Chapter II: Part 2

The standing figures in the door proper are of women, and represent Truth (on the right) and Research (on the left). Research holds the torch of knowledge or learning, and Truth a mirror and a serpent, the two signifying that in all literature, wisdom (of which the serpent is the emblem) and careful observation (typified by the mirror, with its accurate reflection of external objects) must be joined in order to produce a consistent and truthful impression upon the reader. The smaller panels below contain a design of conventional ornament with cherubs or geniuses supporting a cartouche, on which the mirror or serpent of the larger panels is repeated.

=Mr. Macmonnies’s Bronze Door.=--In Mr. Macmonnies’s design the tympanum is occupied by a composition which he has entitled, _Minerva Diffusing the Products of Typographical Art_. The Goddess of Learning and Wisdom--a fit guardian to preside at the main portal of a great library--is seated in the centre upon a low bench. On either side is a winged genius, the messengers of the goddess, each carrying a load of ponderous folios which she is dispatching as her gift to mankind. To the right is her owl, perched solemnly on the bench on which she is sitting. She wears the conventional helmet and breastplate--the latter the Ægis, with its Medusa’s Head--of ancient art, but in her wide, full skirt, with its leaf-figure pattern, the artist has adopted a more modern motive. The Latin title of Mr. Macmonnies’s subject, _Ars Typographica_, and various symbolical ornaments are introduced in the background. To the left and right, enclosed in a laurel wreath, are a Pegasus and a stork. The former stands, of course, for the poetic inspiration which gives value to literature. The stork, commonly symbolizing filial piety, may be taken here, if one chooses, as typifying the faithful care of the inventors of printing and their disciples in multiplying the product of that inspiration. To the left, also, are an hour-glass, an inking-ball, and a printer’s stick; and on the other side of the panel, an ancient printing-press.

Each of the small panels in the upper portion of the doors below is in the shape of a tympanum, and is occupied by a conventionally decorative design composed of a wreath with floating ribbons, enclosing a cartouche on which are inscribed the words “Honor to Gutenberg”--the Inventor of Printing. Each of the upright panels contains the figure of a young and beautiful woman, clad in a robe of the same design as that worn by Minerva, and carrying two tall flaming torches. The figure in the left-hand leaf represents _The Humanities_, the soft contours of her face expressing the gentle and generous liberalities of learning. Her companion stands for _Intellect_, and the lines of her face are of a bolder and severer character.

MAIN

ENTRANCE HALL.

Entering by either of these three bronze doors, one passes immediately through a deep arch into the Main Entrance Hall. It is constructed of gleaming white Italian marble, and occupies very nearly the whole of the Entrance Pavilion. By reason of a partial division of the hall into stories and open corridors, and on account of the splendor and variety of the decoration everywhere so liberally applied, the eye is attracted to a number of points of interest at once. The arrangement, however, is really simple and well defined, as may be seen by looking at the plan on page 9. With the exception of a portion of the attic story and of two or three small rooms partitioned off in the southeast and northeast corners of the first floor, the entire pavilion serves as a single lofty and imposing hall. In the centre is a great well, the height of the pavilion--seventy-five feet--enclosed in an arcade of two stories, the arches of the first supported on heavy piers and of the second on paired columns. The centre of the well is left clear; on either side, north and south, is a massive marble staircase, richly ornamented with sculpture. On the east side of the pavilion a broad passageway, treated as a part of the general architectural scheme of the Entrance Hall--though really an arm of the interior cross already referred to--connects it with the Main Reading Room.

=The Vestibule.=--The arcades surrounding the well, or Staircase Hall, as it would better be called, screen two stories of corridors. The corridor which the visitor has now entered--the West Corridor, on the library floor--serves as the general vestibule of the building, and appropriately, therefore, is more sumptuously decorated than any of the others. The most striking feature is a heavily panelled ceiling, finished in white and gold--perhaps as fine an example of gold ornamentation on a large scale as can be found in the country. It is impressively rich and elegant without in the least overstepping the line of modesty and good taste.

The corridor is bounded by piers of Italian marble ornamented with pilasters. There are five piers on each side, those on the west terminating the deep arches of the doors and windows, and one at either end. It will be noticed that these piers, like all the others on this floor, are wider than they are deep, so that the arches they support are of varying depth--the narrow ones running from north to south, and the deeper ones from east to west, invariably. This difference of depth, both of the piers and of the arches, is apt to be somewhat bewildering until one perceives the system on which it is based, so that it may be well to add in this connection that the same rule of broad and narrow, and the direction in which each kind runs, holds good, also, of the corridors on the second floor, the only variation being that paired columns, as has already been pointed out, are substituted for piers.

=The Stucco Decoration of the Vestibule.=--Above the marble arches of the Vestibule the wall with its ornamentation, and the whole of the panelled ceiling, are of stucco. By the use of this material, especially in connection with the gold, the architect has succeeded in obtaining a warmer and softer tone of white than would have been possible in marble.

Above each of the side piers are two white-and-gold consoles, or brackets, which support the panelled and gilded beams of the ceiling. In front of every console--and almost, but not quite, detached from it--springs a figure of Minerva, left the natural white of the stucco. The figures are about three feet in height, and were executed from two different models, each the work of Mr. Herbert Adams. They are skilfully composed in pairs: the first (the Minerva of War) carrying in one hand a falchion or short, stout sword, and in the other holding aloft the torch of learning; and the second (the Minerva of Peace) bearing a globe and scroll--the former significant of the universal scope of knowledge. Although thus differing, the figures are of the same type; both wear the Ægis and the same kind of casque, and both are clad in the same floating classic drapery.

