GREAT WORKS LOST IN FIRE

Professor Leon Dupriez, of the University of Louvain, who is now lecturing on government at the University, has written the following article for the CRIMSON on the loss of the university in the burning of Louvain:

"The main building of the university, which was totally destroyed by the fire started by the German troops the night of August 26 and the morning of August 27, had been built--the lower part in 1317,--after the early Gothic style. It had served for more than two centuries as a cloth warehouse. The upper part had been constructed in the nineteenth century, in the classical style. The halls contained the promotion room, all the bureaus of administration, the archives and all the souvenirs of the university, and finally the library. There, also, until less than two years ago, were the lecture rooms of the faculties of law and theology, which were recently moved to make space for additions to the library.

"Of all this nothing remains except some ruined walls and heaps of cinders. The fire was so violent that not even the charred remains of large books could be found. The library contained more than 230,000 volumes, among which were 380 incunabula -- some of them very rare and beautiful examples. Nine hundred and twenty manuscripts, several of which figured an autobiography of Thomas a Kempis, have also disappeared. The library of Louvain contained the complete and unique collection of all the books and pamphlets published in the Austrian Low-Countries (Belgium) during the eighteenth century. It also possessed a collection of old coins and seals, very interesting for the history of the Low-Countries. The university has also lost all its archives and all its souvenir portraits and busts of professors and benefactors, among artistic beauty, like the portrait of Pope Adrian III or the bust of Chonissen, the scholarly criminologist. Others were the only contemporary and authentic portraits of scholars of the Renaissance, like Juste Lipse and Tuteanus.

"Many professors saw their works and collections consumed in the fire; more than twenty of them have had their houses burned and witnessed the destruction of their books, their letters, and their notes. All the important presses and book-shops of Louvain have been burnt; likewise, all the collections of reviews published at Louvain by our professors. Among these scientific losses I shall mention one especially deplorable. Professor Van Gehuchten had published, twenty years ago, a work on the anatomy of the nervous system, which had won for him a world-wide reputation. In June, 1914, he had finished the preparation of a new edition of his work,--or rather had finished an entirely new book on the same subject. He had sent his manuscript and the numerous drawings which were to illustrate his book to the printer. As a precaution he preserved at home duplicates of both manuscript and designs. On the morning of August 27 the house of Professor Van Gehuchten was a mass of ruins; the house and establishment of his printer had been burnt to ashes; and all the notes collected by this scholar during a quarter of a century, necessary to the second edition of his work,--everything was destroyed. My unfortunate colleague, who still enjoyed a vigorous physique, who was only 53 years old, large and strong, who had always worked with the strength of iron,--could not survive the terrible catastrophe. Two months ago he died in Cambridge, England, of a malady caused by the grief and fears which the war had brought him. The fire of August 26 had lost for service the new work which Professor Van Gehucten had prepared in the full maturity of his knowledge, and the future accomplishments which this energetic and persevering worker might have produced in the future."