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.

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.

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 tympa nums 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. 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 votingurn 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 millwheel 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.

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

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.

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