286 LOUVRE. BIBLIOTHEQUE DU HOI.
of the needle. The very street-beggar feels a prop erty and a pride in the decorations of la belle Paris. To rifle a plant, or wound a tree, or deface a statue in the public squares or gardens, is held by the rudest boy an indelible disgrace. Would that it were so everywhere \
In the Louvre, amid that astonishing collection of fifteen hundred arranged pictures, and probably as many more, for which the walls of its sumptuous gal lery have no space, were groups of artists, of both sexes, diligently employed in copying ad libitum. The department of statuary, notwithstanding the spoils of Italy have been abstracted and restored, is still very extensive. Our party often found themselves attracted towards a lovely, pensive Polhyminia, and a fine infant Mercury, and imagined among the effigies of the Em perors of Rome some resemblance to their real char acter ; especially in the philosophic features of Marcus Aurelius, the thoughtful brow of Antoninus Pius, and the varied lineaments of Trajan, Severus, and Nerva, Domitian, Nero, and Caracalla ; though a youthful Commodus in his gentleness and grace displayed none of those latent evils which gave the sharpest pang to the deathbed of his father.
Like the Louvre, the Bibliotheque du Hoi, is fitted up with every accommodation of light, warmth, and silent recess, for those who are desirous of profiting by its immense accumulation of nine hundred thousand volumes, and eighty thousand manuscripts. The books are in cases, protected by wire grating, and
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