The painting has grown mellow with the flight of a quarter-century. It shows the influence of Turner very plainly, and is accepted by the painter of the scene in words as a fair interpretation in color of the _château en Espagne_ of his song. It was a favorite of Sandford Gifford’s--another dear friend of the poet’s, whose handiwork in lake and mountain scenery lights up other corners of the room. Kindred treasures are a masterly head, by Eastman Johnson, of a Nantucket fisherman, gazing seaward through his glass; a glimpse of the Alps, presented by Bierstadt to Mrs. Stoddard; a swamp-scene, by Homer Martin, in his earlier manner; a view of the Bay of Naples, by Charles Temple Dix, the General’s son; and bits of color by Smillie, Jarvis McEntee, S. G. W. Benjamin, and Miss Fidelia Bridges. Two panels (“Winter” and “Summer”) were given to the owner by a friend who had once leased a studio to J. C. Thom, a pupil of Edouard Frère. When the artist gave up the room, these pictures were sawed out of the doors on which he had painted them. Besides two or three English water-colors, there are small copies by the late Cephas G. Thompson, whose art Hawthorne delighted to praise, of Simon Memmi’s heads of Petrarch and Laura, at Florence. A more personal interest attaches to an oil-painting by Bayard Taylor--a peep at Buzzard’s Bay from Mattapoisett, disclosing a part of the view visible from Mrs. Stoddard’s early home. Not all of these works are to be found in the library; for in our hurried tour of inspection we have crossed the threshold of the dining-room, where such prosaic bits of furniture as a sideboard, dinner-table and straight-backed chairs hold back the flood of books. One wave has swept through, however, and is held captive in a small case standing near the back windows. The summer light that finds its way into this room is filtered through a mass of leaves shading a veranda similar to the one in front.