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