TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the [end of the book.]

THE NEW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

HANDBOOK
OF THE NEW
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

COMPILED BY HERBERT SMALL

WITH ESSAYS ON THE

ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE and PAINTING

By CHARLES CAFFIN

AND ON

THE FUNCTION OF A NATIONAL LIBRARY

By AINSWORTH R. SPOFFORD

BOSTON

CURTIS & CAMERON

1897

COPYRIGHT 1897 BY CURTIS & CAMERON

The Heintzemann Press

BOSTON

[PREFACE.]

The intention of this Handbook is to furnish such an account of the new building of the Library of Congress as may prove of interest to the general reader, and at the same time serve as a convenient guide to actual visitors. To this latter end, a system of headings and sub-headings has been introduced, and the building has been described throughout in the order in which a visitor might naturally walk through it. Criticism has been avoided in the general description, but a brief survey of the artistic qualities of the Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting is given in Mr. Caffin’s supplementary essay.

The writer had intended at first to give rather a full account of the collections of the Library, of the Smithsonian system of exchange, of the operation of the copyright law, and of the general system under which the Library was carried on. So much of what he might have thus described, however, would have been entirely changed, and so much more considerably modified, by the new methods of administration made possible and necessary by the new building, that it was decided to pass lightly over all matters connected with the administration of the Library. Should another edition of the Handbook be called for, it is hoped that there will be an opportunity to supply this omission. In the meantime it will be found that Mr. Spofford’s paper on the Function of a National Library will serve to indicate the general scope of the institution.

The writer desires to express his great obligation, for much information and courtesy, to Mr. Bernard R. Green, in charge of the Library during the time that this book was preparing, to Mr. Edward Pearce Casey, and to Mr. Spofford. Without their assistance the book could hardly have been written. Thanks are due, also, to many of the individual artists for their courtesy in explaining the meaning and application of their work—and in particular to Mr. Elmer E. Garnsey, for a great deal of painstaking assistance.

H. S.

Copyright Notice:—In addition to the general copyright of this Handbook, which covers the text and illustrations, the engravings of the paintings in the following pages are from Copley Prints, copyright 1896 and 1897, by Curtis & Cameron, the Prints being made directly from the original paintings, copyright 1896 and 1897 by the several artists.

[TABLE OF HEADINGS.]

MINERVA
1896 DESIGN FOR A MOSAIC BY ELIHU VEDDER
CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY WASHINGTON

THE NEW

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

IN WASHINGTON

BY HERBERT SMALL

THE NEW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS IN WASHINGTON
BY HERBERT SMALL

The Library of Congress in Washington is not the mere reference library for the legislative branch of the Government that its name would imply. It is, in effect, the library of the whole American people, directly serving the interests of the entire country. It was, it is true, founded for the use of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives; but, although the original rule still holds good that only they and certain specified Government officials may take books away from the building,[1] the institution has developed, especially during the last quarter of a century, into a library as comprehensively national as the British Museum in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, or the Imperial Library in Vienna. It is more freely open to the public than any of these, everyone of suitable age being permitted to use its collections without the necessity of a ticket or formal permission, while in scope it is their equal, however much it may for the time being be inferior to them in certain branches of learning. Its aim in the accumulation of books is inclusive and not exclusive, as Mr. Spofford explains elsewhere in this Handbook, in his article on [The Function of a National Library].

This development amounts almost to a change of front, in spite of the fact that the original purpose of the Library as an aid to the legislation and debates of Congress has been fully preserved. The change has been brought about in many ways, but principally by the exchange system of the great governmental scientific bureau, the Smithsonian Institution, and by the operation of the national copyright law.

The Smithsonian Institution issues each year a large number of scientific publications of the highest interest and importance. It distributes these throughout the world, receiving in exchange a body of scientific literature which comprehends practically everything of value issued by every scientific society of standing both in this country and abroad. With the exception of a small working library retained by the Smithsonian Institution for the immediate use of its officers, the splendid collection of material which has been gathered during the forty years in which this exchange system has been in operation is deposited in the Library of Congress, forming a scientific library unrivalled in this country.

By the operation of the copyright law, any publisher, author, or artist desiring to obtain an exclusive privilege of issuing any publication whatever, must send two copies of the publication on which a copyright is asked to the Librarian of Congress to be deposited in the Library. By this means, during the twenty-five years that the law has been in force, the Library has been enabled to accumulate approximately the entire current product of the American press, as well as an enormous number of photographs, engravings, and other works coming under the head of fine arts. The possession of this material would alone give the Library a special national character possible to no other library in the country.

HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY.

The Library of Congress was founded in the year 1800, about the time that the government was first established in Washington. Five thousand dollars was the first appropriation, made April 24, 1800, while Congress was still sitting in Philadelphia. Some of the Democratic Congressmen, as strict constructionists, opposed the idea of a governmental library, but their party leader, Thomas Jefferson, then President, warmly favored it. He called it, later in life, with a sort of prophetic instinct, the “Library of the United States,” and his support of it from the very beginning was so hearty and consistent that he may perhaps be regarded in the broad sense as the real founder of the institution.

The Library was shelved from the first in a portion of the Capitol building. The first catalogue was issued in April, 1802. It appears that there were then, in accordance with the old-fashioned method of dividing books according to size, not subject, 212 folios, 164 quartos, 581 octavos, 7 duodecimos, and 9 maps.

The Burning by the British Troops.—The War of 1812 wrecked the slender accumulations of the first dozen years of the Library’s existence. The collection was entirely destroyed by fire by the British troops which entered Washington August 24, 1814. The burning is described by a writer in an old magazine. “The British,” he says, “first occupied the Capitol, only the two wings of which were finished, and connected by a wooden passageway erected where the Rotunda now stands. The leading officers entered the House of Representatives, where Admiral Cockburn of the Royal Navy (who was co-operating with General Ross), seating himself in the Speaker’s chair, called the assemblage to order. ‘Gentlemen,’ shouted he, ‘the question is, Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned? All in favor of burning it will say Aye!’ There was a general affirmative response. And when he added, ‘Those opposed will say Nay,’ silence reigned for a moment. ‘Light up!’ cried the bold Briton; and the order was soon repeated in all parts of the building, while soldiers and sailors vied with each other in collecting combustible material for their incendiary fires. The books on the shelves of the Library of Congress were used as kindling for the north wing; and the much admired full-length portraits of Louis XVI. and his queen, Marie Antoinette, which had been presented by that unfortunate monarch to Congress, were torn from their frames and trampled under foot. Patrick Magruder, then Clerk of the House of Representatives and Librarian of Congress, subsequently endeavored to excuse himself from not having even attempted to save the books; but it was shown that the books and papers in the departments were saved, and that the Library might have been removed to a place of safety before the arrival of the British.”