Modelled in relief upon the wall between the two Minervas is a splendid white-and-gold Greek altar, used as an electric light standard. The bowl is lined with a circle of large leaves, from which springs a group of nine lamps, suggesting, when lighted, a cluster of some brilliant kind of fruit. Above the piers at either end of the corridor is another altar, somewhat narrower and of a different design, but used for the same purpose.

It should be noted that, for the most part, both in the ceiling and on the walls, the gold has been dulled or softened in tone in order to avoid any unpleasing glare or contrast with the white. This effect, however, is regularly relieved by burnishing the accentuating points in certain of the mouldings.

=The Marble Flooring.=--Before leaving the Vestibule, the visitor may be interested to notice the design of the marble flooring. The body of it is white Italian, with bands and geometric patterns of brown Tennessee, and edgings of yellow mosaic. It will be seen at once that the design is harmonious with the lines of the arcade and the ceiling. These are not slavishly mimicked, but are developed, varied, and extended. Sometimes a circle is used to draw together two opposite arches; sometimes a square echoes the pattern of the ceiling; lines of beaming--as they may be called in an easy metaphor--connect opposite piers; and finally the boundaries of the corridor are outlined in a broad border enclosing the whole. It has been said that in hardly any other building in the country has so much pains been taken by the architect to make the lines of his floor designs consistent with those of the architecture and the general decorative scheme. Throughout the Library, wherever marble or mosaic is used for this purpose, the visitor will find this phase of the ornamentation of the building of the highest interest and importance.

=The Staircase Hall.=--The floor of the Staircase Hall, into which one passes next, is an excellent example of this point. Besides the marble, the pattern contains a number of modelled and incised brass inlays. The one in the centre is a large rayed disc, or conventional sun, on which are noted the four cardinal points of the compass, which coincide with the direction of the main axes of the Library. The disc thus performs the same service for the building--only more picturesquely and vividly--as an arrow-head cross for a chart or plan. From the sun as a centre proceeds a great circular glory--or “scale pattern,” as it is technically, and more descriptively, called--of alternate red and yellow Italian marble, the former from Verona and the latter from Sienna. Other inlays are arranged in a hollow square, enclosing the sun as a centrepiece. Twelve represent the signs of the zodiac; the others are in the form of rosettes, in two patterns. They are embedded in blocks of dark red, richly mottled, French marble, around which are borders of pure white Italian marble.

=The Commemorative Arch.=--On the easterly side of the Staircase Hall, on the way to the Reading Room, the regularity of the arcade is interrupted by a portico of equal height, which does duty as a sort of miniature triumphal arch, commemorating the erection of the Library. The spandrels contain two sculptured figures in marble by the late Olin L. Warner, the sculptor of the bronze doors previously described. Along the frieze are the words LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, inscribed in tall gilt letters. A second inscription, giving the names of those concerned in the erection of the Library, is cut upon the marble tablet which forms part of the parapet above. It is flanked by lictors’ axes and eagles, sculptured in marble, and reads as follows:

ERECTED UNDER THE ACTS OF CONGRESS OF
APRIL 15 1886 OCTOBER 2 1888 AND MARCH 2 1889 BY
BRIG. GEN. THOS. LINCOLN CASEY
CHIEF OF ENGINEERS U. S. A.

BERNARD R. GREEN SUPT. AND ENGINEER
JOHN L. SMITHMEYER ARCHITECT
PAUL J. PELZ ARCHITECT
EDWARD PEARCE CASEY ARCHITECT

=Mr. Warner’s Spandrel Figures.=--Mr. Warner’s figures in the spandrels of this commemorative arch are life-size, and are entitled _The Students_. Both figures--one in either spandrel--are represented in an easy, but dignified and sculptural attitude, leaning on one arm against the curve of the arch. That to the left is of a young man seeking to acquire from books a knowledge of the experience of the past. That to the right is an old man with flowing beard, absorbed in meditation. He is no longer concerned so much with books as with observation of life and with original reflection and thought. The sculptor has thus naturally indicated the development of a scholar’s mind, from youth to old age. As an ornament of the approach to the Reading Room, the appropriateness of the figures is obvious.

Within the arch, the pier on either side is decorated with a bit of relief work, consisting of the seal of the United States flanked by sea-horses, by Mr. Philip Martiny. It is Mr. Martiny’s sculpture, also, which ornaments the staircase, the coved ceiling, and the lower spandrels of the Staircase Hall. With the exception of Mr. Warner’s figures, just described, and of a series of cartouches and corner eagles which occupy the spandrels of the second-story arcade--the work of Mr. Weinert--Mr. Martiny has this central hall to himself, so far as the sculpture is concerned.

=Mr. Martiny’s Staircase Figures.=--The spandrels in the first story are unusually delicate and pretty. The design comprises wreaths of roses and oak and laurel leaves, with oak or palm for a background. It is in the staircases, however, that Mr. Martiny’s work is most varied and elaborate. On the piers between which they descend into the hall, he has sculptured a striking female head of the classic type, with a garland below and a kind of foliated arabesque on either side. Upon the newel post which terminates the railing of each staircase is placed a bronze female figure upholding a torch for electric lights. The two figures are somewhat taller than life, measuring six and a half feet, or eight feet to the top of the torch, and ten feet including the rounded bronze base on which they stand. Each has a laurel wreath about her head, and is clad in classic drapery.

