Handbook of the new Library of Congress

by Unknown

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.

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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.

Astronomy holds a lens, such as is used in a telescope, in her right hand, and in her left the globe of Saturn surrounded by its rings—selected as being perhaps the best known and most easily distinguished of all the planets. She stands on the sphere of the earth, beyond which, to the left, is the quarter moon. The lines of her drapery with their slow curves are suggestive, in a way, of the orbits of the heavenly bodies. They flow in long lines, enveloping her figure in the strength which proceeds from complete harmony.

Chemistry is shown with her left foot placed upon a piece of chemical apparatus and holding in her right hand a glass retort, in which she is distilling a liquid. The necessary heat, manifested by the ascending vapor which curls about the vessel, is from the mouth of the serpent—the emblem of fecundity and life, breathing the element of life, fire. The serpent is coiled about an hour-glass, which is significant of the exact measurement of time necessary in chemical experiments. The face of the figure is more worn, on account of the anxious nature of her employment, than would comport with the character of an out-of-door science like Botany or Zoölogy. She is draped somewhat in the eastern manner, like a sibyl, thus recalling the occult character ascribed to the science during the Middle Ages—when it was called alchemy—and, for that matter, the marvellousness of its results in the laboratories of to-day. A snake wound as a fillet about her hair still further emphasizes this mystic quality.

At either end of the corridor is a tablet bearing a list of names of men distinguished in the sciences which Mr. Shirlaw has depicted; at the north end: Cuvier, the Zoölogist; Linnæus, the Botanist; Schliemann, the Archæologist; and Copernicus, the Astronomer; at the south end: La Grange, the Mathematician; Lavoisier, the Chemist; Rumford, the Physicist; and Lyell, the Geologist. In the penetrations on either side of these two lists of names are the following appropriate inscriptions:—

The first creature of God was the light of sense; the last was the light of reason.

Bacon.

The Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth not.

John 1, 5.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Pope.

In nature all is useful, all is beautiful.

Emerson.

Along the centre of the vault, three medallions by Mr. William B. Van Ingen represent respectively Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting. In each the art is represented by a female figure engaged either in chiselling the features of a bust (that of Washington), drawing the plan of a building, or painting at an easel.

TOUCH.—BY ROBERT REID.

Mr. Reid’s Paintings.—Passing to the North Corridor, the attention is at once attracted to the brilliant coloring of Mr. Reid’s decorations in the vault and along the north wall. The former are five in number, and represent the Five Senses. They are octagonal in form, measuring within an inch of six feet and a half across. The order of the subjects, beginning at the westerly end, is Taste, Sight, Smell, Hearing, Touch. In each the sense suggested is represented by a beautiful young woman, more of the modern than the antique type of beauty, and clad in drapery which recalls contemporary fashions rather than the classic conventions which are usually followed by artists in their treatment of ideal subjects. Being painted upon a ceiling, so that the visitor is required to look directly upward in order to study them, the figures, though, in a sense, represented as seated, are rather to be imagined as poised in the air, without any special reference to the law of gravitation. They are shown as supported upon cloud-banks, and the backgrounds of the panels are sky and clouds.

The suggestion of the subject is as simply as it is ingeniously and unconventionally conveyed. A large portion of this suggestion must be looked for, of course, in the expression of the face and the attitude as well as in the action of the figures. Taste is shown drinking from a shell. She is surrounded by foliage, and a vine grows beside her laden with bunches of ripe grapes. She wears flowers in her hair, and the idea throughout may perhaps be taken as that of the autumnal feast of the wine-press. Sight is looking at her reflection in a handglass, and smiling with pleasure at the evidence of her beauty. A splendid peacock, the emblem of beauty and pride in beauty, is introduced beside her. Smell is represented seated beside a bank of lilies and roses. From this mass of flowers she has selected a great white rose, which she presses to her nose. Hearing holds a large sea-shell to her ear, and dreamily listens to its roaring. Touch is delightedly observing a butterfly which has alighted on her bare outstretched arm—the touch of its tiny feet as it walks over her flesh imparting an unaccustomed sensation to her nerves. A setter dog, which she has just ceased from caressing, lies asleep behind her.

Mr. Reid’s subjects in the four circular panels along the wall are entitled, in order from left to right: Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Philosophy. Each is represented by a half-length seated female figure—more solidly painted, but of much the same type as the figures representing The Senses—holding a scroll, book, or tablet. In the panel of Philosophy, a Greek temple is seen in the background, emblematic of the Greek origin of philosophy.

HEARING.—BY ROBERT REID.