The Acquisition of Jefferson’s Library.—Jefferson was then living in retirement at Monticello. He was in some financial difficulty at the time, and he offered the Government the largest portion of his library, comprising some 6,700 volumes, for the price which he had originally paid for them—$23,700. The offer was accepted by Congress, although it met with much opposition. Among those who objected to the bill were Daniel Webster, then a Representative from New Hampshire; while Cyrus King, a Federalist member of the House from Massachusetts, “vainly endeavored to have provision made for the rejection of all books of an atheistical, irreligious, and immoral tendency”—a curious example of the many attacks of a similar nature made upon Jefferson by his political opponents.

With Jefferson’s books as a nucleus, the Library of Congress began to make substantial gains. In 1832, a law library was established as a distinct department of the collection. At present it numbers some 85,000 volumes, but for the greater convenience of the Supreme Court, which sits in the old Senate Chamber of the Capitol, it has not been removed from its former quarters in that building. It is always reckoned, however, as a portion of the collection of the Library of Congress.

In 1850, the Library contained about 55,000 volumes. December 24, 1851, a fire broke out in the rooms in which it was shelved, consuming three-fifths of the whole collection, or about 35,000 volumes. A liberal appropriation for the purchase of books in place of those destroyed was made by Congress, and from that time to the present day the growth of the Library has been unchecked.

Mr. Spofford’s Administration.—In December, 1864, the present Librarian, Mr. Ainsworth Rand Spofford, was appointed by President Lincoln[2]. The general management of the Library has always been in the hands of a joint committee of Congress; but the membership of the committee is constantly changing, so that the Librarian is practically the real head and director of the institution. During the time that Mr. Spofford has occupied his position, not only has the growth of the collection been little short of marvellous, but so many changes of system have been introduced as almost completely to transform the old Library of half a century ago. The year following Mr. Spofford’s appointment, the previous copyright law was modified so as to require the deposit in the Library of Congress of a copy of every publication on which copyright was desired, the second copy required being deposited elsewhere. The administration of the law was still divided, however, in that each State had its own office for copyright—some States more than one—with the result that the volumes due the Government were sometimes received and sometimes not. There was no way to call the negligent publisher or author to account, for no single office contained the complete information necessary. Such system as existed was often invalidated by the carelessness of the officials—the Clerks of the United States District Courts—in charge in the various States. In 1870, therefore, Congress still further amended the copyright law by consolidating the entire department in the hands of the Librarian of Congress, as Registrar of Copyrights, with the provision that both copies of the publication copyrighted should go to the Library. Since then, the law has worked with perfect smoothness, and with the result of enormous additions to the Library—numbering, in the year 1896, no less than 55,906 publications of all kinds.

Naturally enough, therefore, the Library has grown in the last quarter of a century to be by far the largest in the country. In 1896 it contained, roughly estimated, 755,000 volumes of books, 250,000 pamphlets, 500,000 separate pieces of music, 25,000 maps, and 256,000 engravings, photographs, lithographs, etchings, photogravures, and pictorial illustrations in general.

The Old Quarters in the Capitol.—For many years the Library had been kept in the west front of the Capitol. Here there was provision for perhaps 350,000 volumes. With the great increase, the old quarters had long been utterly inadequate. The crypts in the basement of the Capitol afforded room for storage, but the hundreds of thousands of books, pieces of music, and engravings thus stored were for the most part entirely inaccessible to the student—a serious loss to the usefulness of the Library, in spite of the fact that, so far as the books were concerned, only duplicates and such volumes as were seldom called for were thus laid away. The copyright business could be kept up to date only by the greatest effort. The rooms regularly devoted to the Library were so small, and so over-crowded with books, that there was almost no opportunity for quiet study, while the ordinary official routine was carried on with the greatest difficulty and inconvenience. That the Library should be able to keep its doors open at all, much more that it should continue promptly to furnish books to applicants, was a sufficient cause for wonder.

The Agitation for a New Building.—In his report for 1872, Mr. Spofford first laid before Congress the necessity of a new building for the accommodation of the Library. It was fourteen years, however, before any decided action was taken in response to this appeal, annually repeated, and twenty-five years before the present building was finally ready for occupancy. During these fourteen years, to quote Mr. Spofford, “various schemes for continuing the Library within the Capitol were brought forward. One was to extend the west front of the edifice one hundred feet, to hold the books; another, to project the eastern front two hundred and fifty feet, thus making a conglomerate building out of what is now a purely classic edifice; a third, and more preposterous scheme, was to accommodate the Library growth within the great inner concave of the dome, which was to be literally honeycombed with books from the floor of the Rotunda to the apex: a plan which would have given space for only twelve years’ growth of the Library, besides increasing incalculably all the difficulties of its administration. Every plan for enlarging the Capitol would have provided for less than thirty years’ increase, after which Congress would be confronted with the same problem again, and forced to erect a new building after all the cost (estimated at four millions of dollars) of such enlargement. At length a commission of architects reported against disturbing the symmetry of the Capitol, and that illusive spectre was laid to rest. Then ensued difficulties and dissensions about a site, about plans, about architects, and about cost. Some wanted to save money by planting a building in the Botanic Garden, or on the Mall, sites which have been twice under water in the last twenty years, from the overflow of the Potomac River. Some wanted a plain storehouse of brick, after the model of the Pension Building, but it was wisely concluded that one such architectural monstrosity was enough for our Government.

“At length all differences between Senate and House were harmonized; the act for a separate building received over two-thirds majority in 1886; a site of ten acres was purchased on a plateau near the Capitol for $585,000; work was begun on a large scale, but cut down in 1888 to smaller dimensions, with a limitation of ultimate cost of $4,000,000; restored in 1889 to the original size, and the limitation of cost was raised to $5,500,000, in addition to sums heretofore appropriated, thus providing for an ample and thoroughly equipped edifice, with ultimate accommodations for four and one-half millions of volumes.”

