The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1914-04-21
WOULD BE PRICELESS
ARcHAEoLoGIsTs HOPE TO FIND
LIBRARY OF RUSSIAN CAR.
Possibility That the Wonderful CoIIec-
tlon Made by Ivan the Terrible
May Not Have Been Destroyed
In the Great Fire of 1912.

A snort time ago a professor of
theology In the university at ST. Pc
tersburg, Russia, purchased at a shop
In Moscow a manuscript copy of the
Gospels dating from prior to A. D.
1000. On examination it was found to
have belonged to the great library col
lected in his youth by Ivan the Terri
BILE. when he believed that he had a
divine mission. This library was sup
posed to have been burned In the
great fire of Moscow of 1912.
On a subsequent visit to Moscow the
professor traced his book to the fam
lily of a laborer, who said that he had
found it with several similar volumes
in subterranean passage near the
Kremlin
The famous library of Ivan the Ter
rible is now supposed to be still hid
den in some underground vault, which
the efforts of generations have hither-
to failed to discover. 1t was Ivan the
Terrible-whose reputation as a great
ruler has been obscured by the fas-
cination of his extraordinary excuses
who established the printing press
In Russia.
There is a wide field of conjecture
as to what might not come to light in
the event of this curious library one
day being discovered Ivan the Terri
BILE was In close communication with
all the rulers of our hemisphere, from
London to Picking; one branch of
knowledge is almost certain to be well
represented in this lost library, and
that is the scence of black magic. 1t
Is equally likely that new codices of
Holy Scripture may yet come to light,
for Ivan the Terrible undertook to
print the Scriptures in the vulgar
tongue. Only one thing is certain,
that such library existed and has
never been found, nor is 1t even known
to have persisted in any of the numer-
GUS fires that devastated Moscow.
References in the archives to its ex-
istence, as we'll as to the existence Of
the subterranean roadways, are suffi-
Client to whet the keenest curiosity,
but not enough to afford much practi-
S1A ooOl6bdA1OO " LILO lAfColl6dtOI.
Apart from changes of surface feat
ures In the Kremlin, the level of the
soil is six or eight feet above what it
was in the sixteenth century. 1t is no
doubt the knowledge, an unpleasantly
vague knowledge, of the existence of
these underground passages which
causes the police on every occasion of
an imperial visit to Moscow to seal up
with wire and lead seal every single
opening, cellar shoot, surface drainage
grid, to be found anywhere over the
area of the Kremlin, and frequently to
inspect the integrity Of these seals.
Legends of a labyrinth of under
ground passages have been current
among the populace for centuries. but
1t Is only within the last decade or so
that the very extensive building enter
prise on modern lines undertaken in
Russia's premier capital" has given
substance to these ancient legends.
When the main drainage scheme had
been in operation few years the al
iteration of subsoil conditions caused
a sinking of the foundations of many
of the more massive public buildings,
which had to be underpinned. while
new erections required much deeper
excavation in order that a secure
foundation might be reached. 1t was
in course of these operations that
many underground passages came to
light. and eventually the newly fledged
societies interested in the preserva-
ton of monuments of antiquity at
tempted to deal with the matter from
the historical standpoint.