eek thought and song, since the days when Ptolemy
Philadelphus walked there with Euclid and Theocritus, Callimachus and
Lycophron.

On the left of the garden stretched the lofty eastern front of
the Museum itself, with its picture galleries, halls of statuary,
dining-halls, and lecture-rooms; one huge wing containing that famous
library, founded by the father of Philadelphus, which hold in the time
of Seneca, even after the destruction of a great part of it in Caesar's
siege, four hundred thousand manuscripts. There it towered up, the
wonder of the world, its white roof bright against the rainless blue;
and beyond it, among the ridges and pediments of noble buildings, a
broad glimpse of the bright blue sea.

The room was fitted up in the purest Greek style, not without an
affectation of archaism, in the severe forms and subdued half-tints of
the frescoes which ornamented the walls with scenes from the old myths
of Athene. Yet the general effect, even under the blazing sun which
poured in through the mosquito nets of the courtyard windows, was one
of exquisite coolness, and cleanliness, and repose. The room had neither
carpet nor fireplace; and the only movables in it were a sofa-bed, a
table, and an arm-chair, all of such delicate and graceful forms as may
be seen on ancient vases of a far earlier period than that whereof we
write. But, most probably, had any of us entered that room that morning,
we should not have been able to spare a look either for the furniture,
or the general effect, or the Museum gardens, or the sparkling
Mediterranean beyond; but we should have agreed that the room was
quite rich enough for human eyes, for the sake of one treasure which it
possessed, and, beside which, nothing was worth a moment's glance. For
in the light arm-chair, reading a manuscript which lay on the table, sat
a woman, of some five-and-twenty years, evidently the tutelary goddess
of that little shrine, dressed in perfect keeping with the archaism of
the chamber, in simple old snow-white Ionic robe, falling to the feet
and reaching to the throat, and of that peculiarly severe and graceful
fashion in which the upper part of the dress falls downward again from
the neck to the waist in a sort of cape, entirely hiding the outline of
the bust, while it leaves the arms and the point of the shoulders bare.
Her dress was entirely without ornament, except the two narrow purple
stripes down the front, which marked her rank as a Roman c