THE ENTRANCE PAVILION.

THE NEW BUILDING.

The first act of Congress providing for the construction of the building was approved April 15, 1886. Its terms adopted the plan submitted by Mr. John L. Smithmeyer; created a commission consisting of the Secretary of the Interior, the Architect of the Capitol Extension, and the Librarian of Congress, to have charge of and carry forward the work; and selected the present site. The year 1886 was occupied in appraising and taking possession of the ground; the next year in clearing the site, making the principal excavation for the foundations, and laying the drainage system; and the year 1888 in laying one half of the concrete foundation footings on the plan adopted by the act above mentioned. On October 2, 1888, a new act of Congress was approved, repealing so much of the act of April 15, 1886, as provided for a commission and the construction of the building according to the plan therein specified. This act placed the work under the sole control and management of the Chief of Engineers of the Army, Brigadier-General Thomas Lincoln Casey, requiring him to report direct to Congress annually and to prepare general plans for the entire construction of the building, subject to the approval of the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Interior, and within a total cost of $4,000,000, exclusive of appropriations previously made.

The preparation of the new design was at once entered upon, using the previous one of Mr. Smithmeyer as a basis by reducing its dimensions and otherwise considerably modifying it to bring the cost within the required limit. The new plans were completed and submitted for approval to the Secretaries on November 23, 1888, but no action was taken by them. At the same time this design, together with another modification of the original, retaining the full dimensions of the building, but modifying its ground-plan and other architectural features, within and without, in many important particulars, was placed before Congress. The cost of the building by the latter design was estimated at $6,003,140, and the time for its construction at eight years. Toward the close of the session Congress again took up the subject of plans in connection with the sundry civil appropriation bill and adopted the larger modified design by the act approved March 2, 1889, directing that the building be erected in accordance therewith, and at a total cost not to exceed $5,500,000, exclusive of appropriations previously made. The amount of the previous appropriations was $1,000,000, of which a balance of $745,567.94 remained after the expenses of operations on the old plan had all been defrayed. Thus the total limit of cost of the new plan was fixed by law at $6,245,567.94. It may be added that none of the plans, drawings, or designs made prior to General Casey’s taking charge of the work were used, all having been new and different.

In the meantime many detailed plans of stonework for the exterior walls, foundations, etc., had been prepared, and the working up of the details of design and construction in general had been actively going on in the drafting room, so that all was in readiness for the prompt and vigorous commencement of operations, which took place on the ground as soon as Congress had passed the act of March 2, 1889.

In the execution of the work General Casey had the entire responsible charge under Congress from October 2, 1888, until his death, on March 25, 1896, and he also disbursed the funds during that period. He held general supervision, gave general direction to all principal proceedings, and maintained an intimate knowledge of the work at all times, while performing the duties of his more absorbing and important office of Chief of Engineers of the Army at the War Department, to which he succeeded a few months before he was placed in charge of the Library building by Congress. General Casey had been connected with some of the most important pieces of construction ever undertaken by the Government, including the erection of the State, War and Navy Building and the completion of the Washington Monument. The last was an especially difficult task, as it had been necessary to strengthen the old foundations of the shaft before it was possible to proceed with the work. In this delicate and hazardous undertaking, as well as in the erection of the State, War and Navy Building, and other works, General Casey had been assisted by Mr. Bernard R. Green, C. E., whom he now appointed to be superintendent and engineer of the construction of the new Library building, and put in full local charge of the entire work.

To aid in designing the artistic features of the architecture—that is, exclusive of arrangement, construction, utility, apparatus, and the management of the business—Mr. Paul J. Pelz was employed under the immediate direction of General Casey and Mr. Green. Mr. Pelz had been in partnership with Mr. Smithmeyer in the production of the original general plan and design. In this way the design of the building, as it now appears in the main in the exterior and court walls, the dome, the approaches to the west front, was evolved, Mr. Pelz thereby fixing the plan and main proportions of the building. In the spring of 1892 Mr. Pelz’s connection with the work ceased. At that time the building had reached but little more than one-half its height.

In the fall of that year Mr. Edward Pearce Casey, of New York City, was employed as architect and also as adviser and supervisor in matters of art. His designs principally include all of the most important interior architecture and enrichment in relief and color. Mr. Casey continued as architect until the completion of the building. On the death of General Casey, in March, 1896, he was immediately succeeded by Mr. Green, under whose charge the building was completed, in February, 1897, within the limit of time set by Congress in 1888, and about $140,000 below the limit of cost—or, in round numbers, for $6,360,000.

General Decoration: Mr. Garnsey and Mr. Weinert.—In addition to those whose work has been described in the preceding paragraphs, two other men remain to be mentioned in giving any general account of the construction of the new building: Mr. Elmer E. Garnsey, who was in charge, under the general supervision of the architect, of the conventional color decoration of the interior, and Mr. Albert Weinert, who, in the same way, was in charge of the stucco ornamentation. Mr. Weinert was put at the head of a staff of modellers, who executed on the spot the great variety of relief arabesque and minor sculpture required in the comprehensive scheme of stucco ornament adopted by Mr. Casey as a chief factor in the decoration of the main halls and galleries throughout the building. For the general color decoration of the building—which extends into every room in the building, and includes the many elaborate and beautiful arabesques which decorate the vaulting of the main halls—Mr. Elmer E. Garnsey, who had been concerned in similar work at the World’s Fair, the Boston Public Library, and the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, was engaged. A large studio was fitted up in the building and a staff of designers and fresco-painters was organized. Mr. Edward J. Holslag was appointed foreman; Mr. William A. Mackay and Mr. Frederick C. Martin were employed to carry out on the walls the finer portions of the designs; and Mr. W. Mills Thompson and Mr. Charles Caffin to make the finished cartoons from the original sketches for the use of the fresco-painters. The latter numbered about twenty-five, and the larger portion of them were kept constantly busy for nearly a year and a half.

