dignified as Frate Bartolommeo, whom he studied of duty; I have acted consistently; I have gone before he went to Rome? In amplitude, in gravi- on as I began. Why should these infuriated monty, in majesty, Fra Bartolommeo is much the su-sters run from under the North Pole against me? perior of Michel-Angelo: both want grace: both why be permitted to stroke up, in a manner, are defective in composition. These two qualities my spinal hair from tail to nape in this fashion? were in the soul of Raffael: had he looked for merciful Jesu! eradicating, eradicating! flaying, them externally, he might have found them on laying. The acquirer of the pictures, he comthe gates of the Battisterio. I admire and vene- plain too! he complain! after spoiling his own rate the power of Michel-Angelo: but the boy of speculation. Had he kept his tongue from ringUrbino reached the head of this giant at the first ing, his seven hundred louis, the poor compenthrow. He did not strip your skins over your sation for our master-pieces, would have proheads to show where your muscles lie; nor throw cured him a seat in the Committee of Taste in Hercules into the manger at Bethlehem; nor fall London, and every piece would have turned out a upon Alcmena for Mary. miraculous loaf; a Christ in the Garden. What power! what patronage! And they eat, Eminence! they eat; or they are much belied. If another man's macaroni is a foot long, theirs is a yard. Fry, fry, fry, all day: the kitchen hums and buzzes like a spring meadow: it frets and fumes and wheezes with its labour: one cook cannot hear another: you might travel as far as from Bologna to Ancona between the boiled and the roast. And what do we get? at the uttermost the scale of an anchovy, with scarcely oil enough to float it..

I know not how it happens, but love of the Arts leads me astray. When persons of intelligence on such subjects are about me, I am apt to prolong the discourse. But the pleasantest day must end; the finest sunset is at last a sunset.

Gentlemen! on the word of a friend, and such I am to all entrusted to my governance, and especially to men of merit, to persons of distinction, true Bolognese, real professors.. Gentlemen! you will find it better to contrive, if possible, that this awkward question do not come before the ordinary tribunals.

Corazza... And perhaps, late in the season, Scampa. Eminence! what in God's name can the extremity of a radish, so cursedly tough, you they do against us if we are protected?

Biancheria. The milord erred in his judgment; we did not err in ours. If men are to suffer for errors, which, alas! seems the lot of humanity, let those suffer who do err, by no means those who do not. No man was ever brave at this embroidery of picture-fancying until he had often pricked his finger. Now I would advise milord to put his between his lips, and not to hold it up in public with a paltry jet bead of blood on it, as if he endured the sufferings of a martyr. We ought to complain; not he. Is it right or reasonable, or according to justice or law, that good quiet Christians, pursuing the steps of their forefathers. . do I say well, Signor Marchese?

Scampa. Capitally! admirably! sound argument! touching truth! But I am not to judge.. I am a party, it seems!

Biancheria. That good quiet christians, eccetera; loyal subjects, eccetera; gallant men, men of honour, men of garb, eccetera, eccetera. . should be persecuted and ransacked and trodden upon and torn and worried and dilacerated and devoured by these arrogant insatiable English.

Scampa. Bravo! bravo! bravo!

Corazza. Ancora! ancora! bisse, bisse, bisse! Biancheria. These arrogant insatiable English, what would they have? I gave them my flesh and blood; would they seize my bones? Let them, let them! since for even one's bones there is no rest on earth; none whatever; not a pin's point; saving upon the breast of your Eminence. Legate. Ohibo! where is the need of weeping and wailing, Signor Conte?

Biancheria. Magdalen wept and wailed, Peter wept and wailed: but they had gone astray, they had slipped and sidled: I have followed my line

may twist it twenty times round the finger.