Halfway up the staircase is a sort of buttress, which serves as a pedestal for a group representing, on the south side of the hall, Africa and America, and on the other side, Europe and Asia. The four continents are typified, very delightfully, by little boys, about three feet high, seated by the side of a large marble globe, on which appear the portions of the earth’s surface which they are intended to personify. _America_ is an Indian, with a tall headdress of feathers, a bow and arrow, and a wampum necklace. With one hand he shades his eyes while he gazes intently into the distance, awaiting, one may fancy, the coming of his conqueror, the white man. _Africa_ is a little negro, with a war-club and his savage necklace of wild beasts’ claws. _Asia_ is a Mongolian, dressed in flowing silk robes, the texture of which, as the visitor will notice, is very perfectly indicated by arranging the folds of the marble so that they receive the proper play of light and shade. In the background is a sort of dragon-shaped jar of porcelain. _Europe_ is clad in the conventional classic costume, and has a lyre and a book; and a Doric column is introduced beside him--the three objects symbolizing, specifically, Music, Literature, and Architecture, and, more broadly, the pre-eminence of the Caucasian races in the arts of civilization generally, just as the dragon-jar on the other side of the globe stands for the admirable ceramic art of China and Japan; and, also, as the wampum and bow of the Indian indicate his advance in culture over the stage of evolution typified by the rude war-club and savage necklace of the negro.

The balustrade of the top landing on either side is ornamented with the figures of three children in relief representing certain of the Fine Arts. In the south staircase, beginning at the left as one looks up from the floor, are _Comedy_, _Poetry_, and _Tragedy_. The first has a comic mask and the thyrsus or ivy-wreathed wand of Bacchus, to whom the first comedies were dedicated. _Poetry_ has a scroll, and _Tragedy_ the tragic mask. Opposite, the figures, taking them again from left to right, represent _Painting_, with palette and brushes; _Architecture_, with compasses and a scroll, and behind him the pediment of a Greek temple; and _Sculpture_, modelling a statuette.

In the ascending railing of each staircase Mr. Martiny has introduced a series of eight marble figures in high relief. These, also, are of little boys, and represent various occupations, habits and pursuits of modern life. The procession is bound together by a garland hanging in heavy festoons, and beneath is a heavy laurel roll. In the centre the series is interrupted by the group on the buttress just described. At the bottom it begins quaintly with the figure of a stork. Thence, on the south side of the hall, the list of subjects is as follows: A Mechanician, with a cog-wheel, a pair of pincers, and a crown of laurel, signifying the triumphs of invention; a Hunter, with his gun, holding up by the ears a rabbit which he has just shot; an infant Bacchanalian, with Bacchus’s ivy and panther skin, hilariously holding a champagne glass in one hand; a Farmer, with a sickle and a sheaf of wheat; a Fisherman, with rod and reel, taking from his hook a fish which he has landed; a little Mars, polishing a helmet; a Chemist, with a blow-pipe; and a Cook, with a pot smoking hot from the fire.

In the north staircase are: A Gardener, with spade and rake; an Entomologist, with a specimen-box slung over his shoulder, running to catch a butterfly in his net; a Student, with a book in his hand and a mortar-board cap on his head; a Printer, with types, a press, and a type-case; a Musician, with a lyre by his side, studying the pages of a music book; a Physician, grinding drugs in a mortar, with a retort beside him, and the serpent sacred to medicine; an Electrician, with a star of electric rays shining on his brow and a telephone receiver at his ear; and lastly, an Astronomer, with a telescope, and a globe encircled by the signs of the zodiac which he is measuring by the aid of a pair of compasses.

=The Ceiling of the Staircase Hall.=--Beneath the second-story cartouches on the east and west sides of the hall are tablets inscribed in gilt letters with the names of the following authors: Longfellow, Tennyson, Gibbon, Cooper, Scott, Hugo, Cervantes. A single moulding in the marble cornice above is touched with gold, as an introduction to the rich coloring and profuse use of gilding in the coved ceiling which it supports. The cove itself is of stucco, and is painted blue--the color of the sky, which it is intended to suggest--with yellow penetrations. These penetrations are outlined by a heavy gilt moulding, and give space for ten semicircular latticed windows opening into the rooms of the attic story. In the centre of each penetration is painted a white tablet supported by dolphins, and bearing the name of some illustrious author--Dante, Homer, Milton, Bacon, Aristotle, Goethe, Shakespeare, Molière, Moses, and Herodotus. In each corner of the cove are two female half-figures, as they are called, supporting a cartouche, on which are a lamp and a book, the conventional symbols of learning. The figures and cartouche are of stucco, and were modelled by Mr. Martiny. Around them the cove is sprinkled with stars. Higher up are the figures of flying geniuses, two in each corner, painted by Mr. Frederick C. Martin, of Mr. Garnsey’s staff.

