there must be occasional exceptions to this rigid, but upon the whole
salutary, "Ordonnance du Roy." Indeed I have reason to mention a most
flattering exception to it--in my own favour: for M. Van Praet would come
into the second room, (just mentioned) and with his own hands supply me
with half a score volumes at a time--of such as I wished to examine. But,
generally speaking, this worthy and obliging creature is too lavish of his
own personal exertions. He knows, to be sure, all the bye-passes, and
abrupt ascents and descents; and if he be out of sight--in a moment,
through some secret aperture, he returns as quickly through another equally
unseen passage. Upon an average, I set his bibliomaniacal peregrinations
down at the rate of a full French league per day. It is the absence of all
pretension and quackery--the quiet, unobtrusive manner in which he opens
his well-charged battery of information upon you--but, more than all, the
glorious honours which are due to him, for having assisted to rescue the
book treasures of the Abbey of St. Germain des Près from destruction,
during the horrors of the Revolution--that cannot fail to secure to him the
esteem of the living, and the gratitude of posterity.

[Illustration: GOLD MEDAL OF LOUIS XII.
From the Cabinet des Medailles at Paris.]

We must now leave this well occupied and richly furnished chamber, and pass
on to the fourth room--in the centre of which is a large raised bronze
ornament, representing Apollo and the Muses--surrounded by the more eminent
literary characters of France in the seventeenth century. It is raised to
the glory of the grand monarque Louis XIV. and the figure of Apollo is
intended for that of his Majesty. The whole is a palpable failure: a
glaring exhibition of bad French taste. Pegasus, the Muses, rocks, and
streams, are all scattered about in a very confused manner; without
connection, and of course without effect. Even the French allow it to be