Supplement to the Standard Guide.

THE LIBRARY DECORATIONS.

With Sixteen Interior Views from Photographs.

THESE pages contain concise but comprehensive descriptions of all the mural decorations of the Library Building. The location of every painting is indicated, and its subject is explained. All the quotations and other inscriptions on walls and ceilings are given. The "Standard Guide" is a complete handbook for visitors.

The arrangement and presentation of the material are such as to make it of very practical assistance in helping one to see all of the Library understandingly and appreciatively in the time at disposal.

The descriptions are given in the section order shown below. The visitor will find an advantage in following the same order.

For fountain, ethnological heads, and portico busts and sculptures, see ante.

Study the plans of the two stories. Remember that the building faces west. Take your bearings from the compass points in the floor of the Central Stair Hall, and as given in the floor plans.

1. The Three Bronze Doors.

Tradition.-Tradition is typified as a woman reciting her story to a boy, who leans upon her knee and looks up into her face. Grouped before her and listening to the tale are four representative types of mankind. To her right is a Norse warrior, with winged cap and battle-axe; and by him a shepherd with his crook. On her left sit a primitive man with his stone axe, and an American Indian with his arrows. The Indian figure is a portrait of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perces.* In the left panel is Imagination with the lyre, emblematic of recitation and song; in the right stands widowed Memory clasping the sword and helmet of her dead. The genii below support on one side the wings of imagination; on the other the memorial urn. (By Olin L. Warner.)

* On the day in April, 1897, when these particular notes were being made for the "Standard Guide," Chief Joseph himself was here at the Library, looking upon this portrait of himself.

Printing. The large tympanum represents Minerva presiding over the “Diffu sion of the Products of the Typographical Art." The goddess, seated in the center, holds upon her lap an open book. Two winged figures of youthful genii are, as her envoys, conveying to mankind the blessings of learning and literature. By Minerva's side is her owl; other suggestions are the hour-glass, the old-fashioned printing press, the stork (as the bird of home), and a winged Pegasus. In the minor tympanum a cartouche set in a garland of fruits bears the legend: "Homage to Gutenberg." (Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, Germany, 1400– 1468.) In each of the panels is an idealization, in form of a graceful female figure in brocaded robes, upholding in each hand a flaming torch. The one on the right as we enter is Intellect; on the left, Humanities. (By Frederick Macmonnies.) Writing is a mother instructing her children from the written record of the scroll. On one side is an Egyptian scribe with his stylus, and a Jewish patriarch; on the other, a Greek with a lyre and a Christian with the cross. In the panels are Truth with mirror and serpent and Research with torch. (By Warner.)

2. The Vestibule.

The Two Minervas.-The sun-lit finial of the dome is the Torch of Learning; we have seen the same emblem employed in the bronze doors, and we shall find it repeated again and again in the symbolical decorations of the interior. It is here in the vestibule, held aloft by the Minerva of Defensive War, represented with torch and sword. In her other character Minerva is shown as the presiding genius of Wisdom and the Liberal Arts. The figures are reproduced in eight pairs. They are by Herbert Adams. The white marble of the vestibule is from Italy. The gold of the white and gold ceiling is like that of the dome, 22-carats fine.

3. The Central Stair Hall.

The details which one will not fail to note are Martiny's bronze-lamp bearers and relief figures in the staircases, which are described in detail in the illustrated pages of this chapter; and the commemorative arch with its inscription and Warner's spandrel figures of Students, one a boy and the other an old man-for books are the instruction of youth and the solace of age. The arch bears the official designation of the edifice as the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; and a tablet gives the record of construction; see ante. On either side of the tablet are the fasces and the

eagle.

In the corners of the cone of the ceiling are Martiny's flying half-figures supporting cartouches upon which appear the device of the lamp and the book. Commemorative tablets in the ceiling bear the names of Moses, Herodotus, Dante, Homer, Milton, Bacon, Aristotle, Goethe, Shakespeare, Moliere. In the marble tablets below, are in succession: Cervantes-Hugo, Scott-Cooper, Longfellow-Tennyson, Gibbon-Bancroft.

Points of the Compass.-Radiating from a conventional sun inlaid in brass in the center of the floor are the Cardinal Points, surrounded by the Signs of the Zodiac. Fixing the points of the compass in mind as here indicated, one may readily follow from apartment to apartment as each is described in the "Standard Guide." The descriptions begin with the South Hall, on this floor.

