Chapter V

.). What we have there spoken of may here be (not handled indeed, but) seen.

It will now be time to bring our visit to the Museum to a close, lest we should be allured by its multifarious treasures--the memorials of all ages, to wander too far from our proper subject. Yet a glance must be had at the manuscripts that are exposed to view in cases in the saloons on the eastern side of the Museum. These manuscripts, to some of which we must hereafter make a reference, bring under the eye all those varieties of material, of decoration, and of character as to the writing, which already have been briefly mentioned. Among them we may find samples of the writer’s art, and of the art of the writer’s brother--the decorator, as seen in the illuminations; some of them are in the highest degree sumptuous and magnificent; others are more business-like:--a few that have held their integrity as books through sixteen hundred years, and many, during a thousand years. The summers and the winters--times of war and devastation--times of peace:--years of narrow risks from spoliation, conflagration, barbarian recklessness; and centuries, perhaps, when, throughout noiseless days and nights not a breath, not a hand, moved the dust that was always coming to its long rest upon the cover! So it has been that a safe transmission of the inestimable records of mind has had place, notwithstanding the mischances, the storms, the violences, the ignorance, and the neglects, of so many years.

##