eBooks Base 2000

He is a gentle, refined,
quiet-looking man, as well he may be, having spent all his life among
these books, where few people intrude, and few cares can come. He showed
us a very old Bible in parchment, a specimen of the earliest printing,
beautifully ornamented with pictures, and some monkish illuminations of
indescribable delicacy and elaboration. No artist could afford to
produce such work, if the life that he thus lavished on one sheet of
parchment had any value to him, either for what could be done or enjoyed
in it. There are about eight thousand volumes in this library, and,
judging by their outward aspect, the collection must be curious and
valuable; but having another engagement, we could spend only a little
time here. We had a hasty glance, however, of some poems of Tasso, in
his own autograph.
We then went to the Palazzo Galitzin, where dwell the Misses Weston, with
whom we lunched, and where we met a French abbe, an agreeable man, and an
antiquarian, under whose auspices two of the ladies and ourselves took
carriage for the Castle of St.


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