The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1914 THE VATICAN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 31, 23 September 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1914 THE VATICAN.

Mr Douglas Skulen, who, >t is stated, spends half the year in Italy, and devotes 'his attention while there chiefly to the study of Church antiquities, lias written a hook entitled ''How to See the Vatican,'-' and he explains the work is intended to initiate f he public in those sights which visitois do not generally see, and therefore refrains from taking up their time in describing those parts of the palace which are already dealt with fully in other 'looks. The famous library, celebrated for its 35.000 manuscripts, i« described at length. This library owes its character, if not its inception, to Nicholas V., who founded it simultaneously with the invention of printing, for though Pope St. Damascus, in the fourth century, had a notable library, this was dispersed in the persecutions of Diocletian. Leo XIII., bent upon carrying out the great project of Nicholas V., that the Vatican Library should become the focus of European scholarship, placed both the manuscripts and the archives at the disposal of scholars from any quarter of the world. He established the new Leonine Library, which lies beneath the Sala Sistina, the superb hall of Sixtus V. Ordinary visitors, a writer in the Sydney Telegraph says, spend most of their time hi this magnificent chamber,, which \i brilliantly arnbesqued, and filled with glass cases containing, the most famous manuscript treasures of the Vatican. But only students, or those specially privileged, descend to the Leonine Library below it, which consists of eight fine chambers—six under the Sala Sistina, one in a room at the east end taken from the Vatican mosaic factory, and one in the corresponding room'at the other end adjoining the Arehivio. In - this place is housed every printed book in .the Vatican. At. one end, at the descent from the library above, stands the statue of St. Thomas Aquinas. sculptured by Cesare Aurelio, and presented to Leo XML on the occasion of his jubilee by a subscription from nil the Roman Catholic seminaries in the world. At the other end is a statue of Lope Leo himself. In the days before the new Leonine Library was formed, those who were studying the Vatican archives had to walkabout half a mile to get to the library of printed books if they wished to refer to anything. The Pope's garden is rarely seen by visitors. Here his Holiness may walk undisturbed in wood and vineyard. or amidst the flowers of the field; or, if he wishes, gaze from the heights upon the view of the open road, the spacious Campagna, and the distant sea. At one time a great coach all scarlet and gold, with flying and trumpeting cherubs, carried Pius X., the last of the Pope-kings, in his Royal processions, on four great days of the year ; but now, when the Pope never drives past the Vatican gates, the eonch-house has surrendered its unneeded chambers to the Pope's pictures and the swelling archives of the Vatican, many of which made the

lorn pilgrimage to Avignon in the years of the first captivity, and have only come back in those latter days. i'ius X., it appears on the authority of the most influential of ihc Cardinals, bad had in mind the project ol establishing a St. Peter's Museum, like the Opera del Duomo at Florence and Siena; but any such intention lias now been frustrated by his death.