"
£21,800 FOR A BIBLE. RECORD FRICE IN NEW YORK.
The so-called Molk copy of the Gutenberg Bible was bought at auction in New York last month by Dr. Abraham Rosenbach, of Philadelphia, for the extra ordinary sum of $168,000 (about £21,900). This bibliographical treasure, which was owned for 300 years by the Austrian monastery at Melk, was bought last summer by a London book dealer and forwarded to the Anderson Galleries. It was expected to fetch about 875,000, but the bidders, encouraged by a large and fashionable audience, soon brought the
offers to over $100,000.
THE FIRST BIBLE.
A MONASTIC ACHIEVEMENT. [37 Á. C. 2. CARTER IN THE LONDON "DAILY TILEGRAPH."]
THE HONGKONG DAILY PRESS, TUESDAY, MARCH SOTE, 1916
DOMINIONS AND FOREIGN
POLICY."
THE PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE. At University College, Gower-street, Mr. J. H. Morgan, Professor of Con- stitutionst Law, gara isst month the first of four Rhodes lectures on The Dominions and Foreign Policy." Mr. Amery, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, presided.
Professor Morgan maid Lord Milner was chairman of the Rhodes Trustees, under whose auspices the lectures were delivered. In remarkable political testament, given lately to the world in The Times, he declared his hope and faith that the forces making for the dissolution of our Expire would be arreated by the growth of a new Civic Consciousness common to all our
PLEA FOR SIMPLIFIED
SPELLING
PETITION TO MR. BALDWIN,
TRIAL TRIP OF S.S. SIANGWO."
Tho Sinhgwo, built by the Hong- kong & Whampoa Dock Co., Ltd, to the order of the Indo-China Steam Naviga-
A petition propared by the Simplised, tion Co, Ltd., was given her Official Spelling Society, bearing nearly 15,000 Trials on the Admiralty messured three signatures, and asking for the appoint-mile course at East Lamma Channel, on light draft River vessel for the Middle men of a Royal Commission to consider Sunday 29th March). The vessel is a and report on the whole question of Eng-Yangtze trade of the following dimen Moulded, oft Oin.; Depth Moulded, Ilft. Oin. lish spelling, has been sent to the Prime sions:-Length B.F., 976ft. Gin. Breadth
Minister
BOILE
She is equipped in regard to cargo The petitioners urge that the case for
measure of spelling reform for gear with goal-posts forward, carrying two steel derricks, each capable of lifting general purposes has never been astis. 10 tons, and aft two Sampson posts with derricki to lift 5 tons each. Har dead- factorily mat, while actual experiment, weight carrying espacity is 1,858 tons on oftan repeated, has successfully proved a mean draft of 6 feet 11 inches.
Her passenger accommodation on the their contention that the uas of a simple bridge deck is of the most comfortable phonetic spelling as a method in educa description. The staterooms
usually large, and, for, tropical River tion during the earlier stages saves time, service, unique. ds to comfort and cool- effort, and financial expenditure, and, by ness, each stateroom having two doora, the substitution of a sound for an un-one leading out on deck, and the other into a central corridor, all doors and sound metal discipline, conduces to the windows being mosquito proofed with water is laid on to all bathrooms and to
ata
dominions. He had taken with him to improvement of education generally, with gauze wire netting. Hot and cold If Shakespears had to be dethroned the grave his charms, his wisdom, and They claim to have secured the support the hand basins in the staterooms. At from his seat of auction pre-eminence it his powers; he had left us his inspirof those in all parts of the Empire to the after end of the bridge deck is the i
would then seem meet and right that the Bible should bring it about. Yet even in these days of huge American bidding the news that a copy of the first printed Bible has exceeded £90,000 causes a thrill; and one recalls the excitement at Sotheby's in the Britwell sale, 1919, when that book-plunger, the late George Smith, paid £15,100 for a tiny quarto contain- ing a first edition of Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim" and a fourth of Venus and Adonis" the almost similar combination in the Capell library at Trinity, Cambridge, bearing the note that it cost the owner three halfpence.