Between the penetrations, the curve of the cove is carried upon heavy gilt ribs, richly ornamented with bands of fruit. In the spandrel-shaped spaces thus formed on either side, Mr. Martin has painted another series of geniuses, which, by reason of the symbolical objects which accompany them, reflect very pleasantly the intention of Mr. Martiny’s sculpture in the staircases below. The significance of most of the things they bear is obvious. Beginning at the southwest corner, and going to the right, the list is as follows: a pair of Pan’s pipes; a pair of cymbals; a caduceus, or Mercury’s staff; a bow and arrows; a shepherd’s crook and pipes; a tambourine; a palette and brushes; a torch; a clay statuette and a sculptor’s tool; a bundle of books; a triangle; a second pair of pipes; a lyre; a palm branch and wreath (the rewards of success); a trumpet; a guitar; a compass and block of paper (for Architecture); a censer (for Religion); another torch; and a scythe and hour-glass--the attributes of Father Time.

The ceiling proper rests upon a white stylobate supported on the cove. It is divided by heavy beams, elaborately panelled, and ornamented with a profusion of gilding, and contains six large skylights, the design of which is a scale pattern, chiefly in blues and yellows, recalling the arrangement in the marble flooring beneath.

=First Floor Corridors: the Mosaic Vaults.=--The North, South, and East Corridors on the first floor of the Entrance Hall are panelled in Italian marble to the height of eleven feet, and have floors of white, blue, and brown (Italian, Vermont, and Tennessee) marble, and beautiful vaulted ceilings of marble mosaic. These last will immediately attract the attention of the visitor. The working cartoons were made by Mr. Herman T. Schladermundt from preliminary designs by Mr. Casey as architect. The body of the design is in a light, warm grayish tone, relieved by richly ornamental bands of brown which follow pretty closely the architectural lines of the vaulting--springing from pier to pier or outlining the penetrations and pendentives. In all three corridors tablets bearing the names of distinguished men are introduced as a part of the ornament, and in the East Corridor are a number of discs, about eighteen inches in diameter, on which are depicted “trophies,” as they are called, emblematic of various arts and sciences, each being made up of a group of representative objects such as the visitor has seen used to distinguish the subjects of Mr. Martiny’s staircase figures.

The method of making and setting such a mosaic ceiling is interesting enough to be described. The artist’s cartoon is made full size and in the exact colors desired. The design, color and all, is carefully transferred by sections to thicker paper, which is then covered with a coating of thin glue. On this the workman carefully fits his material, laying each stone smooth side down. The ceiling itself is covered with a layer of cement, to which the mosaic is applied. The paper is then soaked off, and the design pounded in as evenly as possible, pointed off, and oiled. As the visitor may see, however, it is not polished, like a mosaic floor, but is left a little rough in order to give full value to the texture of the stone.

At the east end of the North and South Corridors is a large semi-elliptical tympanum, twenty-two feet long. Along the walls are smaller tympanums, below the penetrations of the vault. At the west end, over the arch of the window, is a semicircular border. These spaces are occupied by a series of paintings--in the North Corridor by Mr. Charles Sprague Pearce, and in the South Corridor by Mr. H. O. Walker. Like most of the special mural decorations in the Library, they are executed in oils on canvas, which is afterwards affixed to the wall by a composition of whitelead.

=Mr. Pearce’s Paintings.=--Mr. Pearce’s decorations are seven in number. The subject of the large tympanum at the east end is _The Family_.[6] The smaller panels along the north wall, taking them from left to right, are entitled _Religion_, _Labor_, _Study_, and _Recreation_. The single painting on the south side of the corridor, occurring opposite the panel of _Recreation_, represents _Rest_. The broad, arched border at the west end contains two female figures floating in the air and holding between them a large scroll on which is inscribed the sentence, from Confucius: “Give instruction unto those who cannot procure it for themselves.”

The series, as seen by the list of titles just given, illustrates the main phases of a pleasant and well-ordered life. The whole represents the kind of idyllic existence so often imagined by the poets--showing a people living in an Arcadian country in a state of primitive simplicity, but possessing the arts and habits of a refined cultivation. This life is very well summed up in the first of Mr. Pearce’s paintings--that representing _The Family_. The subject is the return of the head of the household to his family, after a day spent in hunting. He stands in the centre, his bow not yet unstrung, receiving a welcome home. His aged mother, with her hands clasped over the head of her staff, looks up from the rock on which she is sitting, and the gray-bearded father lays aside the scroll in which he has been reading. The hunter’s little girl has hold of his garment, and his wife holds out his baby son. An older daughter leans her elbow against a tree. The scene is in the open air, at the mouth of a cave, with a view beyond into a wooded valley bounded by high mountains.

The smaller tympanums illustrate the simple occupations and relaxations of such an existence as is here depicted. _Recreation_ shows two girls in a glade of the forest playing upon a pipe and a tambourine. In the panel of _Study_, a girl, sitting with her younger companion on a great rock, is instructing her with the aid of a book and compasses and paper. _Labor_ is represented by two young men working in the fields. One is removing the stump of a tree, and the other is turning over the newly cleared soil to fit it for planting. In _Religion_, a young man and a girl are kneeling before a blazing altar constructed of two stones, one set upon the other. In _Rest_, two young women are sitting quietly beside a pool, where they have come with their earthen jars for water.

The penetrations in the vault of Mr. Pearce’s corridor contain the names of men distinguished for their work in furthering the cause of education: Froebel, Pestalozzi, Comenius, Ascham, Howe, Gallaudet, Mann, Arnold, Spencer. It is of some interest to note that among the hundreds of names inscribed in the Library only three are those of men still living. Herbert Spencer, the last-named in the list just given, is one, and the other two are Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Edison.

