The Barberini Library

IN the Calendar of Domestic State Papers (England) for the year 1678 there is a letter containing a reference of an unusual kind to the Vatican Library, written by a man named Giles Vanbrugh to the Bishop of London at the time when the whole city, and indeed most of the nation, had gone crazy over the pretended revelations of Titus Oates. The writer of this letter, who did not see why all the conspiracy should be confined to one party, suggested a most ingenious counter‐plot. He is evidently quite serious; and his plan was perhaps quite practicable. “I shall acquaint you,” he writes to the Bishop, “with what I think not only warrantable but honourable, and what may much advantage the Protestant Religion. It is the assaulting the city of Rome on the side the Vatican stands and bringing away the library …”