Those who have tried to work in the overcrowded libraries of Europe, hampered by annoying restrictions and wearisome delays, will fully comprehend the blessing which such freedom brings. The humblest creature that ever learned to read and write has but himself to blame if he yields supinely to the darkness of ignorance in the face of advantages like these.

The vaulted corridor on the left of the staircase-gallery, larger than the right-hand one, is lighted by a window overlooking the court. As in the former case, the door is surmounted by an old Venetian lion; and the decorations of walls and ceiling, by Joseph Lindon Smith, in the style of the Renaissance, symbolize the golden age of Venice. The "white swan of cities," embodied in a graceful female figure, sits enshrined above the window between a kneeling Saint Theodore and a genius of the Adriatic, against a background of mountain and lagoon.