of a
kind of gentlemanly deportment.

On entering the first of those rooms, where the prints are kept, you are
immediately struck with the narrow dimensions of the place--for the
succeeding room, though perhaps more than twice as large, is still
inadequate to the reception of its numerous visitors.[21] In this first
room you observe a few of the very choicest productions of the burin, from
the earliest periods of the art, to the more recent performances of
_Desnoyer_, displayed within glazed frames upon the wainscot. It really
makes the heart of a connoisseur leap with ecstacy to see such
_Finiguerras, Baldinis, Boticellis, Mantegnas, Pollaiuolos, Israel Van
Meckens, Albert Durers, Marc Antonios, Rembrandts, Hollar, Nanteuils,
Edelincks, &c._; while specimens of our own great master engravers, among
whom are _Woollet_ and _Sharp_, maintain a conspicuous situation, and add
to the gratification of the beholder. The idea is a good one; but to carry
it into complete effect, there should be a gallery, fifty feet long, of a
confined width, and lighted from above:[22] whereas the present room is
scarcely twenty feet square, with a disproportionably low ceiling. However,
you cannot fail to be highly gratified--and onwards you go--diagonally--and
find yourself in a comparatively long room--in the midst of which is a
table, reaching from nearly one end to the other, and entirely filled
(every day) with visitors, or rather students--busied each in their several
pursuits. Some are quietly turning over the succeeding leaves, on which the
prints are pasted: others are pausing upon each fine specimen, in silent
ecstacy--checking themselves every instant lest they should break forth
into rapturous exclamations!... "silence" being rigidly prescribed by the
Curators--and, I must say, as rigidly maintained. Others again are busied
in deep critical examination of some ancient ruin from the pages of
_Piranesi_ or of _Montfaucon_--now making notes, and now copying particular
parts. Meanwhile, from the top to the bottom of the sides of the, room, are
huge volumes of prints, bound in red morocco; which form indeed the
materials for the occupations just described.[23]

But, hanging upon a pillar, at the hither end of this second room, you
observe a large old drawing of a head or portrait, in a glazed frame; which
strikes you in every respect as a great curiosity. M. Du Chesne, the
obliging and able director of this department of the collection