Alternating with Mr. Reid’s ceiling paintings, is a series of rectangular panels, in which are depicted, in low tones of color and in a style somewhat suggestive of a classic bas-relief, a number of ancient out-door athletic contests. Beginning at the west end of the vault, the first of these represents a group of young men throwing the discus. Then come Wrestling and Running. In the fourth panel, the athletes are being rubbed down by attendants, to clear them of the sweat and heat of the conflict; and in the fifth, the successful contestants are kneeling to receive the crown of victory at the hands of a woman seated on a dais. The last picture represents the return home, a tripping company of youths and maidens crowned with garlands.

The visitor will remember what was said concerning the special enrichment of the penetrations in the side corridors for the sake of compensating in a way for the absence of such decorations as Mr. Shirlaw’s in the pendentives. In the present instance, this enrichment takes the form of dragons and swans, which serve as “supporters” of the panels containing the printers’ marks.

In the pendentives, tablets for inscriptions alternate with medallions containing trophies of various trades and sciences. The list of the latter, beginning at the left over the north wall, is as follows: Geometry, represented by a compass, a protractor, and a scroll, cone, and cylinder; Meteorology, the barometer, thermometer, and anemometer; Forestry, a growing tree, and an axe and pruning-knife; Navigation, the chronometer, log, rope, rudder, and compass; Mechanics, the lever, wedge, and pulley-block; and Transportation, with a piston, propeller, driving-wheel, and locomotive head-light.

The inscriptions are from Adelaide A. Procter’s poem, Unexpressed, and are as follows:—

Dwells within the soul of every Artist

More than all his effort can express.

No great Thinker ever lived and taught you

All the wonder that his soul received.

No true painter ever set on canvas

All the glorious vision he conceived.

No musician....

But be sure he heard, and strove to render,

Feeble echoes of celestial strains.

Love and Art united

Are twin mysteries, different yet the same.

Love may strive, but vain is the endeavor

All its boundless riches to unfold.

Art and Love speak; and their words must be

Like sighings of illimitable forests.

The only other decoration which there is space to mention is the broad, semicircular border which follows the line of the vault on the wall at either end of the corridor. At the east end, this border is ornamented with a bright-colored arabesque, mainly in violet and greens, with a medallion in the centre bearing a map of the Western Hemisphere. At the west end, the border is plainer, with five semicircular or circular tablets, two of which are ornamented with the obverse and reverse respectively of the Great Seal of the United States. The other three carry the following inscriptions:—

Order is Heaven’s first law.

Pope.

Memory is the treasurer and guardian of all things.

Cicero.

Beauty is the creator of the universe.

Emerson.

Mr. Barse’s Paintings.—In the East Corridor, the pendentive figures of Mr. Barse represent, beginning on the east side, at the north end: Lyric Poetry (entitled by the artist, Lyrica), Tragedy, Comedy, and History; and on the west, again beginning at the north, Love Poetry (Erotica), Tradition, Fancy, and Romance. The subject of the entire series, therefore, may be called simply Literature. The figures, as the visitor will perceive, need but little explanation. All are those of women clad in graceful, classic robes, represented throughout as seated, and depicted with little attempt at dramatic expression or action. Lyric Poetry is playing on the lyre. Tragedy and Comedy have a tragic and comic mask respectively, and Comedy a tambourine. History has a scroll and palm-branch, and an ancient book-box for scrolls, such as was used by the Romans, is set at her feet. Romance has a pen and a scroll. Fancy clasps her hands, and gazes upward with a rapt expression on her face. Tradition wears the Ægis, and holds a statue of the winged goddess of Victory in her hand—both introduced as symbols of antiquity. Erotica is writing on a tablet.

Along the centre of the vault, occupying a similar position to the medallions in the opposite corridor, is another series of three paintings, executed by Mr. William A. Mackay, which represent The Life of Man. One will best understand the meaning of the paintings by first reading the inscriptions which are placed immediately above and below each medallion. On one side they refer to the ancient allegory of the Three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos—the first of whom spun, the second wove, and the third cut, the Thread of Life—and are as follows:—

For a web begun God sends thread.

Old Proverb.

The web of life ... is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

All’s Well that Ends Well.

Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears

And slits the thin-spun life.

Milton.

On the other side the inscriptions, which compare the life of a man to the life of a tree, are taken from Cardinal Wolsey’s speech in Henry VIII:—

This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hopes.

To-morrow blossoms.

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him.

The third day comes a frost, ...

And ... nips his root,

And then he falls.

