BOOK I. Chapter VI. subjects will scarcely now be contemplated. But it cannot be too much insisted on that, when the limit is once well defined-whether it be one of subject or of period, every thing that comes within that limit should meet a ready welcome. If Thomason, or the collectors of the French Revolutionary Tracts, had sat in judgment on the worth or worthlessness of what they were bringing together, their just claims to the gratitude of the students of history would have been seriously diminished, whatever the critical acumen or the conscientious impartiality which (in intention, at all events,) might have governed their choice. CHAPTER I. LIBRARIES BUILT. Here, without travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of ancient times, the learnedest philosophers, the wisest councillors, the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with the best jewels they have in their Treasury, with the same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians; and, without suspicion of felony, make use of them as mine own. I can here, without trespassing, go into their vineyards, and not only eat my fill of their grapes for my pleasure, but put up as much as I will in my vessel, and store it for my profit and advantage. WALLER (Divine Meditations). BOOK II. Chapter I. THE Laurentian Library at Florence, built by Michael Angelo, and the Library of St. Mark at Venice, built by Libraries built. Sansovino, are, as is well known, noble monuments of the genius of those great architects, but would be of small help as models for new structures. The illustrious artists were too intent on erecting buildings which should strikingly enhance the architectural beauty of Florence, or of Venice, to care much about the practical accommodation of books or of readers. Nor, indeed, can we rationally expect that edifices which are amongst the earliest that were raised for the special purpose of BOOK II. Chapter I. storing books for public use, or rather for the use of Libraries built. the learned,—should evince much study of that Libraryeconomy for which theretofore there had been so little call. Few were even the single rooms then set apart for the reception of books, save in monasteries or in palaces. Laurentian Library at Library at Venice. The first objects that strike the traveller on entering the Laurenziana are usually those "Storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light," which were designed by one of the pupils of Raffaelle; and the next the rude and antique aspect of the many ponderous MS. volumes that are still chained to their desks, in the fashion of the sixteenth century. The proportions and the decoration of the principal room are very fine, but the staircase and the vestibule rather Old St. Mark's fantastic than pleasing. Sansovino's Library, on the other hand, has a noble staircase and vestibule, worthy of the fine apartment in which the books were deposited until 1812, when they were transferred to the "Hall of the Grand Council," where, in an architectural sense, they are perhaps the most magnificently lodged books in the world. But that richly painted and gilded ceiling; that long series of pictures, by Tintoretto, the Bassani, Jacopo Palma, and Zuccaro, representing the triumphs of Venice; those pieces of ancient sculpture, one of them attributed by Canova to Phidias;-and, above all, that famous "Frieze of Doges" (with its memorable gap,-Hic locus Marini Falieri decapitati pro criminibus,) throw too much into the shade, even such books and such bindings as those of the Library of St. Mark. |