferguson's professional studies led him in the first place to form an extensive chemical library, embracing not merely the modern text-books which were in a way necessities, but the older works, now by the rapid advance of the science abandoned by all but the student of what may be called the archæology of chemistry. To a thorough worker the speculations of the forerunners of the modern chemist are always of very great interest. Hence the collection of old chemical books, then of works on the occult sciences as illustrating these, and, as a sort of corollary, books on witchcraft. Like all libraries formed in the true booklover's fashion-carefully tasting every purchase-not buying so rapidly as to lose the pleasure distinct and by itself of each new acquisition-the alchemical and the general collections have grown silently with the years, until their dimensions when ascertained astonish even their owner.

But the library is rich in several respects besides alchemy. Indeed it is full of surprises. With no pretensions to being complete-with no design on the part of the owner to make it so-some of the smaller sections challenge our attention by their high interest. With the one exception of alchemy, hardly a subject has been followed out to any notable extent, but every book having been bought for some historical or literary purpose, the merits of the sections depend mainly on their being representative and select. This evident

absence of desire to form large collections on individual subjects increases our surprise to find works of excessively great rarity and value which would form the nuclei and are the desiderata of many special libraries. It is idle, of course, to speak of the few fifteenth century books which are usually to be found in the best of private-not noble-libraries as a collection, when we remember that Hain mentions 16,299 works all printed before the year 1500, but when we find so many as nearly seventy fifteenth century books in a small private library, the fact is worthy of notice, and a legitimate subject for extended remark, the more so that the volumes have not been secured because of their early date merely but for quite independent reasons.

Professor Ferguson would disclaim being reckoned a collector of Glasgow books. Yet we find among those having connection with the city a copy of the first document printed in Glasgow; a copy of Zachary Boyd's "Last Battell of the Soule in Death," having the rare 1628 title-page; the "Academiae Glasguensis XAPIETHPION;" which contains congratulatory odes from members of the University and Z. Boyd's "Panegyric to Charles I." when he came to Scotland to be crowned; the works of some early natives of the city, and other valuable local works. The same remark applies to most of the other departments.

The total number of volumes in the collection is above 6,000. The works on alchemy are much in the condition they have been acquired in-contemporary covers in most cases-but the larger part of the remainder of the library is in elegant modern binding. Some of the volumes have come from famous libraries, such as those of Thuanus, Gordon of Gordonstoun, Sunderland, Beckford, Hamilton, Syston Park; some have been bound by celebrated binders, as Roger Payne, Derome, Lewis, Mackenzie; a few examples of printing from the famed presses of Aldus, Stephanus, Froben,