to the right, looking into the quadrangle before mentioned.

You pass through this room--where scarcely any body lingers--and enter the
second, where are placed the EDITIONES PRINCIPES, and other volumes printed
in the fifteenth century. To an _experienced_ eye, the first view of the
contents of this second room is absolutely magical; Such copies of such
rare, precious, magnificent, and long-sought after impressions!... It is
fairy-land throughout. There stands the _first Homer_, unshorn by the
binder; a little above, is the first _Roman edition of Eustathius's_
Commentary upon that poet, in gorgeous red morocco, but printed UPON
VELLUM! A Budæus _Greek Lexicon_ (Francis I.'s own copy) also UPON VELLUM!
The _Virgils, Ovids, Plinies_ ... and, above all, the _Bibles_--But I check
myself; in order to conduct you regularly through the apartments, ere you
sit down with me before each volume which I may open. In this second-room
are two small tables, rarely occupied, but at one or the other of which I
was stationed (by the kind offices of M. Van Praet) for fourteen days--with
almost every thing that was exquisite and rare, in the old book-way, behind
and before me. Let us however gradually move onwards. You pass into the
third room. Here is the grand rendezvous of readers. Six circular or rather
oval tables, each capable of accommodating twelve students, and each
generally occupied by the full number, strike your eye in a very pleasing
manner, in the centre of this apparently interminable vista of printed
volumes.

But I must call your particular attention to the _foreground_ of this
magical book-view. To the left of this third room, on entering, you observe
a well-dressed Gentleman (of somewhat shorter stature than the author of
this description) busied behind a table; taking down and putting up
volumes: inscribing names, and numbers, and titles, in a large folio
volume; giving orders on all sides; and putting several pairs of legs into