Pictures, with or without frames, and frames without
pictures; books in packing-cases with hinged sides, standing piled one
upon another, some closed and some with the sides open and showing the
books within; portfolios of engravings and drawings; inlaid or ivory
boxes, containing a medley of objects--miniatures, snuff-boxes, buttons,
combs, seals; vases and plates of blue and white Nankin; an Italian
stucco or two; a Renaissance bust in painted wood; fragments of stuff,
cabinets, chairs, and tables of various dates and styles--all were
gathered together in one vast and ugly confusion. It might have been a
_salone_ in one of the big curiosity shops of Rome or Venice, where the
wrecks and sports of centuries are heaped into the _piano nobile_ of
some great building, once a palazzo, now a chain of lumber rooms. For
here also, the large and stately library, with its nobly designed
bookcases--still empty of books--its classical panelling, and embossed
ceiling, made a setting of which the miscellaneous plunder within it was
not worthy. A man of taste would have conceived the beautiful room itself
as suffering from the disorderly uses to which it was put.
Only, in the centre, the great French table, the masterpiece of Riesener,
still stood respected and unencumbered. It held nothing but a Sevres
inkstand and pair of candle-sticks that had once belonged to Madame
Elisabeth. Mrs. Dixon dusted it every morning, with a feather brush,
generally under the eyes of Melrose.
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