=Mr. Walker’s Paintings.=--The general subject of Mr. Walker’s decorations is _Lyric Poetry_. Like Mr. Pearce’s, in the corresponding position, the painting in the large tympanum at the east end of the corridor sums up in a general way the subject of the whole series. The scene is a wood, with a vista beyond into a wide and open champagne. Down the centre a brook comes tumbling and splashing over its rocky bed. Although wild, and thus suggestive, perhaps, of the inspiration of poetry, the landscape purposely has, as a whole, a touch of artfulness, hinting therefore at the formalities of metre and rhyme. The titles of the figures which enter into the composition--all, with one exception, those of women--are named in the conventional border with which the artist has enclosed his painting. The figure standing boldly forward in the centre represents Lyric Poetry. She is crowned with a wreath of laurel, and is touching the strings of a lyre. The feelings which most commonly inspire her song are personified on either side. To her left are Pathos, looking upward, as if calling on Heaven to allay her grief; Truth, a beautiful nude woman (the Naked Truth) standing securely upright, and seeming by her gesture to exhort the central figure not to exceed the bounds of natural feeling; and in the corner of the tympanum, Devotion, sitting absorbed in contemplation. On the other side of the panel are Passion, with an eager look, and her arms thrown out in a movement at once graceful and enraptured; Beauty, sitting calmly self-contained; and Mirth, the naked figure of a little boy, inviting her to join his play.

For the smaller tympanums, Mr. Walker has taken single youthful male figures suggested by various poems by English and American poets--on the south side of the corridor, Tennyson, Keats, Wordsworth, and Emerson, and on the north side, Milton and Shakespeare. Although not always from lyrics, the general spirit of the scene selected is invariably lyrical. The first painting shows Ganymede upon the back of the eagle--the form taken by Jupiter when he brought the boy from his earthly home to be the cup-bearer of the gods. The lines referred to are in Tennyson’s _Palace of Art_:--

Flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh
Half-buried in the Eagle’s down,
Sole as a flying star shot thro’ the sky
Above the pillar’d town.

The next panel represents Endymion, in Keats’s poem of that name, lying asleep on Mount Latmos, with his lover, Diana, the Moon, shining down upon him. The painter, however, had no special passage of the poem in mind.

The third panel is based on Wordsworth’s lines beginning, “There was a Boy.” A boy is seated by the side of a lake the surface of which reflects the stars:--

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander!--many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him....
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

For Emerson, Mr. Walker has selected the poem of _Uriel_, representing the angel retired in scorn from his companions, on account of the anger with which they have received his proposition:--

Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.

In the selection of this subject, Mr. Walker has commemorated Emerson in a very interesting personal way--for the poem was written soon after the famous Phi Beta Kappa oration of 1838, and is understood to voice Emerson’s feelings regarding the storm of opposition which that address had called forth.

Milton is represented by a scene out of the masque of _Comus_--the vile enchanter Comus (in the guise of a shepherd) entranced at hearing the song of the Lady. The words which he speaks in the poem, and which Mr. Walker seeks to illustrate in his painting, are as follows:--

Can any mortal mixture of earth’s mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?

In Shakespeare, the artist has gone to _Venus and Adonis_, showing the dead body of Adonis, killed by the boar, lying naked in the forest. The painting refers to no particular lines in the poem.

The broad border at the west end is occupied by an idyllic summer landscape containing three seated female figures and a youth--the two figures to the left, one of them caressing a lamb, representing the more joyful moods of lyric poetry, and the other two its more solemn feelings. At the top is a streamer, with the words, from Wordsworth:--

The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!

In the mosaic of the vault are the names of lyric poets, six Americans occupying the penetrations on the north side: Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, Whitman, Poe; and the following English and foreign or ancient lyrists along the centre of the vault and in the south penetrations: Browning, Shelley, Byron, Musset, Hugo, Heine, Theocritus, Pindar, Anacreon, Sappho, Catullus, Horace, Petrarch, Ronsard.

=Mr. Alexander’s Paintings.=--In the East Corridor are six tympanums of the same size as the smaller panels of Mr. Walker and Mr. Pearce, by Mr. John W. Alexander, illustrating _The Evolution of the Book_. The subjects are, at the south end, _The Cairn_, _Oral Tradition_, and _Egyptian Hieroglyphics_; and at the north end, _Picture Writing_, _The Manuscript Book_, and _The Printing Press_. In the first of these, a company of primitive men, clad in skins, are raising a heap of stones on the seashore, perhaps as a memorial of some dead comrade, or to commemorate some fortunate event, or, perhaps, merely as a record to let others know the stages of their journey. In the second panel, an Arabian story-teller stands relating his marvellous tales in the centre of a circle of seated Arabs. The third shows a scaffolding swung in front of the portal of a newly erected Egyptian temple. A young Egyptian workman is cutting a hieroglyphic inscription over the door, while an Egyptian girl, his sweetheart, sits watching the work beside him. _Picture Writing_ represents a young American Indian, with a rudely shaped saucer of red paint beside him, depicting some favorite story of his tribe upon a dressed and smoothed deer-skin. An Indian girl lies near him, attentively following every stroke of his brush. The next panel gives the interior of a convent cell, with a monk, seated in the feeble light of a small window, laboriously illuminating in bright colors the pages of a great folio book. The last of the series shows Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, in his office: the master, with his assistant beside him, examining a proof-sheet, and discussing the principle of his great invention. To the right is an apprentice, swaying upon the handle-bar of the rude press.