Scampa. We are amenable to your Eminence: but what has the Academy of Florence to do with us? Presently, no doubt, we shall be cited before the Committee of Taste on the Thames. Let us discuss a little the qualifications of our future judges, now we have plainly shown what our present are. Has not this glorious Committee paid several thousand louis for a false Correggio, which was offered at Rome heretofore for fifteen crowns, and carried to Milan ere it found so much? Has not this glorious Committee, which snatched so eagerly at a false, rejected a real one at a low price? Have the blockheads not allowed the finest Andrea to slip out of London, and to hang on a banker's wall at Paris? Could they not have bought it at a third less than what the banker paid for it? and will he sell it again for a third more?

Legate. In almost all the works of this otherwise admirable painter there is a vulgarity which repels me.

Biancheria. But what truth, Eminence, what

truth!

Legate. The most endearing quality, I perceive, with Signor Conte Biancheria.

Biancheria. It stands indeed high with me. Scampa. There is no answering any of the Count's questions on the Committee of Taste.

Biancheria. The facts are known all over the world. Not a cottage or cavern, not a skiff or felucca, not a gondola or canoe, from Venice to Van Diemen's Land, that does not echo them. Legate. Indeed!

Biancheria. Upon my faith as a Christian!

Scampa. There is a certain duke at Rome, a duke made after buckles were left off, who can

Scampa. And, after an attestation on the spot, Signor Corazza!

Legate. Titian ennobled men; Correggio raised children into angels; Raffael performed the more arduous work of restoring to woman her pristine purity. Perugino was worthy of leading him by the hand. I am not surprised that Rubens is the prime favorite of tulip-fanciers: but give me the clear warm mornings of Correggio, which his large-eyed angels, just in puberty, so enjoy. Give me the glowing afternoons of Titian; his majestic men, his gorgeous women, and (with a prayer to protect my virtue) his Bacchantes. Yet, Signors!

Corazza. I but humbly follow Signor Marchese. | more they venerated the abilities of their master. Enter the Tribuna where the best pictures are sup- He had no pupil so great as Raffael, nor had posed to hang. The Magdalen's head is more Raffael any so great as he. like a boiled calf's. She was flesh and blood, the Magdalen was, I warrant her. She had fingers fit for anything: and here are long sticks, no better than those which some blockhead has stuck upon the Medicean Venus, for Englishmen to admire upon tradition in this age, and Kamskatkadales in the next. We do not read that the fingers of the Magdalen were broken or dislocated at the cross or elsewhere, as these are. How would you manage her heavy stupid head? Guido would have put it in its right position: Guido would have given it expression and grace, ten-we may descant on grace and majesty as we will; derness and emotion: it has verily no more of these than an ox's heart at the shambles. Another step, and we stand before the Holy Family of Michel-Angelo.

:

Legate. Signor Corazza, my patron! do not pull down this picture: this is genuine it was painted for the Medici, and was never out of their sight. There is some (however slight) reason to believe that the other is a Guido: but Guido was a youth before he was a man, and a boy before he was a youth, and often painted a picture by lamp-light, or by none, to get out of a scrape.

Scampa. Historical facts! recondite biography! Guido has got drunk upon a Magdalen, gone to a brothel with a Saint Catharine, and gamed upon Christ's coat. In Michel-Angelo's Holy Family, why does the Virgin (who looks neither like virgin nor mother) toss the poor Baby so carelessly across her shoulder? And why do those idle vagabonds sit naked on the wall behind her? Have they no reverence? no decency? God's blood! master Michel-Angelo ! I suspect thy nose was flattened by divine judgment for this flagrant impudicity. In the same Tribuna is another Holy Family; one among the few bad works of Giulio Romano. Beyond it are two Correggios by Vanni of Sienna, and then another Holy Family, also by Vanni, but undoubted for Correggio's.

Corazza. Ah Signor Marchese! There is somewhat of his sweetness in the coloring of the landscape.

