C. Csapodi, E. Moravek et al.(szerk.): The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1826–1961.

II. The Use of the Library

ranged according to his classification. Separate old loose-leaf catalogues contain the catalogue pages of manuscripts and of the correspondence material. Now these catalogues are more simple. In the reading room of the Department a show-case is placed parallel with the reading desks. Its glasses are covered with green felt to preserve the precious handwritten national values from light. These include a Prayer-hook of Benigna Magyar written in Hungarian in 1513 (Fig. 17) and the thick Érsekújvári-Codex, also written in Hungary at the beginning of the sixteenth century (Fig. 18). It was copied on the Isle of Rabbits (which is the former name of the Margaret-Island that lies between Buda and Pest). One of the pages bears the name of the copying nun: Márta Sövényházi. The Library's only Corvin-codex is also placed here: the work of Ludovicus Carbo: De laudibus Matthiae Regis (Fig. 19). Its silk binding is disintegrating, hut the codex itself is unharmed, its gilding gleams, and bears the coat-of-arms of the Hunyadi dynasty, representing a raven holding a ring. Another treasure of the Library is the Liber de septem signis that had been taken to the Corvina-library from King Sigismund's collection (Fig. 20). At present this codex is placed on deposit at the Museum of Fine Arts. This Department has 125 codices, 85 of them mediaeval. Among them are twelve manuscripts bearing mediaeval records of the Hungarian language. The show-case displays the following manuscripts of our great writers and, poets: a Latin letter of Miklós Zrínyi, the soldier-poet who defeated the Turkse a report to the Academy by Sándor Körösi C'soma (Fig. 42), the author of thf first Tibetan grammar, a drawing by Kazinczy, the neologist and organiser oe Hungarian literature, that he drew looking out of the window of his jail, wher

. he had been imprisoned for disseminating the ideas of the French Revolution, János Batsányi was also banished to Linz at the end of the eighteenth century: because of his revolutionary ideas. The call at the end of his poem reads „Keep your watchful eyes on Paris" (Fig. 21). The first, corrected version oi Vörösmarty's „Szózat", a poem that is Hungary's second national anthem, is also exhibited here, as well as the manuscript of János Arany's excellent translations of Aristophanes, and the manuscript of the Tragedy of Man by Madách with the corrections of Arany (Fig. 24). The Department took over all 2* 19