Accordingly, in the present series, the first medallion shows a woman (Clotho) with her distaff and a baby lying in her lap. The sun is rising above the horizon, a sapling begins to put out its branches, and near by is a little spring. In the next picture, Lachesis has a loom and shuttle. The spring has grown into a river, and the mature man bears in his hand a basket of fruit gathered from the abundance of the full-grown tree, while the sun in the heavens marks the high noon of life. In the last medallion the sun is setting, the tree has fallen in ruin on the ground, and the stream has dried up. The man, grown old and crippled, faints by the roadside, and Atropos opens her fatal shears to sever the thread of his existence.

At each end of the corridor is a tablet containing the names of eminent American printers, and men who have contributed to the improvement of American printing machinery. At the north these names are: Green, Daye, Franklin, Thomas, Bradford; and at the south, Clymer, Adams, Gordon, Hoe, Bruce.

Mr. Benson’s Paintings.—Mr. Benson’s decorations in the vault of the South Corridor and along the wall below are of the same size and shape as those of Mr. Reid in the North Corridor. The arabesque ornament of the ceiling is so arranged, however, as to allow space for only three instead of five of these hexagonal panels. The subject of the paintings they contain is The Graces—Aglaia (at the east), Thalia (in the centre) and Euphrosyne (at the north).

COMEDY.
BY GEORGE R. BARSH, JR.

The three figures are almost invariably represented in a group, in both ancient and modern art. Taken together, they stand, of course, for beauty and graciousness, and typify, also, the agreeable arts and occupations. In separating them, Mr. Benson has considered Aglaia as the patroness of Husbandry; Thalia as representing Music; and Euphrosyne, Beauty. The first, therefore, has a shepherd’s crook, the second a lyre, and the last is looking at her reflection in a hand-mirror. All are shown sitting in the midst of a pleasant summer landscape, with trees and water and fertile meadows.

For the four circular panels Mr. Benson has chosen as his subject The Seasons. Each is represented by a beautiful half-length figure of a young woman, with no attempt, however, at any elaborate symbolism to distinguish the season which she typifies. Such distinction as the painter has chosen to indicate is to be sought rather in the character of the faces, or in the warmer or colder coloring of the whole panel—in a word, in the general artistic treatment.

At either end of the vault is a rectangular panel painted in the same style as those depicting the ancient games in the North Corridor, but in this case representing the modern sports of Football and Baseball. The former, occurring at the east end of the vault, is a more or less realistic picture of a “scrimmage.” The latter is more conventionalized, showing single figures, like the pitcher and catcher, in the attitude of play, and others with bats, masks, and gloves.

Instead of the swans and dragons of the North Corridor, the printers’ marks in the penetrations of the present corridor are supported between the figures of mermen and fauns, and mermaids and nymphs, the male figures, with their suggestion of greater decorative strength, occurring at the ends of the corridor, and the nymphs and mermaids alternating between. Altogether there are thirty-two figures, each painted by Mr. Frederick C. Martin.

On the pendentives, the series of trophies begun in the North Corridor is continued, giving place, as before, in every other pendentive, to a tablet bearing an inscription. Beginning on the south side, at the east end, the trophies are as follows: Printing, with a stick, inking-ball, and type-case; Pottery, three jugs of different kinds of clay; Glass-making, three glass vases of different shapes; Carpentry, a saw, bit, hammer, and right angle; Smithery, the anvil, pincers, hammer, bolt, and nut; Masonry, a trowel, square, plumb, and mortar-board.

The following are the eight inscriptions:—

Studies perfect nature and are perfected by experience.

Bacon.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good.

Wordsworth.

Learning is but an adjunct to ourself.

Love’s Labor’s Lost.

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Pope.

The universal cause

Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.

Pope.

Vain, very vain, [the] weary search to find

That bliss which only centres in the mind.

Goldsmith.

Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine!

Goldsmith.

The fault ... is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Shakespeare (Julius Cæsar).

The semicircular borders at either end are practically the same in color and design as in the North Corridor. At the east end, the Eastern is substituted for the Western Hemisphere, and at the west end, a caduceus and a lictor’s axe for the United States Seal. The accompanying inscriptions are as follows:

Man raises but time weighs.

Modern Greek Proverb.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Bulwer Lytton.

The noblest motive is the public good.

Virgil.

The Decoration of the Walls.—The decoration of the vaults of the four corridors is distinctly Renaissance in character; the walls beneath, however, are colored and decorated in accordance with a Pompeiian motive. It may seem at first thought illogical thus to join two styles so remote from each other in point of time, but it must be remembered that, in both art and literature, the Renaissance was literally, as has been pointed out, the new birth of Greek and Roman forms, in the course of which the Italian painters adapted to their use and subdued to their style the sort of wall decoration which we know as Pompeiian, from the discovery of so many examples of it in the excavations at Pompeii. The two styles, as used in conjunction in the Library of Congress, not only in these corridors but throughout the building, are perfectly harmonious in color and design; from the explanation just given the visitor will see that they have long ago been brought into a historical unity as well, through the conventions established by the great and authoritative school of the Renaissance artists.