=Mosaic Decorations of the East Corridor.=--The various trophies already spoken of as ornamenting the mosaic of the vault of the East Corridor are ten in number, each occurring in one of the pendentives, at the ends and along the sides. Below each are the names of two Americans (only those actually born in the United States being included) eminent in the art or science typified. The list of trophies, with the names, is as follows: Architecture (the capital of an Ionic column, with a mallet and chisel), Latrobe and Walter; Natural Philosophy (a crucible and pair of balances, etc.), Cooke and Silliman; Music (a lyre, flute, horn, and music-sheet), Mason and Gottschalk; Painting (a sketch-book, palette, and brushes), Stuart and Allston; Sculpture (the torso of a statue), Powers and Crawford; Astronomy (a celestial globe), Bond and Rittenhouse; Engineering (including an anchor, protractor, level, etc.), Francis and Stevens; Poetry (a youth bestriding Pegasus), Emerson and Holmes; Natural Science (a microscope and a sea-horse), Say and Dana; Mathematics (a compass and counting-frame), Peirce and Bowditch. In the vault proper is inscribed a list of names of Americans distinguished in the three learned professions: under Medicine, Cross, Wood, McDowell, Rush, Warren; under Theology, Brooks, Edwards, Mather, Channing, Beecher; and under Law, Curtis, Webster, Hamilton, Kent, Pinkney, Shaw, Taney, Marshall, Story, and Gibson.

From the East Corridor, entrance to the basement may be had through a little lobby with a domed mosaic ceiling under either of the main staircases. At the north end of the corridor is the Librarian’s Room, and at the south end are a toilet-room for ladies and a cloak-room. The little lobby of the latter is especially bright and attractive, with deep, velvety red walls, a high arabesque frieze, and ceiling decorations of lyres and a disc containing a large honeysuckle ornament.

=The Librarian’s Room.=--The Librarian’s Room is one of the most beautifully finished of any in the Library. It is divided into two by a broad, open arch, leaving the office proper on one side, and a smaller, more private office, with a gallery above, on the other. The fittings are in oak, with oak bookcases. The windows look out upon the Northwest Court. The gallery has a groined ceiling, and over the main office is a shallow dome, with stucco ornamentation in low relief by Mr. Weinert. Standing in a ring around a central disc are the figures of Grecian girls, from two slightly differing models, holding a continuous garland. Other ornaments are gilded tablets and square or hexagonal panels, bearing an owl, a book, or an antique lamp. The central disc is occupied by a painting by Mr. Edward J. Holslag, already spoken of as the foreman of Mr. Garnsey’s staff, representing _Letters_--the seated figure of a beautiful woman holding a scroll in her hand and accompanied by a child with a torch. The following Latin sentence is inscribed in a streamer: _Litera scripta manet_.

In the pendentives of the dome, Mr. Weinert has modelled a figure, about two feet in height, of a boy holding a palm-branch and blowing a trumpet. Like the ring of girls in the dome, the figures are of an alternating design. Above each is a circular panel with the half-length figure of a woman, painted by Mr. Holslag. The four decorations are intended to supplement, in a general way, the idea of Mr. Holslag’s ceiling disc; one of the figures, for example, holds a book, another a lute (for the musical quality of literature), and so on. Each painting contains a Latin inscription, as follows:--_Liber dilectatio animae_; _Efficiunt clarum studio_; _Dulces ante omnia Musae_; _In tenebris lux_.

The color scheme adopted for the room is chiefly green. A green tinge is used in the dome to emphasize the outline of the ornament, and green, on a blue ground, predominates in the arabesques contained in the tympanums below. The design of these last--where complete, that is, for the tympanums are variously intercepted by door- and window-arches--is a pleasant little study of the evolution of the poet. At the bottom, a little boy is playing a pastoral tune on his oaten pipe; above, two little trumpeters blare at him to join them in the joy of battle; and at the top, a fourth child, the full-fledged bard, sits astride his modern hobby-horse. The centre of the decoration shows either a Pegasus or a Pandora, the latter opening the famous box containing all the ills which plague mankind, and only Hope for a blessing.

=The Lobbies of the Rotunda.=--Beyond the East Corridor, and separated from it by an arcade, is the broad passageway leading to the Reading Room. The entrance for visitors, however, is by way of the second story, the doors on the library floor being open only to those desiring to consult books. The passageway is divided by a second arcade into two transverse lobbies. The ceiling of each is vaulted, with a mosaic design of much the same pattern as those in the corridors already described.

The second lobby is the immediate vestibule of the Reading Room, and contains the two main passenger elevators, one at either end. They start at the basement and ascend to the attic story, where, among other rooms, are a commodious and well-equipped kitchen and restaurant for the use of visitors and students, and the attendants in the Library.

=Mr. Vedder’s Paintings.=--The lobby contains five tympanums, of the same size as Mr. Alexander’s, which are filled by a series of paintings by Mr. Elihu Vedder, illustrating, in a single word, _Government_. Small as it is, the little lobby offers the painter one of the most significant opportunities in the whole interior; work here placed, in an apartment of the Library which serves at once as elevator-hall and as vestibule to the Main Reading Room, can hardly fail to attract the attention of everyone passing through the building. It could not be more conspicuous anywhere outside the central Reading Room, and the selection of such a subject as Government is therefore peculiarly appropriate. In every sort of library the fundamental thing is the advancement of learning--illustrated in the Reading Room dome, as the visitor will see later--but in a library supported by the nation the idea of government certainly comes next in importance.