The General Character of the Building.—Of the splendid and monumental building itself, it may be stated, before entering upon a detailed description—and stated, too, with hardly any fear of contradiction—that it is the most perfectly adapted for the convenient use and storage of books of any large library in the world. It is the largest, the costliest, and the safest. It is absolutely fire-proof, not through any ingenious arrangement or contrivance, but by the very quality of the materials of which it is built—granite, brick, marble, iron, steel, and terra-cotta. Wood floors are used in many of the rooms, but they are merely a carpet of boards laid upon terra-cotta or brick vaults. It would be impossible for the Library to burn down; a fire would nowhere have an opportunity to spread. The great size of the building is perhaps best appreciated from a statement of the amount of some of the materials used in it: 409,000 cubic feet of granite, 500,000 enamelled brick, 22,000,000 red brick, 3,800 tons of steel and iron, and 73,000 barrels of cement. The draughting office turned out, during the eight years that the Library was under construction, 1,600 plans and drawings. Exclusive of the cellar, the total floor-space is 326,195 square feet, or nearly eight acres; and the whole number of windows is about 2,165.

As a matter of “library economy,” the arrangement of the building is of great interest. The problems to be solved were mostly new ones. In a paper on the Library, read before the American Library Association, Mr. Green said: “Its design was preceded by few or no good examples of library architecture, and was therefore the outcome of theory and deduction rather than the application of established principles.” This task was not undertaken in any dogmatic way, however; “the effort was,” as Mr. Green went on to say, “to plan on general rather than particular principles, and afford the largest latitude for expansion and re-arrangement in the use of the spaces.”

So far, however, as general interest is concerned, it is the magnificent series of mural and sculptural decorations with which the architecture is enriched that has contributed most to give the Library its notable position among American public buildings. Although a similarly comprehensive scheme of decoration was carried out at the World’s Fair in Chicago, and afterwards in the new Public Library in Boston, the Government itself had never before called upon a representative number of American painters and sculptors to help decorate, broadly and thoroughly, one of its great public monuments. Commissions were here given to nearly fifty sculptors and painters—all Americans—and their work, as shown throughout the building, forms the most interesting record possible of the scope and capabilities of American art.

It may be noted here, also, that, both inside and out, the Library is, in the main, in the style of the Italian Renaissance—derived, that is to say, from the architecture of the buildings erected in Italy during the period (roughly speaking, the fifteenth century or earlier) when the elements of classic art were revived and re-combined in a Renascence, or New Birth, of the long-neglected models of Greece and Rome.

THE EXTERIOR OF THE BUILDING.

The site of the Library originally comprised two city blocks, containing seventy houses, with an extent, as has been said, of ten acres. It is bounded by First, East Capitol, Second, and B Streets, and forms a partial continuation of the band of parks which stretches east from the Washington Monument, including the Agricultural Grounds, the Smithsonian Grounds, Armory Square, the Public Gardens, the Botanic Garden, and the Capitol Grounds. The general effect of the grounds enclosing the Library is that of an extension of the Capitol Grounds, the street separating the two, for example, being treated, so far as possible, as a driveway through a park, and both being enclosed by low or “dwarf” walls of the same height and design.

PLAN OF FIRST STORY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Library faces exactly west. It is four hundred and seventy feet long (from north to south), and three hundred and forty deep (from west to east). It occupies, exclusive of approaches, three and three-quarters acres.

The general disposition of the building may best be seen by a glance at the ground plan given on the present page. The exterior walls are thus seen to belong to a great rectangle, which encloses a cross dividing the open space within into four courts, each one hundred and fifty feet long by seventy-five or one hundred feet wide. At the intersection of the arms of the cross is an octagon, serving as the main reading room, and conspicuous by reason of its dome and lantern, which, rising well above the walls of the Rectangle, are the first feature of the building to attract the attention of the visitor. The lantern is surmounted by a great blazing torch with a gilded flame—the emblematic Torch of Learning—which marks the centre and apex of the building, a hundred and ninety-five feet above the ground. The dome and the domed roof of the lantern are sheathed with copper, over which, with the exception of the ribs of the dome, left dark to indicate their structural importance, is laid a coating of gold leaf, twenty-three carats fine. The surface covered is so large that one’s first thought is apt to be of the expense. As a matter of fact, however, the total cost—including the gilding for the flame of the torch—was less than $3,800. Since it will require to be renewed much less frequently its use was considerably more economical than painting.

The Façades.—The exterior walls of the Library are constructed wholly of granite, quarried in Concord, New Hampshire. The stone is a close-grained variety, so even and light in tone that when the sun is shining upon it the effect is almost as brilliant as if a white marble had been used. The massive buttresses which support the Octagon at each of its eight corners, and so much of the Octagon wall as is visible from the outside, are also granite, but of a different quality, slightly darker in hue, and coming from quarries in Maryland.

NYMPH AND SEA-HORSE, FROM THE FOUNTAIN.

The Library is in three stories: the basement story of fourteen feet; the first story, or main library floor, of twenty-one feet; and the second story of twenty-nine feet-making a height of sixty-four feet for the three stories at the lowest point. Adding to this the base at ground level, and the simply designed balustrade which surmounts the whole, the total height is seventy-two feet above the ground. Beneath the entire structure is a cellar, below the level of the ground outside, but within opening upon the interior courts. The granite of which the walls are constructed is rough, or “rock-faced,” in the basement story; much more finely dressed in the story above; and in the second story brought down to a perfectly smooth surface. The windows in the basement are square-headed, as also on the library floor, except along the west front, where they are arched, with ornamental keystones. Throughout the second story they are again square-headed, but with casings in relief, surmounted by pediments alternately rounded and triangular, and, along the west front, railed in at the bottom by false balustrades.

To prevent the monotony incident to a long, unrelieved facade, the walls are projected at each of the four corners and in the centre of the east and west sides, into pavilions, which, in addition to being slightly higher than the rest of the rectangle—thus allowing space for a low attic-story—are treated with greater richness and elaboration of ornamental detail. The corners are set with vermiculated granite blocks—blocks whose surface is worked into “vermiculations” or “wormings.” The keystones of the window-arches in the first story are sculptured with a series of heads illustrating the chief ethnological types of mankind. Along the second-story front runs a portico supported upon a row of twin columns, each a single piece of granite, with finely carved Corinthian capitals. The pedestals which support the columns are connected by granite balustrades, so that the portico forms a single long balcony, with an entrance through the windows which look out upon it.

