We visited the imperial library a day or two ago.  The hall is two hundred and forty-five feet long, with a magnificent dome in the center, under which stands the statue of Charles V., of Carrara marble, surrounded by twelve other monarchs of the house of Hapsburg.  The walls are of variegated marble richly ornamented with gold, and the ceiling and dome are covered with brilliant fresco-paintings.  The library numbers three hundred thousand volumes and sixteen thousand manuscripts, which are kept in walnut cases gilded and adorned with medallions.  The rich and harmonious effect of the whole can not easily be imagined.  It is exceedingly appropriate that a hall of such splendor should be used to hold a library.  The pomp of a palace may seem hollow and vain, for it is but the dwelling of a man; but no building can be too magnificent for the hundreds of great and immortal spirits to dwell in who have visited earth during thirty centuries.

Among other curiosities preserved in the collection, we were shown a brass plate containing one of the records of the Roman Senate made one hundred and eighty years before Christ, Greek manuscripts of the fifth and sixth centuries, and a volume of Psalms printed on parchment in the year 1457 by Faust and Schoeffer, the inventors of printing.  There were also Mexican manuscripts presented by Cortez, the prayer-book of Hildegard, wife of Charlemagne, in letters of gold, the signature of San Carlo Borromeo, and a Greek Testament of the thirteenth century which had been used by Erasmus in making his, translation and contains notes in his own hand.  The most interesting article was the “Jerusalem Delivered” of Tasso, in the poet’s own hand, with his erasures and corrections.

The chapel of St. Augustine contains one of the best works of Canova—­the monument of the Grand Duchess Maria Christina of Sachsen-Teschen.  It is a pyramid of gray marble, twenty-eight feet high, with an opening in the side representing the entrance to a sepulcher.  A female figure personating Virtue bears in an urn to the grave the ashes of the departed, attended by two children with torches.  The figure of Compassion follows, leading an aged beggar to the tomb of his benefactor, and a little child with its hands folded.  On the lower step rests a mourning genius beside a sleeping lion, and a bas-relief on the pyramid above represents an angel carrying Christina’s image, surrounded with the emblem of eternity, to heaven.  A spirit of deep sorrow, which is touchingly portrayed in the countenance of the old man, pervades the whole group.

While we looked at it the organ breathed out a slow, mournful strain which harmonized so fully with the expression of the figures that we seemed to be listening to the requiem of the one they mourned.  The combined effect of music and sculpture thus united in their deep pathos was such that I could have sat down and wept.  It was not from sadness at the death of a benevolent tho unknown individual, but the feeling of grief, of perfect, unmingled sorrow, so powerfully represented, came to the heart like an echo of its own emotion and carried it away with irresistible influence.  Travelers have described the same feeling while listening to the “Miserere” in the Sistine Chapel at Rome.  Canova could not have chiselled the monument without tears.