And America's reception of a £20,000 Bible to-day is a very different affair "from the critical clamour in 1847 which greeted the first import of a first printed Bible. Then that persistent book-lover, Mr. James Lenox, the founder of the Lenox Library in New York, had dared to order his London agent to buy a copy of the Gutenberg and Fust, 1455, Mainz Bible in the Latin Vulgate, contra "mundum. His competitors included that omnivorous collector, Sir Thomas Philipps; but Mr. Lenox's commissioner won the prize at £800, a price which was stigmatised as
on both sides of the Atlantic.
mad
Indeed, public feeling was so wrathful in New York that for some time Mr. Lenox did not venture to release the Bible from the Custom House; and it was only after an heroic effort that he that darned declared himself to be
not only ready to pay £500 for fool his act of devont folly, but to band over £100 more to clear the charges for com- mission, expenses, and customs duty. Years afterwards he used to chuckle and May that 1847 happened to be a good year for Bibles-and port.
tion. (Cheers.)
whose opinions, on such a subject-be- Continuing, Professor Morgan said neither in the domain of what was called cause of their special knowledge or ex private international law, which might perience, or because of the responsible be termed "forensie, nor in the realm public positions they occupy-great of international law, which might be termed diplomatic, were the Dominions weight must indisputably be attached. nations. When we called them nations The petition proceeds: Our select lists we were using a political tarm and not contain the names of many men whose a legal one. When the British Govern-
British eminence in scholarship, science, letters, mant negotiated rights for nationals with a foreign Power, those and affairs is widely recognized Fur rights usually (he did not say always) were secured for British subjects in all ther, in relation to a matter so essentially our Dominions whether those Dominions educational, the inclusion among our reciprocated or not. That was only an supporters of so many representatives other way of saying that, as the result of resident members of the staffs and govern British diplomacy, they secured the ing bodies of so mary British and over- benefits attaching to British nationals
of the highest distinction, should in it and escaped the obligations. There could as universitice, not a few of them men B stronger self suffice to convince the Government hardly, he thought, be argument for maintaining unimpaired that the request for an inquiry is not be lightly dismissed." the principle that in foreign affairs the British Government should remain the Failing & Royal Commission, the peti supreme negotiating party.
tioners say they would welcome the ap pointment by the Government of any Commission or Committee which may be considered suitable.., Government Com- inittees have been from time to time ar pointed to consider questions relating to education and educational method, as for example the best method to be adopted in the study of English languago and literature, or the best methods in teach-
one which can
He made no apology for this excursion into the domain of law. It would have served its purpose if it had made clear that constitutional developments in the British Empire had outgrown the cate garies of the law. If he had to distin- guish the British Empire from the em- pires of the ancient world he should say her supreme distinction lay in that she was the nursery of freedom The eming foreign languages-subjects of un- pires of the ancient world were conceived in war and brought forth in slavery they arose and through slavery they fell. The Empire of Great Britain had grown out of the adventurous spirit of her children. pass away. Verily, she should ret (Cheers.)
Mr. Amery said Professor Morgan had put before them something of the im mense complexity and dificulty of the problem with which we were confronted They must have felt how dangerous it would be to attempt in any formal way
doubted importance, but scarcely com parable in importance with a subject through which, it may be said, the foundations of all education on the in- tellectual aide are laid."
The signatories include:--
*Sir
*Sir Robort Baden-Powell; Emery Barnes, Hulsean Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge; commander Carlyon Bellaire, M.P.; When, on July 2nd, 1923, Mr. Philip
Miss Sara A. Hurstall, Honorary Lec- chester; Mr. G. A. Christian, vice. Rosenbach (the brother of Mr. Abraham
turer in Education, Caiversity of Man- Rosenbach gave £9,500 for the Earl of
president of the Battersea and Wands to define and write down the constitution worth Educational Council; *Mr. Harold Carysfort's Gutenberg Bible, he told me that he already possessed two more of the British Empire. They were deal Cox, editor of the Edinburgh Review: copies, but that he was determined that ing. in the growth of the British Empire+Mr. Henry Drummond; Mr. E. R. Ed- his firm should annex any remaining in with new ideas, new conceptions, and private possession. So far as this coun- new purposes which could not be fitted wards, Docteur de l'Université de Paris; try is concerned the Caryafort example, inte existing categories. If we attempt Dr. Oliver Elton, King Alfred Professor which was bought originally in aed to solve the problems by a process of of English Literature, Liverpool Univer- monastery abroad, by Mr. Perry, pro- commons sense, working them out in prietor of The Morning Chronicle, was practice, then he believed the genius of the last but one in private hands; the our race would find a solution. Ho survivor being the example which fetched agreed in putting colloquial intercourse £2,100 in the Hopetown sale, after having in the forefront. The problems of em- been discovered by Mr. Tom Hodge pire could always be solved, and had "among some old medicine bottles in a been again and again in recent years, disused cupboard at Queen's Ferry whenever leading statesmen of the Em- Castle in 1889. Before the Carysfort pire met around the same table. (Cheers.) copy (the 1458 Bible is always in two volumes) brought £9,500, its previous auction sale history was: Perry sale, £163; Duke of Sussex disposal, £190;
Bishop Daly of Cashel sale, 4805; Earl of bid me up, but I hope to be rich enough Crawford, 2,650, in 1887. It should to stand any, loss." also be recalled that this first Bible is often named the Mazarin Bible, because the earliest example to be identified was found in the library of the famous Cardinal,
AN ORIGINAL HOMER.