THE ENTRANCE PAVILION.

NEPTUNE, FROM THE FOUNTAIN.

Of all these pavilions the West, or Main Entrance, Pavilion, is by far the largest as well as by far the most ornate. It is one hundred and forty feet long, or almost a third the total length of the building, and about seven feet higher than either of the other five pavilions. At either end it is itself projected, or pavilioned. The Main Entrance is through a porch of three arches, on the main library floor. The approaches are extensive and imposing. A flight of steps, constructed of granite from Troy, New Hampshire, ascends from either side to a central landing, laid with flags of red Missouri granite. Thence the stairway leads in a single flight to the Entrance Porch, with space underneath for a porte cochère in front of the doors admitting to the basement. The central landing just spoken of is protected by a high retaining wall which forms the background for a splendid fountain by Mr. Roland Hinton Perry, ornamented with a profusion of allegorical figures in bronze—the chief figure representing Neptune enthroned in front of a grotto of the sea.

The posts of the granite railing of the steps support elaborate bronze candelabra, bearing clusters of electric lamps for illumination at night. The spandrels of the Entrance Porch—the approximately triangular spaces flanking the three arches—are ornamented with female figures sculptured in high relief in granite, representing Literature, Science, and Art. They were modelled by Mr. Bela L. Pratt. Above the main windows of the library floor is a series of smaller, circular windows, which serve as a background for a series of granite busts (the pedestals of which rest in the pediments below) of men eminent in literature. There are nine in all, seven along the front, and one at each end of the pavilion. They are flanked by boldly sculptured figures of children, reclining upon the sloping pediments, or, alternately, by massive garlands of fruits. The keystones of the circular windows each support the standing figure of a winged cherub, or genius, all sculptured from a single design, and introduced as the accentuating feature of a frieze of foliated ornament extending along the three sides of the pavilion. Like the garlands and figures on the pediments, they were modelled by Mr. William Boyd. At either end of the attic story Mr. Boyd’s hand appears again in the sculptural embellishment of the little porch—as one may perhaps call it—which looks out upon the balcony formed by the granite railing. The rounded pediment contains a group in granite consisting of the American eagle flanked by two seated children. Each pediment is supported on the shoulders of two conventional Atlases—“Atlantides” is the technical name—figures of gigantic strength, so called because in the Greek and Roman mythology Atlas was fabled as a giant supporting the vault of heaven by his unaided strength.

RUSSIAN SLAV. BLONDE EUROPEAN. BRUNETTE EUROPEAN.

A more particular description is required of the fountain, the ethnological heads, the series of busts in the portico of the Entrance Pavilion, and the spandrel figures ornamenting the Entrance Porch.

Mr. Hinton Perry’s Fountain.—Of Mr. Perry’s fountain, it may be said at once that it is the most lavishly ornamental of any in the country. It occupies a semicircular basin fifty feet broad, containing a dozen bronze figures disposed to represent a scene—so one may take it—in the court of Neptune, the classic god of the sea. The granite wall of the terrace against which the fountain is placed contains three deep niches, in the spandrels of which are four dolphins sculptured in relief from models by Mr. Albert Weinert. The niches themselves are treated with an evident suggestion of a grotto worn by the sea, with a hint, also, at the formation of stalactites by the constant dripping of water. In front of the central niche Neptune is seated in a majestic attitude on a bank of rocks. He is represented as an old man with a long flowing beard, but the lines of his naked figure indicate the energy and great muscular strength befitting the Ruler of the Deep. The figure is of colossal size; it would be, that is, if standing, about twelve feet in height. On either side of the bank lolls a figure of Triton, one of the minor sea-gods, blowing a conch shell to summon the water-deities to the throne of their sovereign. In front of each of the niches at the side is a sea-nymph triumphantly bestriding an infuriated sea-horse, his ears laid back and his fish’s tail writhing with anger on account of a jet of water constantly thrown against his head. The basin is crossed and re-crossed by similar jets, which furnish the whole flow of water, and proceed from the mouths of sea-monsters in various places throughout the fountain. There are seven of them in all. The first is a serpent just showing itself above the water in front of the bank on which Neptune is seated. Higher up, to the right and left, two gigantic frogs lurk in crevices of the rocks; and floating along the outer edge of the basin are four huge Florida turtles, their heads raised a little above the water and their long fins making as if swimming.

MODERN GREEK. PERSIAN. CIRCASSIAN.

HINDOO. HUNGARIAN. SEMITE.

The Ethnological Heads.—The ethnological heads ornamenting the keystones of the first-story pavilion windows offer as interesting material for study as any of the decorations of the Library. The series is unique in that it is the first instance of a comprehensive attempt to make ethnological science contribute to the architectural decoration of an important public building. It was at first proposed to employ a more conventional kind of ornament, such as the familiar Gorgons’ heads so often found in connection with Renaissance architecture. The present idea was carried out with the assistance of Professor Otis T. Mason, the Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the National Museum for the last twelve years. The heads, thirty-three in number, are about a foot and a half in height, and were modelled, some by Mr. Boyd and others by Mr. Henry J. Ellicott, after data accumulated by Professor Mason as the result of some six months’ special study of the ethnological collections in the possession of the National Museum—which contains, indeed, practically all the material (books, photographs, carefully verified measurements) necessary for such an undertaking. The large collection of authentic, life-size models, chiefly of savage and barbarous peoples, which the visitor may see in its exhibition halls, is the most extensive in the country, and many of the heads on the Library keystones are taken directly from these.

ARAB. TURK. MODERN EGYPTIAN.

Taking into consideration the difficulty of obtaining the more delicate differentiation of the features in a medium so unsatisfactory, from its coarseness of texture, as granite, the result of Professor Mason’s work is one of the most scientifically accurate series of racial models ever made. Still another difficulty, it may be added, lay in the fact that each head had to be made to fit the keystone. Besides the necessity of uniform size, the architect demanded also, as far as possible, a generally uniform shape, which it was often very hard to give and still preserve the correct proportions of the racial type. The face had to be more or less in line with the block it ornamented, and, especially, the top of the head had to follow, at least roughly, a certain specified curve. This last point was met either by using or not using a head-dress, whichever best met the difficulty. In one case the problem was a little puzzling—that of the Plains Indian, with his upright circlet of eagle’s feathers, which were bound to exceed the line, if accurately copied. The difficulty was frankly met by laying the feathers down nearly flat upon the head.

