who frequented it. The library buildings form a
quadrangle of massive masonry, with a grave, venerable look, becoming
its name. The collection is upwards of 80,000 volumes; but, what is not
very complimentary to the literary tastes of the prefetto and honorary
canons of Sant' Ambrogio, the curators of the library, they are
arranged, not according to their subjects, but according to their sizes.
This library reminded me of a lamp in an Etrurian tomb. There was light
enough in that hall to illuminate the whole duchy of the Milanese, could
it but find an outlet. As it is, I fear a few straggling rays are all
that are able to escape. There is no catalogue of the books, save some
very imperfect lists; and I was told that there is a pontifical bull
against making any such. I saw a few visitors in its halls, attracted,
like myself, by its curiosities; but I saw no one who had come to
restore volumes they had read, and receive others in their room. The
modern inhabitant of Milan gives his days and nights to the cafe and the
club,--not to the library. He lives and dies unpolluted by the printing
press,--an execrable invention of the fifteenth century, from which a
paternal Government and an infallible Church employ their utmost
energies to shield him. The works of dead authors he dare not read; the
productions of living ones he dare not print; and the only compositions
to which he has access are the decrees of the Austrian police, and the
Catechism of the Jesuit. He fully appreciates, of course, the care taken
to preserve the purity of his political and religious faith, and will
one day show the extent of his gratitude.

I saw in this library the famous _Palimpsests_. My readers know, of
course, what these are. The _Palimpsests_ are little books of vellum,
from which an original and ancient writing has been erased, to make room
for the productions of later ages and of other pens. These pages bore
originally the thoughts of Virgil and Livy, and, in short, of almost all
the great writers of pagan, antiquity; but the monks, who did not relish
their pagan notions, thought the vellum would be much better bestowed if
filled with their own homilies. The good fathers conceived the project
of enlightening and evangelizing the world by purging of its paganism
all the vellum in Europe; and, being much intent on their object, they
succeeded in it to an amazing extent.

"A second deluge learning did o'errun,
And the monks finished what th