. .
sity; Dr Maxwell Garnet, secretary, League of Nations Union; Mr. A. P. Graven, F.R.S.L.. late chairman of the Representative Managers of the L.C.C. Schools; Mr. Arthur Henderson, jus; Sir George Hunter, chairman, Swan, Hunter, and Wigham Richardson, Ltd and chairman of committee, Simplified Spelling Society; Sir Mark Hunter, formerly Director of Public Instruction, Burma, organizing secretary, Simplified Spelling Society; Mr. M. L. Jacks, Head- master, Mill Hill School; Mr. Daniel Jones, Professor of Phonetica, London He was referring University; Dr. C. W. Kimmins, Chief "Pay
to the Fust and Schofffer Inspector, L.C.C. Education Depart more
1450 (in which the ment; Dr. Walter Leaf, chairman of the Athanasian Creed was first printed), for Westminster Bank, Ltd. Dr. R. W. which, in the same sale, he had been Macan, late Master of University Col. made to pay £4.950; the price in the legs, Oxford; Dr. T. J. Macnamara; Sykes sale, 1824, having been only 130gs the Bishop of Manchester; "Sir Theo- Quaritch, in fact, had to keep this doro Morison, Principal, of Armstrong Gilbert Up to that time and for many years Psalteriam for seven years, and then, College, Newcastle; Mr. Jaince Mun
F.R.S.A.; Professor later (when Greek could still be quoted in 1901, he sold it to Pierpont Morgan. ford," in Parliament), the "corner-stone of
The Bible just sold in New York bas Murray, president, Simplified Spelling every gentleman's library" was held to
provenance similar to the Carysfort Society; fDr. T. P. Nuan, Principal of be the first printed edition of Homer, example, in that it comes from a monas- London Day Training College; Bir Frederick Pollock; Mr. Walter Ripman, Benedictine institution issued by those faithful Florentine prin- tery-the ters, the brothers Neali, in 1488. The Melk, in Austria the inscription on it Chief Inspector to London University, first move in the Bible'a favour was made being Monasterii Mellicensis". The bon." treasurer, Simplied Spelling Bo- in the Sir Mark Masterraan Sykes, sale, folio volumes, of 224 and 317 leaves re- ciety; Sir Arthur Shipley, Master of 1824, when his copy realised 190ga As spfectively, are in their venerable brown Christ's College, Cambridge: Mr. Percy Simpson, Fellow of Oriel College, Ox- I write, this catalogue is before me, and call bindings, and the copy has a the comment of that learned bibliophile, distinction, besides its perfection of ford; Dr. G. G. More Smith, late Pro- Dibdin, is eloquent enough to be recondition, in having been diligently fessor of English Language and Litera peated.
rubritated throughout by a contemporary ture, Sheffield University: Dr. J. Parker In contemplating this work, the mind illuminator. The noble examples in the Smith, late Warden of Winchester Col- at the British Joge; Dr. C. E. Spearman, Grote Pro is lost in astonishment that the inventors" King's Library" of printing should, by a single effort, Museum and at Vienne were especially fessor of Mind and Logic, London Uni- have exhibited the perfection of their collated to prove the completeness and versity; Mr. W. D. Steer, formerly president of the N.U.T.; Mr. Bydney art. The firmness of the paper, the genuineness of this Melk survivor. It is Walton; Bishop Welldon, Dean of Dur brightness of the ink, the exact uni- printed in double columns of forty-two ham Mr. Joseph Wells, Vice-Chancellor, formity of the impression, have never lines each, with slight variations. There Oxford University; and Dr. Joseph been surpassed Trithemius says in his are examples of this Bible also on vellum, Wright, Emeritus Professor of Compara Chronicle that he was told by Peter and, although the paper edition is the yo Philology, Oxford University, Schaifer (the partner and son-in-law of more prized, a superb vellum copy.
Vice-President of the Simplified Fust) that this edition was executed fetched $50,000 in the great Hoe sale in
Spelling Society. About the year 1450, and that the expenses New York
nt
incurred in the printing were 80 When the enormous value of a Guten- enormous that 4,000 florins were expendberg Bible is considered, we should rest ed before twelve sheets had been printed. thankful that, bencfcent men long ago This Sykes copy was the one destined endowed our national and public in- to bring £5,800 in the Hath sale, 1911, stitutions with worthy examples, especial- and readers of The Daily Telegraph may ly in the British Museum, the Bodleian, recall that the determination to win then the Archbishop's library at Lambeth, shown by the late Alfred Quaritch was and the Rylands library at Manchester, due largely to the unexpected presence which shelters the Spencer copy. And, of his old schoolmaster. Quaritch was naturally, among the forty-five survivors a boy at school in 1684 when the known (half of which ale imperfect) news came that his father, old Ber there are examples to be found in the nard, had given £3,900 for a Guten Vatican, in the Bibliothèque Nationale, berg Bible in the Breton Park aale Paris, in Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfurt, of Sir John Thorold's library. In and Munich. And the noble black-letter writing to his boy's schoolmaster, Gothic type shows how much Gatenberg Quaritch made a comment which seems and his helper owed to the example of amusing to-day: Unscrupulous, dealers the beautiful lettering-literally cali
graphy of devout medieval scribes. (Continued on nest column,)"
t-Member of the Committee of the So.
ciety.
