BOSTON AND ITS ENVIRONS. 51 



Bostonians have always been proud of their Public 

 Library, from its foundation in 1852. By 1885, the 

 Boylston street building, with accommodations for 

 250,000 volumes, was too contracted a space to hold the 

 largest public library in the world, and with charac- 

 teristic promptness the city rose to the occasion and em- 

 bodied its thought that ''nothing can be too good for 

 the people'' in the beautiful new library in Copley 

 Square, which cost the royal sum of $2,600,000. 



The long chapter of description which this splendid 

 enterprise merits must be reluctantly crowded into a 

 few lines. Nothing, however, save personal observa- 

 tion, can give an adequate perception of its outward 

 loveliness; its exterior of soft cream-gray granite, with 

 a succession of noble arched windows ranged along its 

 fine fa9ades ; its arches, pillars and floorings of rare 

 marbles, and its mosaics, panels and carvings. The grand 

 staircase of splendid Sienna marble, 0[)posite the main 

 entrance, is one of the finest in the world ; and scholar 

 or philosopher could ask no more attractive spot for 

 thoughtful promenade than the beautiful open court, 

 with its marble basin and MacMonnies fountain in the 

 centre, the soft green of its surrounding turf affording 

 grateful rest to book- wearied eyes, and the pensive beauty 

 of the cloister-like colonnade forming an ideal retreat. 



The foremost artists of the world are represented in 

 the interior decoration. The famous St. Gaudens seal, 

 designed by Kenyon Cox and executed by Augustus 

 St. Gaudens, ornaments the central arch of the main 

 vestibule; the bronze doors are by Daniel G. French; 

 the splendid marble lions in the staircase hall — erected 

 as memorials to their martyred comrades by two regi- 

 ments of Massachusetts voluntejers — are by Louis St 



