We inquired in vain after manuscripts and specimens
of early typography. None were to be found; and yet they might surely
have been expected here; for a public library has existed in Caen from
an early part of the last century, and, previous to the revolution, it
was enriched with various donations. M. de Colleville presented to it
the whole of the collection of the celebrated Bochart; Cavelier, printer
to the university, a man known by several treatises on Roman
antiquities, added a donation of two thousand volumes; and Cardinal de
Fleury, who considered it under his especial protection, gave various
sums of money for the purchase of books, and likewise provided a salary
for the librarian. I suspect that no small proportion of the more
valuable volumes, have been dispersed or stolen. Round the apartment
hang portraits of the most eminent men of Caen: tablets are also
suspended, for the purpose of commemorating those who have been
benefactors to the library; but the tablets at present are blank.
For its university Caen is indebted to Henry VIth, who, anxious to give
eclat and popularity to British rule, founded a college by letters
patent, dated from Rouen, in January, 1431. The original charter
restricted the objects of the university to education in the canon and
civil law; but, five years subsequently, the same king issued a fresh
patent, adding the faculties of theology and the arts; and, in the
following year, he still farther added the faculty of medicine.
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