The painting in the central tympanum, over the door leading into the Reading Room, is entitled simply _Government_. It represents the abstract conception of a republic as the ideal state, ideally presented. The other tympanums explain the practical working of government, and the results which follow a corrupt or a virtuous rule. The figures in these four tympanums are therefore appropriately conceived somewhat more realistically. The decoration to the left of the central tympanum illustrates _Corrupt Legislation_, leading to _Anarchy_, as shown in the tympanum at the end of the lobby, over the elevator. Similarly, on the other side, _Good Administration_ leads to _Peace and Prosperity_. In all five, the composition consists of a central female figure, representing the essential idea of the design, attended by two other figures which supplement and confirm this idea.

In the first painting, _Government_, the central figure is that of a grave and mature woman sitting on a marble seat or throne, which is supported on posts whose shape is intended to recall the antique voting-urn--a symbol which recurs, either by suggestion or actually, in each of the other four tympanums. The meaning is, of course, that a democratic form of government depends for its safety upon the maintenance of a pure and inviolate ballot. The throne is extended on either side into a bench, which rests, at each end, upon a couchant lion, with a mooring-ring in his mouth, signifying that the ship of state must be moored to strength. The goddess--for so, perhaps, she is to be considered--is crowned with a wreath, and holds in her left hand a golden sceptre (the Golden Rule), by which the artist means to point out that no permanent good can accrue to a government by injuring another. With her right hand she supports a tablet inscribed with the words, from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “A government of the people, by the people, for the people.” To the right and left stand winged youths or geniuses, the first holding a bridle, which stands for the restraining influence of order, and the other with a sword with which to defend the State in time of danger, or, if one chooses, the sword of justice--it may be taken either way. The background of the group is the thick foliage of an oak tree, emblematic of strength and stability.

In the second panel, _Corrupt Legislation_ is represented by a woman with a beautiful but depraved face sitting in an abandoned attitude on a throne the arms of which are cornucopias overflowing with the coin which is the revenue of the State. But this revenue is represented not as flowing outward, for the use and good of the people, but all directed toward the woman herself. The artist’s idea was that when revenue is so abundant, as here depicted, that it greatly exceeds the needs of government, then government becomes a temptation to all kinds of corrupt practices. The path in front of the throne is disused and overgrown with weeds, showing that under such a corrupt government the people have abandoned a direct approach to Justice. With her right hand, the woman waves away, with a contemptuous gesture, a poorly clad girl--representing Labor--who comes, showing her empty distaff and spindle, in search of the work which should be hers by right, but which she cannot obtain under a government inattentive to the wrongs of the people. In her left hand the woman holds a sliding scale--used as being more easily susceptible of fraud than a pair of balances, and the proper emblem therefore of the sort of justice in which she deals. A rich man is placing in it a bag of gold; he sits confidently beside her, secure of her favors in return for his bribe. At his feet are other bags of gold and a strong box, together with an overturned voting-urn filled with ballots, signifying his corrupt control of the very sources of power. In his lap he holds the book of Law, which he is skilled to pervert to his own ends. In the background are his factories, the smoke of their chimneys testifying to his prosperity. On the other side the factories are smokeless and idle, showing a strike or shut-down; and the earthen jar in which the savings of Labor have been hoarded lies broken at her feet.

The logical conclusion of such government is _Anarchy_. She is represented entirely nude, raving upon the ruins of the civilization she has destroyed. In one hand she holds the wine cup which makes mad, and in the other the incendiary torch, formed of the scroll of learning. Serpents twist in her dishevelled hair, and she tramples upon a scroll, a lyre, a Bible, and a book--the symbols, respectively, of Learning, Art, Religion, and Law. Beneath her feet are the dislocated portions of an arch. To the right, Violence, his eyes turned to gaze upon the cup of madness, is prying out the corner-stone of a temple. To the left, Ignorance, a female figure, with dull, brutish face, is using a surveyor’s staff to precipitate the wreckage of civilization into the chasm which opens in the foreground. Beyond, lying in an uncultivated field, are a broken mill-wheel and a millstone. But the end of such violence is clearly indicated; no sooner shall the corner-stone be pried from the wall than the temple will fall and crush the destroyers; and beside the great block on which Anarchy has placed her foot lies a bomb, with a lighted fuse attached. Such a condition, says the painting, must inevitably contain the seeds of its own destruction.

On the other side of the central tympanum, _Good Administration_ sits holding in her right hand a pair of scales evenly poised, and with her left laid upon a shield, quartered to represent the even balance of parties and classes which should obtain in a well ordered democracy; on this shield are emblazoned, as emblems of a just government, the weight, scales, and rule. The frame of her chair is an arch, a form of construction in which every stone performs an equal service--in which no shirking can exist--and therefore peculiarly appropriate to typify the equal part which all should take in a democratic form of government. On the right is a youth who casts his ballot into an urn. He carries some books under his arm, showing that education should be the basis of the suffrage. To the left is another voting-urn, into which a young girl is winnowing wheat, so that the good grains fall into its mouth while the chaff is scattered by the wind--an action symbolical of the care with which a people should choose its public servants. In the background is a field of wheat, a last touch in this picture of intelligence and virtue, and, in itself, symbolical of prosperous and careful toil.