Scampa. But that wench with her twisted face, her twisted hands, and her child sprawling before her, like what has dropped from one's head under the comb! yet our judges, our censurers, our incriminators, firmly believe in the transcendent excellence of those works. They know nothing of any school but their own, and little of that. What a Perugino is there locked up in their Academy! while these inferior pictures occupy the most conspicuous situation, the satellites of the Medicean Venus. They have heard, and they repeat to you, that Perugino is hard and dry. Certainly those who worked for him were so, and so was he himself in the beginning: but what at first was harshness became at last a pure severity. He learned from the great scholar he taught; and the wiser his followers were, the

believe me, there is neither majesty so calm, concentrated, sublime, and self-possessed (true attributes of the divine), nor is there grace at one time so human, at another time so superhuman, as in Raffael. He leads us into heaven; but neither in satin robes nor with ruddy faces. He excludes the glare of light from the sanctuary; but there is an ever-burning lamp, an ever-ascending hymn; and the purified eye sees, as distinctly as is lawful, the divinity of the place. I delight in Titian, I love Correggio, I wonder at the vastness of Michel-Angelo; I admire, love, wonder, and then fall down before, Raffael.

Scampa. Eminence! we have Titian, we have Raffael, in our Academy; we want only Correggio. At my decease perhaps. . And yet he, who was quite at home with angels, played but a sorry part among saints: he seems to have considered them as very indifferent company for him. How they stare and straddle and sprawl about his Cupola! But what coloring on his canvas! Would your Eminence favor me with another ray of light on him and Raffael!

Legate. Signor Marchese! I am afraid I can say nothing on the subject that has not been said twenty times before; and if I do, I may be wrong.

All. Impossible.

Legate. Even the coloring of Correggio, so transparent, so pure, so well considered and arranged, is perhaps too rich and luscious for the divine ideas of Raffael: it might have overshot the scope which his temperate suavity attained. The drapery of Correggio is less simple than becomes the modest maid of Bethlehem, chosen by the all-seeing eye for her simplicity.

Biancheria. And yet, under favour, in the Madonna della Seggiola, there is almost a fantastic charm in the vivid colours of the tartan dress.

Legate. So much the worse. Let us admire the composition, but neither the style of the drapery nor the expression of the countenance. The Virgin has ceased to be a virgin; and the child has about it neither the sweetness of an amiable infant, nor the mysterious indication of a halfhuman god. Raffael in Rome had forgotten the tenderness of his diviner love; and the Tempter had seduced him to change purity for power. Nevertheless he remains, far beyond all com

parison, the greatest genius that ever glorified the Arts. He was not, like Michel-Angelo, a great architect, a scientific sculptor, an admirable poet: he attempted not universality; but he reached perfection. What other mortal has?

All. Oracles! oracles!

Biancheria. I myself possess a little bit of zen, the most esteemed Signor Flavio Perotti of Perugino honey, sugar, cinnamon.

Corazza (aside). And a good deal of each; two dollars would not cover it. How he kisses the tips of his two fingers and thumb, all three in a cluster! I wish he would pay me my twelve livres for this honey and sugar and cinnamon, in which however he will never catch the wary old wasp. The thing is fairly worth a couple of zecchins, and he knows it.

inquire how much the host asks for so many; and if they do not like the price, they drive off. Formerly if you skinned a milord you only tickled him. Who, in the name of the Holy Virgin ! could have begotten the present race? They have shockingly ill-treated our worthy fellow-citithe Pelican. He offered them his house; he placed everything before them; all unreservedly at their disposal. He serves his country with consummate zeal and fidelity: much money flows into it through his hands: many pictures that might peradventure do great dishonour to the names of Domenichino and Guido, and the whole family of the Caracci, and sweet Albano . my tears will flow at the name, it so much

Legate. Signor Corazza, were you saying your resembles our illustrious protector's .. Yes, prayers behind me?

Corazza. Fervently. Alas! I have no Perugino: I had a Saint Peter: tears like pearls: an car, you might have put your finger in it up to the elbow: hair, I was afraid of blowing a fly from it. Strangers, when they entered the room, cried, "Signor Corazza! do you keep poultry in your saloon?"