4. Entrance Pavilion-First Floor-South Hall. ALL PAINTINGS. --In the South Hall H. O. Walker celebrates Poetry. The large panel at the east end is devoted to Lyric Poetry. The central figure is an ideali. zation of the Muse, laurel-crowned and playing upon a lyre. She is attended, on her right, by Passion with arm upraised responding to the strains, Beauty, and Mirth, a boy. On her left are Pathos with eyes raised to heaven, Truth, and Devotion with bowed head. The landscape is an idyllic scene of the days when Music, heavenly maid, was young."

The six panels on the sides present ideals of youthful subjects of the poets: Emerson's Uriel, the winged angel sitting alone and unmoved by the anger of his companion spirits.

Wordsworth's Boy of Winander, “by the glimmering lake,”

At evening, when the earliest stars began

To move along the edges of the hills.

Keats' Endymion, the lowly shepherd boy of Mount Latmos, with whom Diana in her chariot of the moon, fell in love as she saw him sleeping.

Tennyson's Ganymede, the cup-bearer of the gods

Flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh
Half buried in the eagle's down,

Sole as a flying star shot thro' the sky,
Above the pillar'd town.

Milton's Comus, the enchanter, listening to the song of the Lady.
Shakespeare's Adonis slain by the wild boar.

Joy and Memory are idealized in the painting above the arch in the west wall. Joy is attended by a boy with a lamb; Memory sits by a sculptured marble. The composition symbolizes the dual office of poetry as giving expression to the joyousness of life and as commemorating the men and the deeds of the past. The inscription is from Wordsworth:

The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.

IE CEILING.—In the mosaic ceiling are inscribed names of the poets: Theocritus, Pindar, Anacreon, Sappho-Catullus, Horace, Petrarch, Ronsard - Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, Whitman, Poe-Browning, Shelley, Byron, Musset, Hugo, Heine.

5. South Curtain Corridor.

IE SOUTH CURTAIN CORRIDOR leads from the South Hall of the Entrance Pavilion to the Representatives' and Senate Reading Rooms. The decorations by Walter McEwen celebrate the Greek Heroes. The series begins in the panel above the entrance, with Paris.

Paris at the court of Sparta is entertained by Menelaus, whose wife, Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, has been promised to Paris by Venus. He has come to bear her away to Troy.

Jason enlisting the Greeks in the glorious quest of the Golden Fleece. Beneath this picture is the inscription, from Tenneyson's "Ulysses":

One equal temper of heroic hearts made weak by time and fate,
But strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Bellerophon, commissioned to slay the Chimæra-a monster with lion's head, goat's body and dragon's tail-receives from Minerva the golden bridle of the winged horse Pegasus, by whose aid he is to accomplish the task.

Orpheus slain by the Bacchantes. Dazed by grief for his dead wife Eurydice, the musician could not play the joyful strains required of him by the Bacchantes, who in their fury killed him. Beneath the picture is inscribed:*

A glorious company, the flower of men to serve as model

For the mighty world, and be the fair beginning of a time.

Perseus, come to the court of King Polydectes (who has persecuted the hero's mother, Danäe, by a suit for her hand), turns the monarch and his company into stone by confronting them with the head of the Gorgon Medusa.

Prometheus having stolen fire from heaven, Jupiter created the first woman, Pandora, for the punishment of mankind, and sent her to Prometheus. The hero refused her, and vainly cautioned his brother Epimetheus not to accept her; this is the incident pictured. Pandora holds the fateful box, from which were let fly into the world all human ills, Hope alone remaining behind to bless mankind. The inscription reads:

To the souls of fire, I, Pallas Athena, give more fire;

And to those who are manful, a might more than man's.

Theseus, at the command of Minerva, deserting the sleeping Ariadne on Naxos.
Achilles, at the court of Lycomedes, disguised as a school girl, is sought by the
wily Ulysses, who in peddler's garb displays his wares; the girls choose trinkets,
but Achilles is attracted to a sword, and thus reveals his sex.
The inscription
is from Byron's Childe Harold :

Ancient of days, august Athena, where are thy men of might, thy grand
In soul? Gone-glimmering through the dreams of things that were.

