GLOUCESTERSHIRE

4pp., 12mo. Bifolium. A long letter, closely and neatly written, with a number of emendations suggesting that it is a draft. After a short reference to the Count's kindness to him and his friend Joseph Neave, he devotes the rest of the letter to 'the heavy trial thou has had to pass through', discussing the nature of loss with 'knowledge from my own experience, that the loss of a child is a grief into whose full depths no stranger can enter, and that words, even well-meant, when uttered at an unfit moment, pain instead of helping'.

1p., 4to. In fair condition, on aged paper with small spike hole at centre. Reads: 'Sir/ I have mislaid your account and as I shall not go to Town again this spring I must desire you will make out another bill and sent [sic] it to Williamstrip, & I will send you a draft on my Banker.'

Apart from one contribution dating from 1800, three from the 1850s and two from the 1860s, all contributions date from between 1820 and 1847. 237pp., 4to, with eight items loosely inserted (including four coloured botanical drawings on card) and three-page partial index of contributors. In contemporary black leather binding, with embossed pattern and gilt border on front board, marbled endpapers, and all edges gilt. In good condition, lightly aged and worn, in rebacked binding, worn at spine, with new label.

The three letters total 5pp., 8vo. On aged and damp-stained paper. In the first letter (21 May 1902) Ducie writes that he has that morning received Mellersh's book ('A Treatise on the Birds of Gloucestershire', 1902), and that he is 'delighted with it. Whether it would find a "public" if offered in a cheaper form, I cannot say. It is too scientific for the crowd. | I note only one error. You make out that I shot a Squacco Heron. I bought it or had it given to me from Berkeley'.

On one side of a piece of vellum (roughly 15 x 37 cm). In fair condition, lightly aged and worn. In Latin. In an attractive close hand.

A rare collection of material, comprising the records of a Victorian parochial school, including registers, reports and government Education Department circulars on a range of subjects. Initial reports by H. M. Inspectors are addressed to Rev. R. H. Taylor, Kemble Vicarage, Cirencester, but by the end of the series the entire system has been reorganised, with the addressee now the Clerk to the School Board, Kemble. The manuscript index to the folder lists 128 numbered documents, but 29 are lacking, and an additional seven unnumbered items bring the actual number to 106.

8pp., 12mo. Fair, on aged paper, with small ink blot at head (not affecting text) and dogeared final leaf. The item deals with six aspects of the problem: 'The Child before the Television Screen'; 'General Damages and Dangers'; 'Atomising of the Soul'; 'The Nature of the Human Eye'; 'Injury of Other Senses'; 'A Problem of the Human Being'. It concludes: 'These leaflets are translated and issed by courtesy of the Verein zur Förderung eines erweiterten Heilwesens, of Stuttgart, with whom this new impulse in social hygiene originates.

The six small black and white photographs are all in good condition in a Kodac 'snapshot' card wallet. The captions, in pencil on the reverse and all dated 'April 40', read: [ONE] 'Aerodrome at South Cerney' [an aerial shot]; [TWO] 'Officers' Mess No 3 F.T.S. S. Cerney' [exterior of building]; [THREE] 'Oxfords at No 3 FTS' [three grounded planes]; [FOUR] 'Interior of Oxford' [instrument panel]; [FIVE] 'Interior of Oxford' [back of seats and instrument panel]; [SIX] 'Oxford at No 3 FTS' [grounded].

4to bifolium of three pages, together a seperate leaf (dimensions of leaf in all cases 26 x 20 cm) carrying on one side one set of the three illustrations. Printed in black, and each page enclosed within a red decorative border. Creased and foxed, but a scarce piece of ephemera in acceptable overall condition. The first page of the bifolium is headed, in a variety of decorative fonts and point sizes, 'John Wright & Co.

12mo bifolium. Ellenborough's letter (15 lines of text) occupies the first leaf; with the pencil draft of Gough's reply (also 15 lines), with additions and deletions, on the recto of the second leaf. Very good, with traces of grey paper mount adhering in a thin strip to the reverse of the second leaf. Ellenborough will 'afford' Nichols 'every facility for the making of tracings from the Tiles at Southam'. If Nichols will let him know when he is coming he will 'make it a point to be here'. Suggests that Nichols might come 'after Church, about 2 o'clock, on Sunday next'.

All items octavo. Bound together in contemporary leather half-binding with red label. Good, on aged paper. Front board beginning to split. Label and stamps of Newport Reference Library. Each title-page initialed in contemporary hand 'G. S. W.' Part 2, 1825: pp.[ii] + [103]-348, items 1666 to 6197. Part 3, 1825 ('Including the libraries of the late Rev. Dr. Ryland; J. Nott, M.D. of Clifton, Deceased; And other Collections, recently Purchased'): pp.v + 349-606. With two-page 'Brief Memoir of the late John Nott, M.D. of the Hotwells, Bristol', 'Extracted from Felix Farley's Bristol Journal'.

On good-quality thick wove paper, roughly fifteen inches by eleven wide. Dimensions of plate roughly eleven inches by six and a half wide. Good, clean impression, with blank borders a tad grubby. Attractive portrait of a handsomely dressed Graves, a bookcase behind him, leaning between two tables, on one of which is a manuscript and on the other another manuscript, coins and books. Graves's dates are corrected in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Bathurst (1790-1863), an alumnus of Christ Church, Oxford, was Lord of the Manor of Lidney. One page, 12mo. Good, on creased, grubby and discoloured paper, with traces of mount adhering to reverse. Begins 'I send you a Pamphlet, which I dare say began in my brain in the cotyledonous or radicle state as early as when we bothered at Usk Sessions, one day or other you will perhaps read it'. Ends 'I am glad to find you are better than at the beginning of the Circuit'. There is no record of Bathurst's pamphlet in the BL.