George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[169] the principal librarian. I was struck with the name, and found he is of an Italian stock, and claims to be descended from Bandinelli, the Italian novelliere. At any rate, he is a pleasant, kindly person, and has more bibliographical knowledge than anybody I have met with in England, except Hallam . . . . I was curious for old Spanish books, but the Bodleian, vast as it is, and even with Douce's rare collection added to it, making in all nearly half a million volumes, is yet miserably deficient in Spanish literature. . . . . I was much disappointed, for I thought I should have found a great deal in odd corners; but Bandinel evidently had the whole collection by heart, just as Von Praet used to have the Royal Library at Paris, and he could find nothing really rare or valuable.

I went afterwards with Cotton to Peters at Merton, and went over his fine old College, with its curious and strange library, where some of the books are still chained, and the arrangement is much the same as in the Laurentian at Florence, both belonging to nearly the same period. May 17.—I breakfasted this morning with Cotton, in his nice suite of rooms in Christ Church, and met there Peters, Bunsen,—son of my old friend, the Prussian Minister, who is here preparing himself for the English Church,—and two or three others. It was a favorable and agreeable specimen of the University life, something too luxurious, perhaps, but still it was plain there was a good deal of learning and literary taste among them. At two o'clock I went again to Buckland's lecture . . . . . In the course of his remarks, he said America could never be a manufacturing country without coal in great quantities. After he had finished, I told him we depended on water-power, of which we had great abundance. He said he thought that would not be sufficient, as it was frozen up five months in the year. I set him right about this also. He seemed surprised, but took it all well, better than most professional men would have done. I dined with him, and met a brother of Denison, a man of fortune, who lives at Shotover,—Milton's Shotover,—Dr. McBride, Dr. Hawkins, and some others of the masters of colleges, and Dr. Bandinel. It was a genuinely academic dinner, and things had much less the air of the world than they had at Cambridge, compared with which, no doubt, Oxford is a very monastic place. But it was pleasant and good-natured. Their talk was of books and geology, of the church, and such things. May 18.—Cotton invited the ladies to breakfast with him this morning, and invited two or three persons to meet them, among the rest a