AGLAIA.—BY F. W. BENSON.

Mr. Maynard’s Pompeiian Panels.—The frequent occurrence of windows, doors, and pilasters cuts the wall into narrow spaces, which, at the north and south, are colored a plain olive, and at the east and west the familiar rich Pompeiian red, ornamented with simple arabesques and, at the ends, with female figures representing The Virtues, by Mr. George Willoughby Maynard. There are eight of these figures in all, two in each corner of the hall. Each figure is about five and a half feet high, clad in floating classic drapery, and represented to the spectator as appearing before him in the air, without a support or background other than the deep red of the wall. The style of the paintings is Pompeiian; the general tone is somewhat like that of marble, although touched with color so as to remove any comparison with the marble framing.

Beginning at the left in each case, the names and order of the Virtues are as follows: At the northeast corner, Fortitude and Justice; at the southeast corner, Patriotism and Courage; at the southwest corner, Temperance and Prudence; at the northwest corner, Industry and Concord. The number of virtues to be represented was determined beforehand, of course, by the number of spaces at the disposal of the painter. The selection, therefore, was necessarily somewhat arbitrary.

Each figure is shown with certain characteristic attributes. In the case of Industry, Courage, and Patriotism, Mr. Maynard has himself selected these attributes; in the other five figures he has followed the usual conventions.

SPRING.—BY F. W. BENSON.

Fortitude is shown fully armed—the mace in her right hand and the buckler on her arm, and protected by cuirass, casque, and greaves. She is thus represented as ready for any emergency—living in continual expectation of danger, and constantly prepared to meet it. Justice holds the globe in her right hand, signifying the extent of her sway. She holds a naked sword upright, signifying the terribleness of her punishment. Patriotism is feeding an eagle, the emblem of America, from a golden bowl—an action which symbolizes the high nourishment with which the Virtue sustains the spirit of the country. Courage is represented as armed hastily with the buckler, casque, and sword—not, like Fortitude, continually on guard, but snatching up her arms in the presence of an unforeseen danger. Temperance—figured as the classic rather than the modern virtue—holds an antique pitcher in her right hand, from which a stream of some liquor, whether wine or water, descends into the bowl she holds in her left. Her buoyancy and air of health betoken her moderation of living. Prudence looks in a hand-glass to discover any danger which may assail her from behind. In her right hand she holds a serpent—the emblem of wisdom. Industry draws the flax from a distaff, the end of which is stuck in her girdle, and twists it into thread, to be wound upon the spindle which hangs at her side. Concord—the Roman goddess Concordia—illustrates the blessings of peace. In her right hand she bears an olive-branch, and in her left she carries a cornucopia filled with wheat.

The Inscriptions along the Walls.—Before taking leave of the corridors of the Entrance Hall, one more feature of the decoration requires notice, namely the twenty-nine inscriptions occupying the gilt tablets below the stucco frames which surround the circular windows and the wall-paintings of Mr. Benson and Mr. Reid. They are as follows:—

Too low they build who build beneath the stars.

Young.

There is but one temple in the Universe and that is the Body of Man.

Novalis.

Beholding the bright countenance of Truth in the quiet and still air of delightful

studies.

Milton.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Carlyle.

Nature is the art of God.

Sir Thomas Browne.

There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind.

Lowell.

It is the mind that makes the man, and our vigor is in our immortal soul.

Ovid.

They are never alone that are accompanied by noble thoughts.

Sidney.

Man is one world and has

Another to attend him.

Herbert.

Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

As You Like It.

The true Shekinah is man.

Chrysostom.

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

Shirley.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

Longfellow.

The history of the world is the biography of great men.

Carlyle.

Books will speak plain when counsellors blanch.

Bacon.

Glory is acquired by virtue but preserved by letters.

Petrarch.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Dionysius.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Dr. Johnson.

There is only one good, namely knowledge, and one only evil, namely ignorance.

Diogenes Laertius.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Tennyson.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

Proverbs iv, 7.

Ignorance is the curse of God,

Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

2 Henry IV.

How charming is divine Philosophy!

Milton.

Books must follow sciences and not sciences books.

Bacon.

In books lies the Soul of the whole past time.

Carlyle.

Words are also actions and actions are a kind of words.

Emerson.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Bacon.

Science is organized knowledge.

Herbert Spencer.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

Keats.