Art: MSS.

Drifters from the sidewalks and the magazine rooms, a few tired shoppers from 42nd Street, earnest students with notebooks and clattering herds of bewildered schoolchildren filed into a long exhibition room of the New York Public Library last week. Sprinkled among this crowd was many a Catholic nun, cowled & coiffed. fluttering gently from case to case or resting quietly on the benches to say a silent prayer for J. Pierpont Morgan who in the goodness of his Protestant heart had unlocked his shelves to let them see some of the greatest treasures of their Church.

On either edge of the U. S. are two of the greatest private libraries in the world. The Huntington Library in Pasadena and the Morgan Library in Manhattan are keen rivals. But in illuminated vellum manuscripts of the 9th to the 16th centuries the Morgan Library stands supreme. By the terms of the Elder Morgan's will they have been available to duly accredited scholars for many years. They are not, nor can they ever be, available to the public. In 1924 when the Morgan Library was handed over to a group of trustees as a semi-public institution, the present head of the House of Morgan wrote: "One soiled thumb could undo the work of 900 years, and a misplaced cough could be a disaster."

For the first time last week the public could view the manuscripts and cough its head off without danger of damage. To the Public Library under armed guard were moved 150 of the Morgan treasures to be placed in cloth-lined cases, each with a wet sponge in a little dish to keep the vellum leaves from cracking in the dry air.

What the nuns and the gapers liked best was Morgan Manuscript No. 1, the great Ashburnham Gospels (probably executed between 825-850), lettered in pure gold on purple vellum leaves, bound in golden plates set with ancient rubies and emeralds. Even more valuable for theological students was a case of 9th & 10th Century Coptic manuscripts, one in its original covers, dug from the edge of an oasis by Arabs searching for tillable soil. There was much more to dazzle the imagination: the purple vellum Gospels supposed to have been given to Henry VIII by Pope Leo X; the 10th Century De Materia Medica of Dioscorides; the 13th Century British Psalter with the earliest known picture of a windmill.

All these books were chosen, the catalog prepared and arrangements for the exhibition made, by a dark vivacious woman who has been for over 20 years guardian of the Morgan Treasures—Morgan Librarian Belle da Costa Greene. A prominent figure at book auctions, exhibitions and literary cocktail parties, Librarian Greene is far from inaccessible, but has managed to keep her early history to herself. It is of record, however, that she is of Portuguese-Virginia ancestry, was discovered at Princeton by Mr. Morgan's Cousin Junius when the Morgan Library was building, and has been a fixture in the Morgan household ever since. Librarians all over the world respect her knowledge. Working nervously on the present exhibition since June, when the last wet sponge and special detective was in place last week Librarian Greene took to her bed in collapse.

Sloan for Luks