ABYSSINIAN. MALAY. POLYNESIAN.

In preparing the models, accuracy was the chief thing considered. Any attempt at dramatic or picturesque effect, except what was natural to the type portrayed, was felt to be out of place. Each head was subjected to the strict test of measurement—such as the ratio of breadth to length and height, and the distance between the eyes and between the cheek bones—this being the most valuable criterion of racial differences. All portraiture was avoided, both as being somewhat invidious and unscientifically personal, and, more especially, because no one man can ever exemplify all the average physical characteristics of his race. On the other hand, the heads were never permitted to become merely ideal. It will be noticed that all are those of men in the prime of life.

AUSTRALIAN. NEGRITO. ZULU.

The list of the races, beginning at the north end of the Entrance Pavilion, and thence continuing south and round the building to the Northwest Pavilion, is as follows, each head being numbered for convenience in following the order in which they occur: 1, Russian Slav; 2, Blonde European; 3, Brunette European; 4, Modern Greek; 5, Persian (Iranian); 6, Circassian; 7, Hindoo; 8, Hungarian (Magyar); 9, Semite, or Jew; 10, Arab (Bedouin); 11, Turk; 12, Modern Egyptian (Hamite); 13, Abyssinian; 14, Malay; 15, Polynesian; 16, Australian; 17, Negrito (from Indian Archipelago); 18, Zulu (Bantu); 19, Papuan (New Guinea); 20, Soudan Negro; 21, Akka (Dwarf African Negro); 22, Fuegian; 23, Botocudo (from South America); 24, Pueblo Indian (as the Zuñis of New Mexico); 25, Esquimaux; 26, Plains Indian (Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche); 27, Samoyede (Finnish inhabitant of Northern Russia); 28, Corean; 29, Japanese; 30, Aino (from Northern Japan); 31, Burmese; 32, Thibetan; 33, Chinese.

PAPUAN. SOUDAN NEGRO. AKKA.

It will be seen that the various races are grouped so far as possible according to kinship. There is not, however, space—and this is hardly the place—in which to explain the many points which might be brought up in connection with this interesting series of heads. For such information the reader is referred to any good text-book on ethnology.[3] One or two special details, however, may properly be mentioned. The selection of the Pueblo Indian, for example, was a second choice. Professor Mason would have preferred one of the ancient Peruvian Incas, but no satisfactory portrait could be found to work on. The Thibetan is a Buddhist priest, as indicated by his elaborate turban. The Chinese belongs to the learned, or Mandarin class. The Russian with his fur cap is the typical Slavic peasant. The Blonde European is of the educated German type, dolichocephalic, or long-headed; the Brunette European is the Roman type, brachycephalic, or broad-headed. The architect has introduced a Greek fret on the turban of the Greek to symbolize the importance of ancient Greek art. The Egyptian is the typical Cairo camel-driver. The Corean wears the dress and hat of the courtier, and the Turk also is depicted as a member of the upper classes. The Hungarian wears the astrachan or lambswool cap of the peasant. Many of the heads of savage or barbarous races are shown with their peculiar ornaments—the Malay with his earrings, the Papuan with his nose-plug, the Botocudo with studs of wood in his ears and lower lip, and the Esquimaux with the labret or lip-plug of walrus ivory. The face of the Polynesian, finally, is delicately incised with lines, copied from a specimen of Maori (New Zealand) tattooing.

FUEGIAN. BOTOCUDO. PUEBLO INDIAN.

ESQUIMAUX. PLAINS INDIAN. SAMOYEDE.

The Portico Busts.—The list of the men commemorated by the nine busts in the portico is as follows: Demosthenes, Emerson, Irving, Goethe, Franklin, Macaulay, Hawthorne, Scott, and Dante. The Demosthenes, Scott, and Dante were modelled by Mr. Herbert Adams; the Emerson, Irving, and Hawthorne by Mr. J. Scott Hartley; and the Goethe, Franklin, and Macaulay by Mr. F. Wellington Ruckstuhl. The reader will see that so far as possible with an odd number, the work of each sculptor is, so to say, in balance—Mr. Ruckstuhl’s in the centre, flanked by Mr. Hartley’s, and Mr. Adams’s at either end—thus avoiding any possible confusion of style, and giving the artist all the advantage which comes from a symmetrical disposition of his productions. There is, as a matter of fact, very little diversity in the present series. Each bust is of uniform height—about three feet, not reckoning the pedestal—with a uniform background. The statue of Franklin, coming in the centre, has, intentionally, a certain effect of pre-eminence. The sculptor conceived him “as one of the greatest men of this country, and as a writer and philosopher the patriarch, and therefore aimed to make him dominate the rest.” A word should be said regarding the background of the busts—the glass enclosed in the framing of the circular windows. The effect, as always of a window, is dark, as granite would not have been, thus throwing the busts, which are of the same material as the walls, into sharp, strong relief.

COREAN. JAPANESE. AINO.

BURMESE. THIBETAN. CHINESE.

Mr. Pratt’s Spandrel Figures.—The beautiful spandrel figures of the Entrance Porch modelled by Mr. Bela L. Pratt are six in number.[4] All are about life-size, and are shown leaning gracefully against the curve of the arches. After what has been said of the intractability of granite as a medium for any but the bolder sorts of sculpture, it is not out of place to call attention to the exceptional delicacy and refinement with which these figures have been chiselled. They represent, as has been said, Literature (the left hand arch), Science (in the centre), and Art (to the right). In the background of each spandrel the sculptor has introduced a branch of walnut, oak, laurel, or maple leaves. Of the figures themselves, the two to the left stand respectively for the contemplative and the productive sides of Literature—reflection and composition. The one is writing upon a tablet, although for a moment she turns aside as if in search of the fitting phrase; while the other, at the right, with a hood over her head and a book held idly in her hand, gazes out dreamily into the distance. Of the figures of Science, the first holds the torch of knowledge, and the second, with the celestial globe encircled by the signs of the zodiac in her arm, looks upward, as if to observe the courses of the stars. Here, also, it will be seen that something of the same distinction as in the first arch is drawn between the abstract and the practical. In the third group, the figure to the left represents Sculpture, and that to the right, Painting. The latter busies herself with the palette and brush. Sculpture, with a mallet in her hand, is studying a block of marble in which she has already blocked out the head and features of a bust—that of the poet Dante.

