Another principal librarian is M. LANGLES:[28] an author of equal reputation with Monsieur Gail—­but his strength lies in Oriental literature; and he presides more especially over the Persian, Arabic, and other Oriental MSS.  To the naivete of M. Gail, he adds the peculiar vivacity and enthusiasm of his countrymen.  To see him presiding in his chair (for he and M. Gail take alternate turns) and occupied in reading, you would think that a book worm could scarcely creep between the tip of his nose and the surface of the Codex Bombycinus over which he is poring.  He is among the most short-sighted of mortals—­as to ocular vision.  But he has a bravely furnished mind; and such a store of spirits and of good humour—­talking withal unintermittingly, but very pleasantly—–­that you find it difficult to get away from him.  He is no indifferent speaker of our own language; and I must say, seems rather proud of such an acquirement.  Both he and M. Gail, and M. Van Praet, are men of rather small, stature—­ triplicates, as it were, of the same work[29]—­but of which M. Gail is the tallest copy.  One of the two head librarians, just mentioned, sits at a desk in the second room—­and when any friends come to see, or to converse with him—­the discussion is immediately adjourned to the contiguous boudoir-like apartment, where are deposited the rich old bindings of which you have just had a hasty description.  Here the voices are elevated, and the flourishes of speech and of action freely indulged in.

In the way to the further apartment, from the boudoir so frequently mentioned, you pass a small room—­in which there is a plaster bust of the King—­and among the books, bound, as they almost all are, in red morocco, you observe two volumes of tremendously thick dimensions; the one entitled Alexander Aphrodiaesus, Hippocrates, &c.—­the other Plutarchi Vitae Parallelae et Moralia, &c. They contain nothing remarkable for ornament, or what is more essential, for intrinsic worth.  Nevertheless you pass on:  and the last—­but the most magnificent—­of all the rooms, appropriated to the reception of books, whether in ms. or in print, now occupies a very considerable portion of your attention.  It is replete with treasures of every description:  in ancient art, antiquities, and both sacred and profane learning:  in languages from all quarters, and almost of all ages of the world.  Here I opened, with indescribable delight the ponderous and famous Latin Bible of Charles the Bald—­and the religious manual of his brother the Emperor Lotharius—­composed chiefly of transcripts from the Gospels.  Here are ivory bindings, whether as diptychs, or attached to regular volumes.  Here are all sorts and sizes of the uncial or capital-letter MSS—­ in portions, or entire.  Here, too, are very precious old illuminations, and specimens—­almost without number—­admirably arranged, of every species of BIBLIOGRAPHICAL VIRTU, which cannot fail to fix the attention, enlarge the knowledge, and improve the judgment, of the curious in this department of research.