Hercules, the story runs, having in anger killed a man was condemned by the gods to serve Omphale, the Queen of Lydia, for three years as a slave. Appareled in feminine dress the hero was put to spinning and other woman's tasks, while Omphale wore his lion's skin.

6. Senate Reading Room.

Reached by South Curtain Corridor.

THE SENATE READING ROOM ceiling is decorated with a gold ground on which are floating female figures. Above the mantle is carved the shield of the Union surmounted by the American Eagle, and supported by flying Genii. (By Adams.) 6. Representatives' Reading Room.

Reached by South Curtain Corridor.

THE MANTELS of Italian marble are to be accounted the richest and most beautiful adornments of the building. The mosaic panels (exceeding 7 feet by 3 feet in size) are by Fred. Dielman. The subject of the north mantel is Law; of the south, History. Law, a woman of radiant countenance and wearing the ægis, is enthroned upon a dais. At her feet are doves of peace, the bound volume of the statutes, and the scales of justice. She holds a palm branch toward Truth with her lilies, Peace with a twig of olive, and Industry with his artisan's cap and hammer. On the other side she interposes a sword against skulking Fraud, Discord with her malign serpents, and Violence with his sword and torch.

The inscriptions in the Library are in many instances adaptations, in which the exact text and the form of the verse are as here disregarded.

In the frieze the motives are the lamp and wreath; and in the center is a cartouche of Labrador spar. In the panel above is the American eagle with the shield in a wreath; in the border is the caduceus.

History. In the center stands the Muse of History with recording pen and gold-clasped volume. In the panels on either side are the names of great historians: Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, Bæda, Comines, Hume, Gibbon, Niebuhr, Guizot, Ranke, Bancroft, Motley. In the left of the picture sits Mythology with a recording stylus and a globe symbolic of the myths of the worlds. Beside her is a winged Sphinx and Pandora's box. On the right is the venerable figure of Tradition, and by her with a lyre sits a youthful poet, who will sing the story that she tells. In the distance rise the Pyramids of Egypt back of Mythology, the Parthenon of Greece back of History, and beyond Tradition the Colosseum of Rome.

Below is an antique lamp, and above, a frieze of horns of plenty, with a central cartouche of green onyx. The upper-mantel is similar to the one already noted. WALLS are finished in dark oak and green silk, and the color scheme is extremely rich and effective. The oak tympanums over the doors are carved by C. H. Niehaus with motives of Minerva's owl and the American eagle.

CEILING PAINTINGS, by Carl Gutherz, represent the seven primary colors of the spectrum interpreted as the Lights of Civilization. In the central field of each panel is an idealization in the form of a human figure, and in the corners of the panel are boyish genii, and shields of the States. Beginning at the north, the first is Indigo, the Light of Science.--Science is represented in the figure of Astronomy, borne upon a winged chariot, exploring the heavens. The crescent moon floats in the background; and overhead is a bow of stars. In the corners of the panel are genii with books, charts and a telescope.

Blue, the Light of Truth.—The Spirit of Truth is portrayed as trampling under foot and piercing with a beam of light from heaven the Dragon of Error. The genii in the corners have the Bible, level, plumb and square.

Green, the Light of Research.--Research holds a magnifying lens, and is attended by marine creatures as subjects of investigation. The genii in the corners with their magnifying glasses carry out the same idea.

Yellow, the Light of Creation.-Back of the suns and worlds evolving from the formless void is dimly discerned the shadowy presence of the Creator. The tablet is inscribed with the Divine command: "Let there be light." The books of the genii in the corners of the panel suggest Religion and Philosophy.

Orange is the Light of Progress, personified as poised upon a lofty pinnacle, with wreath, torch, and a streamer bearing the mottoes: Courage, Effort, Excellence, Excelsior. In the corners the book, easel, telephone, steamship, locomotive, Parthenon and dome symbolize phases of human development.

Red, the Light of Poetry.--The genius of Poetry, with torch and globe, is soaring aloft upon Pegasus. The corner suggestions are masks of tragedy and comedy.

Violet, the Light of State, is that of the Republic. America or Columbia supports the shield of the United States; her liberty cap is inscribed "1776"; she is attended by the eagle. In the border appear the mottoes: Liberty, Suffrage, Justice, Fraternity.