Legate. What of that?

yes, many and many slip quietly from the Pelican out of the country, by Signor Flavio's intervention. Hence there is scarcely an auction, I hear, in England, without a dozen of Domenichinos; while in Italy dukes and princes lie on their death-beds and gasp for one. The milords in Florence conspired against poor Signor Flavio, as an accomplice in what they were pleased to denominate a cheat and forgery. Figure it! your Eminence! figure it! an accomplice! Signor Flavio told me that, unless he had quitted Florence on the instant, the Police would have consigned him to the Bargello. This comes of accepting bills from foreigners! this comes from facilitating business!

Many saints have said it, and all honest men have experienced it. I gave my pictures to this Englishman, merely not to disgust or displease him. He had them not at my price, but at his own. I abandoned them; I stood in desolation. Recovering my senses, I saw bare walls; Chiusi, Populonia.

Corrazza. Incidental. The cock in the distance, red, gold, emerald; six, seven, eight crowns' worth of lapis lazuli; wings displayed, neck outstretched, eyes that might have lighted up our theatre; comb. . I would never let a cook enter the room, lest he should have cut it off. Everybody fancied he heard him crow; for fancy it Biancheria. Eminence! we live in an ungratemust have been. And what became of this pic-ful world, a world full of snares, frauds, and perils. ture? Two Englishmen tore it from the wall: I thought they would have carried the house, the street itself, away with it. They stopped my mouth no stirring, no breathing. England, monopolising England, possesses now Saint Peter! The milords threw down their paltry hundred zecchins, leaving me lifeless at the loss of my treasure, and sacking our Bologna in this inhuman way. O had your Eminence seen that cock; had your Eminence seen that hair, fine, fine, fine as an infant's; the crown of the head smooth as the cover of a soup-tureen; nothing to hide the veins on the temples: he would have been bald within the year, unless by miracle. I had also an Andromeda Signor Conte knew her. Dignitaries of the Church have stood before her until their knees bent under them.

Legate. Signor Conte! most illustrious! had the purchaser ever any dealings with you before? Biancheria. He never was before in Bologna. We see many Englishmen from time to time, but none come twice: the reason is, they take the other road. Beside, they are men of business, and carry off at once everything they like.

Corazza. I never heard of one entering the same shop a second time. The French are called inconstant: but in inconstancy the English outfly Legate. Did Englishmen dispossess you likewise them by leagues and latitudes. Him whom they of your Andromeda ?

Corazza. Half the nation fell upon her at once: all were after her what was to be done! I was widowed of her too: they had her. One would think, after this they might have been quiet: not they we must bleed and martyrise: no end or remission of our sufferings. The English are very unlike what they were formerly: surely the breed of milords is extinct.

Legate. Quite the contrary, I believe.

Corazza. Then they are turned into chapmen. No sooner do they come to an inn, than they

call an honest man one day, they call a rogue the next: they are as mild as turnips in the morning, and as hot as capsicums in the afternoon.

Scampa. Whenever an Englishman of distinction was inclined to favor me, he always found my palace at his disposal. I began at last to give a preference to the Frenchman. Instead of such outrageous words as accomplice, eccetera, eccettera, when a Frenchman has rung a few changes on the second and sixth letters of the alphabet, his temperament grows cooler: you may compromise with him: but the Got-dam of the Englishmen

sounds like the bursting of the doors of Janus, | and his fist is always ready to give it emphasis. I regret that I have encountered more than once such rudeness, after making him the master of my house and servants.

Corazza (aside to the secretary). What servants! they are all the Pelican's. Old Baltazzare-Cincinnato never leaves off his cobbling under the palace-stairs for the best heretic in London. He has orders to the contrary, or the Pelican would stand still in the negotiation. He has other perquisites.

Legate. Most prized and ornate Signor Corazza, my patron! I commend your modesty in taking a place behind my chair, while Signor Marchese and Signor Conte do me the honour of indulging me with their presence on the opposite side of the chamber; yet, if you are desirous of whispering any remarks of yours to my secretary, who appears to be an old acquaintance, pray, in courtesy, go as far from my chair as posssible; for whispers are apt to divert the attention more than a louder tone.

Corazza. Signor Secretary! accept this small