THE MAIN ENTRANCE.

The three deep arches of the Entrance Porch terminate with three massive bronze doors, covered with a design of rich sculptural ornament in relief. Each is fourteen feet high to the top of the arch, with an extreme width, including the framing, of seven and a half feet, and a total weight of about three and a half tons. The subject of the decoration is, in the central door, The Art of Printing, modelled by Mr. Frederick Macmonnies; in the door to the left, Tradition, by the late Olin L. Warner; and to the right, Writing, begun by Mr. Warner, but left unfinished at his death (in August, 1896), and completed by Mr. Herbert Adams. The three thus indicate in a regular series—the sequence of which, of course, is Tradition, Writing, and Printing—the successive and gradually more perfect ways in which mankind has preserved its religion, history, literature, and science. Each of the doors is double, with a tympanum at the top closing the arch. The various portions of the design are comprised in a high and rather narrow panel in each leaf, with small panels above and below, and finally the large semicircular panel occupying the tympanum above.

Mr. Warner’s Bronze Doors.—Mr. Warner’s first door, Tradition, illustrates the method by which all knowledge was originally handed down from generation to generation. The background of the panel in the larger tympanum is a mountainous and cloudy landscape, conveying admirably, says one critic[5], “a sense of prehistoric vastness and solitude.” In the centre is a woman, the embodiment of the subject, seated on a throne. Against her knee leans a little boy, whom she is instructing in the deeds and worship of his fathers. The visitor will not fail to notice the unusual expressiveness of the group—the boy with eager, attentive face, and the woman holding his hand in one of hers, and raising the other in a gesture of quiet but noble emphasis. Seated on the ground, two on either side, and listening intently to her words, are an American Indian, holding a couple of arrows in his hand; a Norseman, with his winged steel cap; a prehistoric man, with a stone axe lying by his side; and a shepherd with his crook, standing for the nomadic, pastoral races. The four are typical representatives of the primitive peoples whose entire lore was kept alive by oral tradition. The face of the Indian is understood to be a portrait of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Percés tribe, from a sketch made from life by Mr. Warner in 1889.

Of the panels below, that to the left contains the figure of a woman holding a lyre, and the other the figure of a warrior’s widow clasping the helmet and sword of her dead husband to her breast. The first represents Imagination, and the second Memory, the former being the chief quality which distinguishes the nobler sorts of traditional literature, as exemplified in the true epics, springing from the folk-tales of the people, and the latter standing for that heroic past with which it so constantly deals.

BRONZE DOOR, MAIN ENTRANCE.
BY OLIN L. WARNER.

The same general arrangement of figures is followed in the second door—the one representing Writing—as in the first. In the tympanum of the door, a female figure is seated in the centre, holding a pen in her hand and with a scroll spread open in her lap. Beside her stand two little children, whom she is teaching to read or write. To the right and left are four figures representing the peoples who have had the most influence on the world through their written memorials and literature—the Egyptian and the Jew to the right, and the Christian and Greek to the left. The Jew and the Christian are represented as kneeling, in allusion to the religious influence which they have exerted. The former holds a staff in his hand, and may be taken as one of the ancient Jewish patriarchs; the latter bears a cross. The Greek has a lyre, for Poetry, and the Egyptian holds a stylus in his hand.

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.

TRADITION—TYMPANUM OF BRONZE DOOR.—BY OLIN L. WARNER.

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.

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.

THE MINERVA OF WAR.
BY HERBERT ADAMS.

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 MAIN VESTIBULE.

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.

AMERICA AND AFRICA.—BY PHILIP MARTINY.

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.

THE COMMEMORATIVE ARCH.

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.

DETAIL OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE.

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 STAIRCASE FIGURES.—BY PHILIP MARTINY.

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 NORTH CORRIDOR.—MAIN ENTRANCE HALL.

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.

RELIGION—BY CHARLES SPRAGUE PEARCE.

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.

STUDY.—BY CHARLES SPRAGUE PEARCE.

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.

GANYMEDE.—H. O. WALKER.

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.

LYRIC POETRY.—BY H. O. WALKER.

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.

THE MANUSCRIPT BOOK.—BY JOHN W. ALEXANDER.

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.

THE PRINTING-PRESS.—BY JOHN W. ALEXANDER.

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.

A CEILING FIGURE.
BY ALBERT WEINERT.

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.

MUSIC.—BY EDWARD J. HOLSLAG.

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.

GOOD ADMINISTRATION.—BY ELIHU VEDDER.

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.

ANARCHY.—BY ELIHU VEDDER.

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 NORTH CORRIDOR, SECOND STORY, MAIN ENTRANCE HALL.
SHOWING DECORATIONS BY GEORGE W. MAYNARD AND ROBERT REID.

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.

Very often, as the visitor will see, the printer’s mark is, in its way, a really beautiful piece of design; many have an interest as being associated with the reputation of a famous printer like Caxton, or Aldus, or Elzevir; while others depend mainly for their point upon some special symbolical meaning, very frequently taking the form of an illustrated pun. Thus, in the West Corridor, the mark of Lotter—which means “vagrant” in German—is a mendicant supplicating alms. In the South Corridor, the mark of Geoffroy Tory commemorates the death of his little daughter—the broken vase, with a book symbolizing the literary studies of which she had been fond.

