the whole, there is no furnishing you with any very correct notion of this really matchless public library.  At the further end of the room, to the left, is a small door; which, upon opening, brings you into the interior of a moderately sized, plain room, where the Fifteeners are lodged.  The very first view of these ancient tomes caused a certain palpitation of the heart.  But neither this sort of book-jewel room, nor the large library just described—­leading to it—­are visited without the special license of the Curators:  a plan, which as it respects the latter room, is, I submit, exceedingly absurd; for, what makes a noble book-room look more characteristic and inviting, than its being well filled with students?  Besides, on the score of health and comfort—­at least in the summer months—­such a plan is almost absolutely requisite.

The MANUSCRIPTS are contained in a room, to the right, as you enter:  connected with the small room where M. Bartsch, as commander-in-chief, regularly takes his station—­from thence issuing such orders to his officers as best contribute to the well-being of the establishment.  The MS. room is sufficiently large and commodious, but without any architectural pretensions.  It may be about forty feet long.  Here I was first shewn, among the principal curiosities, a Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus coercendis:  a sort of police ordonnance, on a metal plate—­supposed to have been hung up in some of the public offices at Rome nearly 200 years before the birth of Christ.  It is doubtless a great curiosity, and invaluable as an historical document—­as far as it goes.  Here is a map, upon vellum, of the Itinerary of Theodosius the Great, of the fourth century; very curious, as exhibiting a representation of the then known world, in which the most extraordinary ignorance of the relative position of countries prevails.  I understood that both Pompeii and Herculaneum were marked on this map.  One of the most singular curiosities, of the antiquarian kind, is a long leather roll of Mexican hieroglyphics, which was presented to the Emperor Charles V., by Ferdinand Cortez.  There are copies of these hieroglyphics, taken from a copper plate; but the solution of them, like most of those from Egypt, will always be perhaps a point of dispute with the learned.

But the objects more particularly congenial with my pursuits, were, as you will naturally guess, connected rather with vellum MSS. of the Scriptures and Classics:  and especially did I make an instant and earnest enquiry about the famous fragment of the BOOK OF GENESIS, of the fourth century, of which I had before read so much in Lambecius, and concerning which my imagination was, strangely enough, wrought up to a most extraordinary pitch.  “Place before me that fragment, good M. Kopitar,” said I eagerly—­“and you shall for ever have my best thanks.” “That, and