of the huge mass of historical documents which existed at the time. Besides, it was not, in general, with any purpose of making them generally accessible that collectors like Peiresc, Gaignières, Clairambault, Colbert, and many others, withdrew from circulation documents which were in danger of being lost; they were content (and it was creditable to do as much as this) to share them, more or less freely, with their friends. But collectors (and their heirs) are fickle people, and sometimes eccentric in their notions. Certainly it is better that documents should be preserved in private collections, than that they should be entirely unprotected and absolutely inaccessible to the scientific worker; but in order that Heuristic should be made really easier, the first condition is that all collections of documents should be public.
Now the finest private collections of documents—libraries and museums combined—were naturally, in the Europe of the Renaissance, those possessed by kings. And while other private collections were often dispersed upon the death of their founders, these, on the contrary, never ceased to grow; they were enriched, indeed, by the wreckage of all the others. The Cabinet des manuscrits de France, for example, formed by the French kings, and by them thrown open to the public, had, at the end of the eighteenth century, absorbed the best part of the collections which had been the personal work of the amateurs and scholars of the two preceding centuries. Similarly in other countries. The concentration of a great number of historical documents in vast public (or semi-public) establishments was the fortunate result of this spontaneous evolution.
The arbitrary proceedings of the Revolution were still more favourable, and still more effective in securing the amelioration of