sing up the enchanted vista
through the ruddy stems and deep green foliage of tall stone-pines;
the whole glowing in the brilliant sunshine and the exquisite violet
transparency of the Roman sky. How delightful to spend whole days
there and forget the commonplace present in converse with the master
minds of the ages, and in dreams of the heroic past; the half-closed
shutters and drawn curtains producing a cool and drowsy atmosphere, in
delicious contrast with the broiling sun without! Learning, however,
would be too apt to fall asleep, and be shorn of its strength on the
Delilah lap of such splendid luxury.

A few of the most interesting books and manuscripts are now contained
in two handsome cabinets placed in the centre of the Great Hall of the
library. These cabinets have two cases, an outer and an inner one, and
are carefully double-locked. The librarian opened them for me, and
displayed their contents, which are usually seen only through a thick
plate of protecting glass. In the one cabinet were a manuscript of the
Latin poet Terence, of the fourth and fifth century; the celebrated
palimpsest of Cicero de Republica, concealed under a version of St.
Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, the oldest Latin manuscript in
existence; the famous Virgil of the fifth century, with the well-known
portrait of Virgil; the Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzum; the
folio Hebrew Bible, which was the only thing that Duke Frederico of
Urbino reserved for himself of the spoil at the capture of Volterra in
1472, and for which the Jews in Venice offered its weight in gold; a
sketch of the first three cantos of the Gerusalemme Liberata in the
handwriting of Tasso; a copy of Dante in the handwriting of Boccaccio;
and several of Petrarch's autograph sonnets. In the other cabinet is
the great gem and glory of the Library--the Codex Vaticanus, in
strange association with a number of the love-letters of Henry
VIII. and Anne Boleyn, in French and English. This curious
correspondence--which, after all that subsequently happened between
the English monarch and the Papal Court, we are very much surprised to
see in such a place--is in wonderful preservation. But though
perfectly legible, the archaic form of the characters and the numerous
abbreviations make it extremely difficult to decipher them. The tragic
ending of this most inauspicious love-making invests with a deep
pathos these faded yellow records of it that seem like the cold, gray
ashe