Note 51 — The Library Annexe.

These notices of the Hawarden Library may be compared with the accounts given in Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino of a great Florentine library:—

'Adjoining (the main library) was a study, fitted up with inlaid and gilded panelling, beneath which . . . . were depicted Minerva with her ægis, Apollo with his lyre, and the nine muses, with their appropriate symbols. A similar small study was fitted up immediately over this one, set round with armchairs encircling a table, all mosaicked with tarsia, . . . while in each compartment of the panelling was the portrait of some famous author, and an appropriate distich. . . . To the right and left of the carriage entrance into the great courtyard are two handsome saloons, each about forty-five feet by twenty-two, and twenty-three in height. That on the left contained the famous library of MS. collected by Count Federigo; the corresponding one received the printed books which, gradually purchased by successive dukes, became, under the last sovereign a copious collection. Baldi, in his description of the palace, printed in Bianchini's works, dwells on the judicious adaptation of the former, its windows set high against the northern sky, admitting a subdued and steady light which invited to study; its air cool in summer, temperate in winter; its walls conveniently sheltered. . . . .'