384 WETTIN
large numbers of his countrymen to the schools and enterprises of his Duchy. He
was the author of Glos wolny wolnosc ubezpieczajqcy (A Free Voice insuring
Freedom, 1749), the most influential reforming tract of the age.^15
The spirit of improvement was by no means totally absent. Many magnates,
like Leszczynski, were acutely aware of the Republic's plight, and within their
considerable private means sought to develop the country's resources and to
raise its morale. In Lithuania, the Radziwills had been building manufactories
since the 1740s. Michal Oginski, author of an article on 'The Harp' in Diderot's
Encyclopedic, was building his canals. As from 1760, Andrzej Zamoyski
(1716-92), a future Chancellor, abolished serfdom on all his estates, setting an
example which he was to promote in public policy. Stanislaw Konarski
(1700-73), pedagogue and publicist, founder of the 'Collegium Nobilium',
which opened its doors to pupils in 1740, was equally concerned with political
reform. His tract O skutecznym rad sposobie (Concerning an Efficient Method
of Government), published in the year that Augustus III died, voiced the doubts
of a generation. Here lay the seeds of future change. Most remarkable perhaps
was the work of the Zaluski brothers, Andrzej Stanislaw Kostka (1695-1758)
and Jozef Andrzej (1702-74), Catholic Bishops of Cracow and Kiev respectively.
Bishop Stanislaw, who rose to the dignity of Crown Chancellor, pioneered the
development of iron mining, metallurgy, and the science of mineralogy. Bishop
Jozef Andrzej, who with Konarski had spent a period of exile at Luneville,
founded a collection of books, which was opened in Warsaw in 1748 as the first
public library in Europe. It was housed in the 'Blue Palace' by the Saxon Garden,
built for one of the late king's natural daughters, Maria Orzelska. In time it con-
tained some 400,000 volumes, all magnificently catalogued in rhyming Latin
verse. Its treasures were the object of learned pilgrimages, and were described
by the French scientist, Jean Bernouilli:
The Palace is a veritable labyrinth of rooms, all crammed with books. The most
remarkable room, and indeed the only one to be tastefully decorated, is devoted to show-
piece volumes, many of them French, outstanding for their engravings and bindings. It is
long and high, and adorned by numerous statues in honour of the most famous men of
the country. It is adjoined by Bishop Zaluski's own bedroom.
The Latin collection occupies another large hall on the third floor ... I was shown a
couple of beautiful manuscripts of Longinus and Macrobius, and a very ancient copy of
Ovid's Letters and Metamorphoses, and then several exceptionally fine ecclesiastical
works. One of these was a folio Codex, entitled Pontificalis ordinis liber, written and illu-
minated on parchment, and dating from around 1500 ... I also saw a ninth-century
Burgundian Missal and the Decretalia of Pope Gregory IX, written in gold letters on vel-
lum, and illustrated with more than a thousand miniatures...
As for Polish documents, they attach great importance here to the enormous legal col-
lection of Acts of the Republic in twenty-seven volumes, twelve of which are not origi-
nals but copied from the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow...^16In his will, Bishop Zaluski bequeathed his library to the Republic. But he could
not control its fate. In 1795 it was plundered by the Russian Army, and sent in