In the last panel, that of _Peace and Prosperity_, the central figure is crowned with olive, the emblem of peace, and holds in her hands olive-wreaths to be bestowed as the reward of excellence. On either side is a youth, the one to her right typifying the Arts, and the other, Agriculture. The former sits upon an amphora or jar, and is engaged in decorating a piece of pottery; behind him is a lyre, for Music, and in the distance a little Grecian temple, for Architecture. The other is planting a sapling,--an act suggestive of a tranquil, just, and permanent government, under which alone one could plant with any hope of enjoying the shade and fruit of after years. The background of the picture is a well-wooded and fertile landscape, introduced for much the same purpose as the wheat-field in the preceding tympanum.

Still another piece of symbolism is expressed in this interesting series of pictures by the trees, their foliage forming the background against which the central figure is placed. The oak in the central panel has been spoken of. In the design representing _Peace and Prosperity_, an olive-tree typifies not only Peace but Spring; in the next panel, that of _Good Administration_, the tree is the fig, and the season summer; in that of _Corrupt Legislation_, the autumnal vine, hinting at a too abundant luxury, and with its falling leaves presaging decay; and in that of _Anarchy_, bare branches and Winter.

=The Second Floor Corridors.=--Returning again to the Entrance Hall proper, the visitor may most conveniently continue his tour of the Library by ascending the Grand Staircase to the beautifully decorated corridors of the second-story arcade, on his way to the public galleries of the Main Reading Room. The corridors are arranged like those which the visitor has already passed through on the first floor, but their greater height and the brighter tone of the decoration give an effect of considerably greater spaciousness.

=The Decoration of the Vaults.=--The floors of the corridors are laid in mosaic of varying patterns. The ceilings are uniformly a barrel vault, with pendentives--the same, that is, as those of the North, East, and South Corridors below. The vaults are covered with a painted decoration of Renaissance ornament which for variety and interest is hardly surpassed anywhere else in the building. The decorative scheme which has been adopted was planned throughout by Mr. Casey, and elaborated, especially in the matter of color, and carried into effect, by Mr. Garnsey, working under Mr. Casey’s direction. In addition, each corridor contains, as a distinctive accent of color and design, a series of paintings by a specially commissioned artist--in the West Corridor by Mr. Walter Shirlaw, in the North Corridor by Mr. Robert Reid, in the East Corridor by Mr. George R. Barse, Jr., and in the South Corridor by Mr. Frank W. Benson. In the side corridors, also, at the west end, the arch of the vault is spanned by a broad band of stucco ornament containing a series of octagonal coffers, ornamented in relief by Mr. Hinton Perry.

The decoration is varied, of course, from corridor to corridor, in order to prevent any monotony of impression, but the main principles on which it is based are everywhere the same. Thus the color scheme--which was suggested in part by the beautiful Library in Sienna--comprises in every corridor blue in the pendentives, golden yellow in the penetrations, and a grayish white in the body of the vault. The only exception to this rule is in the West and East Corridors, which are terminated by double arches instead of ending directly upon a wall. Here the end penetrations are red and the pendentive yellow. The others remain as before. The delineation of the spaces is at bottom very simple, and though more elaborate, a good deal like that already noted in describing the mosaic in the lower corridors. The penetrations are outlined by a bright colored border, on which, where the lines converge to a point at the top, rests a border of greater width, enclosing the entire vault in a single great rectangle. This, in turn, is divided into compartments by bands of ornament, varying in number according to the requirements of the decoration, but always occurring immediately over the columns of the arcade. These bands, coming where they do, perform a vital service for the decoration in continually reminding the visitor, if only by a painted arabesque, of the importance of the arch in such a piece of construction as a vault. In the spaces between them are garlands and wreaths, and panels for paintings and inscriptions--the whole making part of one great arabesque, which is as easily intelligible and coherent as it is various, but which would have been bewildering in its wealth of ornament and color if it had not been for the fundamental service performed by these various bands and borders and broad masses of color.

The penetrations and pendentives are richly embellished with a great variety of ornament, both conventional and otherwise. The treatment differs in different corridors, however, on account of the varying relative position of the paired columns which support the arcade--from which results first a series of wide and then a series of narrow pendentives. Where the former occur--in the West and East Corridors--they are ornamented with the decorations of Mr. Shirlaw and Mr. Barse; while the narrower pendentives on the north and south carry simple medallions and tablets, and Mr. Reid’s and Mr. Benson’s paintings find place in the arabesque of the ceiling vault and in circular frames along the wall beneath. The balance is restored, however, by introducing a series of medallions, corresponding to Mr. Benson’s and Mr. Reid’s, though smaller and of less importance, in the vaults east and west, and by ornamenting the penetrations in the side corridors with greater richness and elaboration.

=The Printers’ Marks.=--The most interesting decoration of the penetrations, however, is a series of “Printers’ Marks” which is continued through all four corridors. Altogether there are fifty-six of them--sixteen in each of the side corridors, ten in the West Corridor, and fourteen in the East Corridor. They are painted in black outline, and are of a sufficient size, averaging about a foot and a half in height, to be easily made out from the floor. By a printer’s mark, it should be explained, is meant the engraved device which the old printers used in the title-page or colophon of their books, partly as a kind of informal trade-mark guarding against counterfeited editions, and partly as a personal emblem, such as a publisher of good standing would like to see on a long list of worthy books. For this latter reason, and in order to be able to add an interesting piece of ornament to the title-page, the mark has been revived of late years by a considerable number of modern publishing and printing houses.