FIGHTING T.B." BEGINNING WITH ~ BABY. Professor Calmette's anti-tuberculosis vaccine, which he administered through the mouth in a teaspoonful of milk to 5,000 infants, reduced the deaths. from tuberculosis to 07 per cent, where ordi narily they reached 25 per cent, reports the Paris correspondent of The Times.
A message published in June last stated: that none of the children whom Prot Calmette had treated during the first two months of 1999 had since died of any illness connected with tuberculosis.“
Smoking-room and forward of that on the starboard side the Kelvinator cooling room.
The Officers' quarters situated on the Main Deck are replete with every com- fort, and, like the Staterooms, are fitted
to ventilation and coolness. out in the same manner having regard
The Saloon Passenger accommodation is heated, with electric heaters. The situated at the after end of the vessel Chinese passenger accommodation and from a point of comfort leaves nothing to be desired.
The vessel has twin-screws and is driven by two reciprocating engines of the following dimenions:-H. P. Cylin- der, 13 inches: I. P. Cylinder, 22 inches; LP. Cylinder, 35 inches. Stroke 18 At her trials she attained a mean speed. inches, Revolutions 200, I. H. P. 1400. of 11.399 knots at 200 revolutions and a boiler pressure of 250 lbs.
This vessel should prova su acquisition to the River Fleet of the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company.
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يرسد
AGENTS:
Messrs. Donnelly & Whyte,
THERES A
%, QUEEN'S BUILDINGS,
("LONG, LONG TRAIL
'of
Bugs, Flest, Flies, Beetles, Mosquitoes, etc.
`all killad by
HONGKONG..
KEATING'S
MADE
VISITORS TO CANTON.
Should Purchase
A BOOK FOR THE GLOBE TROTTER
FOR HONGKONG TO CANTON
BY THE PEARL RIVER
BY
CAPTAIN C. V. LLOYD With Illustrations, Maps and Flags
PRICE
C.3.3.2
HONGKONG METEGEOLOGICAL
REGISTER.
Hongkong Observatory, March 29th.
Previous On Date On Date
Barometar Temperature
at
Day
At
at 2 pm 6 am.
+
- 30.15
30.07
30.03
68
63
02
93
81
Calm Calm West
OD
0.96 0.00
Humility Wind Direction...
Force
Weather
Rain
Highest open-air Tamperature on 29th Lowest open-air Temperature on 29th ...
HONGKONG TIDE TABLE....
From March 30th to April 5th, 1928. HIGH WATEL
Month.
Days of
Height.
DOW WATER.
H'Long
Long
Standard
Standard
Timsa
Time
hmith in
b.
Thes. 80m $
35
44
Wed. al m
.8
.4 32 4.45
Ther. 1 m
25746 639333
$1.78
Satur. 3
Sua
m 6 52.
K KO
11 58
: 6 20
Moa
6 m3 44
8' 888 01:661
1 49
8 9
On Bale at- Hongkong: DAILY PRESS Office,
Messrs. KELLY & WALAH, Ltd Mesars. BEWEL & Co. Messrs. A. S. Watum & Co.
Canton:
Height
The HONGKONG & WHAMPOA DOCK Co., Ltd.
TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS: “MANIFESTO.“ HONGKONG »
CODES USED Al, A.BO Fifth Edition; Engineering: First and Second Edition
Western Union and Watkins,
Dook Owners, Ship Buildera. Marine and Land Engineers, Boller Makers.
Iron and Brass Founders, Forge Masters, Electricians.
Steel Twin-Screw Ocean-going Tug and Salvage Steame,
Henry Keswick "
Built, engined and equipped complete" by The Hongkong & Whampoa Dook Co. Ltd., Hongkong, for the awn ervice, 1991. "ngth 188 BP., Breadth 84" (m), Depth 17 (m), LHP. 2,000. Fitted with electrically driven rabeskermble entrifugal pumps, air compresser, wireless, searchlight and all modern appliances for Salvage Wars Please address enquiries to the Chief Manager,
B. K. DYER, B.8e, M.IN.A., KOWLOOK DOCE, HONGKONG.
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