There is no necessity, however, of describing the marks in detail, for, with the exception of two or three American examples, they were all taken from Mr. William Roberts’s Printers’ Marks (London, 1893), in which they are illustrated and explained. Those thought best adapted for decorative effect were chosen throughout, although the marks of as many of the better known printers as possible were included. Occasionally a border or a motto was omitted, but in the main Mr. Roberts’s engravings were pretty exactly copied. In the West Corridor the marks are mostly those of German printers; in the South Corridor, French; in the East Corridor, Italian and Spanish; in the North Corridor, English and Scottish and American.[7]

Mr. Hinton Perry’s Bas-Reliefs.—Mr. Perry’s bas-reliefs, at the west end of the north and south vaults, have already been referred to. They are four in number, and measure three feet eight inches from one side to another. Taken as a series they represent what may be called, for lack of a better title, Ancient Prophetic Inspiration. The chief figure in each is a sibyl or priestess—Greek, Roman, Persian, Scandinavian—in the act of delivering the prophetic warnings which have been revealed to her in the rapture of a divine frenzy. She is regarded as the mouthpiece of the god, and therefore as the fountain of religion, wisdom, literature, art, and success in war—all of which are typified, in one panel or another, in the figures of her auditors.

PRINTERS’ MARKS.—CAXTON, TORY, LOTTER.

Beginning in the South Corridor, the first panel shows the Cumæan or Roman Sibyl. She is represented, in accordance with the ancient histories, as an old and withered hag, whose inspiration comes from an infernal, rather than a celestial source. Two figures, as in all the panels, complete Mr. Perry’s group, one male and the other female. The first is clad in the splendid armor of a Roman general; the woman is nude, and stands for Roman Art and Literature. At her feet is a box of manuscripts, and she takes in one hand an end of the long scroll (representing one of the Sibylline Books, so famous in Roman history) which the Priestess holds in her lap. The panel on the other side of the arch represents a Scandinavian Vala or Wise Woman, with streaming hair and a wolf-skin over her head and shoulders. She typifies, in her bold gesture and excited gaze, the barbaric inspiration of the Northern nations. To the left is the figure of a Norse warrior, and to the right a naked woman lies stretched upon the ground, personifying the vigorous life and fecundity of genius of the North.

In the North Corridor, the subjects of Mr. Perry’s two decorations are Greek and Persian Inspiration. The former is represented by the Priestess of the world-renowned Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. She is seated upon a tripod, placed above a mysterious opening in the earth, from which the sacred fumes rise to intoxicate the Priestess, and fill her with the spirit of prophecy. On one side of the panel, an old man, standing for Greek science and philosophy, takes down her words on a tablet; on the other is a nude female figure, personifying Greek art and literature. In the second panel, that of Persia, the face of the Sibyl is veiled, to signify the occult wisdom of the East. A man prostrates himself at her feet in a fervor of religious devotion, and a woman, nearly nude, stands listening in the background. With her voluptuous figure and her ornaments of pearl and gold—a fillet, anklets, armlets, and necklace—she represents the luxuriance and sensuousness of Eastern art and poetry.

BOTANY.
BY WALTER SHIRLAW.

Mr. Shirlaw’s Paintings.—The subjects of Mr. Shirlaw’s figures in the vault of the West Corridor are, on the west, beginning at the left: Zoölogy, Physics, Mathematics, and Geology; and on the east, again beginning at the left: Archæology, Botany, Astronomy, and Chemistry. Each science is represented by a female figure about seven and a half feet in height. The figures are especially interesting, aside from their artistic merit, for the variety of symbolism by which every science is distinguished from the others, and for the subtlety with which much of this symbolism is expressed. Not only is each accompanied by various appropriate objects, but the lines of the drapery, the expression of the face and body, and the color itself are, wherever practicable, made to subserve the idea of the science represented. Thus the predominant colors used in the figure of Chemistry—purple, blue, and red—are the ones which occur most often in chemical experimenting. In the pendentive of Geology, Mr. Shirlaw employs principally purple and orange; the former is the ruling color in many of the more common rock formations when seen in the mass and naturally; and the latter is the color of the ordinary lichens one finds on boulders and ledges. In the matter of line, again, the visitor will notice a very marked difference between the abrupt, broken line used in the drapery of Archæology, and the moving, flowing line in that of Physics. In both cases it will be found that the line is in very complete sympathy with the character of the science depicted. The method of archæology is largely excavation carried on among sculptural and architectural fragments. The swirling drapery of Physics is suggestive of flame and heat.

Zoölogy is represented with a lion seated beside her, her hands clasping his mane. She is the huntress and student of wild life, and her body is powerfully developed, like an Amazon’s. She is clad in the pelt of an animal, the head forming her cap, and in buskins of skin. She stands on a rocky piece of ground, like a desert. The chief colors employed in the pendentive are the typical animal colors, browns and yellows.

Physics stands on an electric globe, from which emanate rays of light. She carries a torch in her left hand, and she holds up an end of her drapery in her right in such a way that it seems to start from the flame and flow in sympathy with it over her whole body, so that it conveys the idea of the unceasing motion of fire. The same colors as those used in the pendentive of Geology, purple and orange, are used here also, but in this case standing, of course, for the colors of flame.

MATHEMATICS.
BY WALTER SHIRLAW

Mathematics, the exact science, is represented as almost entirely nude,—like “the Naked Truth” of Mr. Walker’s tympanum on the floor below. Her right foot is on a stone block inscribed with the conic sections, and on a shield which she holds are various geometrical figures. Her scanty drapery is appropriately disposed in the severest lines.

Geology, a sculpturesque figure, stands squarely and firmly upon a mountain top, beyond which is seen the setting sun. A fold of her drapery forms a receptacle for the specimens she has gathered. In her left hand is a globe, and in her right a fossil shell. Her hair is confined by a head-dress of bars of silver and gold. The embroidered pattern of her garment has a suggestion of fossil forms and of the little lizards which are found among the rocks.

Archæology is clad in the Roman costume, and wears the helmet of Minerva; the helmet is wreathed with olive, the emblem of peace, which was sacred to Minerva, and is here used with special reference to the peaceful character of the science, which can pursue its labors only in an orderly society. The figure stands on a block of stone, the surface of which is carved to represent a scroll, the ancient form of book. A vase, copied from the manufacture of the Zuñi Indians of New Mexico, stands beside her. In her right hand she holds a large book, the pages of which she examines with the aid of a magnifying glass in order to spell out its half obliterated text. Around her neck is coiled a chameleon, whose changing hues are intended to symbolize the varying nature of the theories she propounds.

The countenance of Botany is expressive of a joyous sympathy with nature. She stands on the pad of a water-lily, engaged in analyzing its flower, the long stem of which coils gracefully about her body to the water. Her drapery flows and breaks as a half-opened flower might arrange itself.