The Evansville journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ind.) 1866-1870, 1868-06-25
NERO LIBRARY Rooms, I
ST. LOUIS, June Is, 1868.
Editors Journal:

This is my fourth visit to these
Rooms, and can't help saying
under the inspiration of the
feeling they inspire, that they
are "a thing of beauty and,
therefore, & a joy forever, and can't
help asking, how long it will be be
fore Evansville will be able to boast
of anything that will bear even a re-
mote comparison with this-to the in
telhgent man, one of the selectest
places in this great inland Metropo-
lis of the nation, as its citizens callit?
When one enters here, there is a
kind of g Procul I o, Procul! Este
profanii air about it. A step only,
as it were, from the coarse babble and
pelf-ringing Babylon outside, and
yet that one step lifts him up into a
wholly different plane and atmos-
phere. Here are two spacious rooms,
the one with the spirits of the dead
and of the living IN many thousand
v0lumns, the other with the same,
but mostly Of the living IN papers,
magazines, reviews. &C., from all parts
of our country, and also Europe, and
over both, spirits of rarity and beauty
upon paper, and canvass, and in mar
Bile, and plaster, and bronze. and wood,
making them a haunt genteel,
quiet, Notwithstanding thought and
study livery lip is still-every head
uncovered, the rules being observed,
that no whispering even is allowed,
and every gentleman upon entering
must remove his hat.
Well. it will be enough to know
that the Library is large, and the
shelves constantly supplied with new
books, and duplicates of popular
ones, to measurably supply the de-
mands of ali. As it regards the
Reading room, it is a question with
you, as you look over the periodicals,
whether any of our approved issues
could be asked for that are not at
hand.
But the aesthetics of the rooms ex-
cite your admiration. Here you have
statues of Webster, and Benton, and
Douglas; life-size paintings of Hum
boldt, Governor CLARK, and others.
You have upon the walls, also, rare
paintings of the old modern masters;
a sculptured stone from Nimrod, the
ancient Nineveh, of vast size, with its
chiseled conqueror, and inscriptions in
cunet- form, or drrolo- headed chdrdc-
ters-older, probably, than Nebuched-
neZzar.
There are also three statues, in pure
italian marble, from the chisel of
Miss Harriet Hosmer. Two of them
life-size, Beatrice Cenci, the other
G'aone, worthy of repeated and long
gazing, for the more you look, the
more the sense of their beauty grows
upon you.
There is also full sized bronze
Venus de Medici, an antique, many
exquisite paintings, copies of the old
masters e g.. Cupid and Psyche, the
Burial of Atlanta, aud others, too
numerous to mention. An exquisite
bust of Burns upon an oaken pedestal,
upon which is cut in alto retjeU0,
scenes from some Of Burnss poems,
as the ACotter's Saturday Night"
and : Tam OShauter.'3 3
What a grand Institution for any |
city! and | ask again when will Z. |
have anything that at all approx. j
mates what st. Louis has in this noble 1
library? Will not some of our mon
eyed mentor we must have more /
than drtbIet subscriptions-will not 4
our moneyed men do something to- /
wards laying a foundation for a SINH
lar superstructure? To be sure, the /
grandest of old oaks was once in the |
acorn, and can not we have an acorn? /
can hardly consent that what we
have on Locust Street-as [ stand in
this presence-can be even that, but
if l do. may not still hope that our
citizens will have a more liberal de-
votion to what is best aud noblest.
and do something that will encourage
a taste for not only the intelligent.
but the rare and beautiful?
And now, as | have been dealing
withsthe fine arts somewhat, | want
to say that [ spent more than an hour
in the gallery of Pettis & Lethe, on
Fourth Street, which is now quite a
center of attraction, because of No
bles' great historical painting of
= John Brown, on exhibition there.
The artist has seized the moment
when Brown is led cut of prison mid
the line of bayonets. The old hero,
with bushy gray hair and long snowy
beard, is calm, erect, fearless of death,
strong ir body as, also, evidently,
strong in his unconquered will of pur-
pose to be true to his principle and
belief. His arms are pinioned be-
see the cord just above the
elbows. His left hand is outstretched
as far as the cord will allow, and is
laid upon the curly head Of a little
black babe or child, just old enough
to toddle along, and whom its young !
mother, kneeIing. is in the act of