would have seemed to less inspired eyes. Their souls understood the divine idea of beauty expressed in forms, which had, too, their alloy of imperfection. They chipped away the imperfection, but kept the character. Man cannot invent character: that is a department which belongs to a higher artificer. All great artists draw largely from nature, and all they draw seems original; for the world is an exhaustless quarry, and all the sparry and ory fragments Man hews out, take new and beautiful forms on the point of his pickaxe. But let him take a lump of glass from the blower's furnace, and a slice of a halfpenny, and a handful of earth, and mould a vitreous crystal of copper ore out of his own head. He will as soon persuade a Cornish miner that his factitious specimen came out of the bowels of the earth, as he who invents a character or a face shall persuade his fellow-men that such a person ever walked on earth's surface, or so looked at the light of day. All that comes out of the unguided imagination of a man has a family likeness, whose point of union is incapacity, to all that has been produced in the same way by any other man. Modern sculpture fancies it can cleverly combine beauty from various models, and steal (unperceived) from a great variety of the antiques a generalized share of perfection. They succeed in making beautiful inanities, which interest nobody but persons desirous of laying out so many hundred or thousand pounds on the best statues to be bought at the period. There are two modern Venuses by Titian, rather naked, and lying at full length; but they have not the power of the Medicean goddess. Rafael's Fornarina, too, looks coarse, and greasy, and dirty-complexioned. Decidedly the statue that enchants the world is the Queen of the Tribune, and Flora only disputes with her the sovereignty of the whole palace of the Uffizzi. The tribune is an octagonal drum-shaped room, lighted from a cupola, and has more precious things in it than anywhere else are to be found in the same compass; for further specifications see Guide-book, for I will tell you no more about the Uffizzi, whether you are glad or sorry. One day, emerging from Oltr'arno upon the statued bridge of Santa Trinita, I heard a hackney-coachman say to another that he was ordered for Fiesole that afternoon. Fiesole! said I to myself, the name is familiar to my ear somehow! where is Fiesole? I have surely heard it mentioned as bright Fiesole and fair Fiesole in poetry, but I never thought of asking where it was; however, it can't be far off, that is evident, for people go there in hackney-coaches of an afternoon. I really felt very much ashamed of my ignorance; which, if the reader is learned, he will hardly believe, and if ignorant, he will wonder why I should make such a fuss about not knowing by heart all about a place he never heard of in his life; nor, for the matter of that, much cares to hear now. However that may be, I am going to tell you something about it, for I made up my mind to go there and see what Fiesole was that very afternoon. Asking my way, I passed the long broad street of Santa Gallo, beyond whose roofs the dark mountains rose like great leaden domes in the distance. I passed under an old medieval gate, and a brand-new triumphal arch outside. Then there was an avenue road for a mile or two, and then beyond the rushing waters of Magellone rose lofty Fiesole, villa-terraced and convent-crowned. I crossed on column stepping-stones, and climbed the steep ascent. The view of Florence, clustering her massive palaces round the great dome, and scattering a profusion of shining villas over plain and hills, now bronzed with winter, but which spring must make very green and beautiful in their contrast with the white dwellings which closely sprinkle them, is very fine, and unlike any other I have seen. Fiesole itself has a quaint old church, and some Cyclopian remains of battlements,-for it proved, by reference to the Guidebook, that she was an ancient Etruscan city. The traveller is very much pestered by little boys, who insist on showing him everything; one of these little miscreants seized me against my will, and insisted on showing me the remains of an amphitheatre. He vainly beat the door of a garden for some time-I scolding him for having brought me to an unopenable stoppage. While he was making frantic efforts, a gust of wind from the mountain gulleys came to his assistance, and blew the gate in his face. We entered the garden and came to a house, out of which we got the dishevelled remains of a torch, with a man to carry it and guide us through the dark subterranean vaults of the amphitheatre. We had a good deal of stooping, and groping, and plodding through low-arched caverns, with muddy floors, and were profusely dropped upon by percolations from above. We stood in the den of the wild beasts. There was the hole in the wall through which Numidian lions leapt out with a yell to worry Cisalpine gladiators in the arena while yet the world was in its cruel boyhood. There was the little round aperture in the roof where food was shovelled down into the den. It was quite the sort of place for an oriental potentate to come and make inquiries how a favourite prime minister of the Hebrew persuasion had passed the night. Of course I do not mention names, from a delicate appreciation of the bad taste of all personalities, whether ancient or modern, sacred or profane. Finally, leaving the lions' den, I went up to the highest peak of the forked hill of Fiesole. The mountain-tops around were pillowed and bolstered with great clouds of a leaden-grey colour, and it began to snow a little. So I went down into Florence, which lay about four miles distant. On my way down, I saw a pretty little shrine of the Virgin, with this inscription on a marble slab : which I took down in my pocket-book for the benefit of a Roman Catholic friend, and thus translate for the benefit of the reader : "Ah! be my guide throughout these fleeting years, Now I am going to mash up the rest of Florence into a little chaos, for I want to have done with it, and be off to Rome, for the Carnival is coming. The third wonder of Florence, after the Venus and the Flora, indeed, I don't think after them, but on a level with those firstclass miracles of art, stands the great bronze Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, under the lofty arches of the Loggia dei Lanzi. With a grand ethereal grace, and dignity, and beauty, such as might befit a semi-divine hero, who has triumphed over demons, he holds out the gorgon's snake-wreathed head in token of victory, and rests his sword-point on the ground. It strikes me as infinitely nobler in feeling, and more beautiful in execution, than the well-known likeness of that poetical and dandified stripling, taken in the toxophilate attitude in which he shot the great serpent with his bow and arrow. Everybody comes to Italy with a magnificent expectation of the triple-arted giant, Michael Angelo, and I think everybody is disappointed. I, at any rate, from all I have seen of him in Florence, am inclined to consider him a grand mediocrity. If he had devoted himself to making spirited anatomical models of difficult contortions of the human frame, he would have succeeded admirably; indeed, he has succeeded admirably in doing so, whether he meant it or not. Between the two statues of Night and Day, who are performing a pose plastique at the feet of Giuliano in the Medicean chapel, it is impossible to decide whether the dreaming or waking lady is going through the most rigorous course of gymnastics. There is something grand in the attitude of Lorenzo, who sits with his chin on his hand, and his elbow on his knee, in an attitude so real and life-like, that he seems as if he had been seized with some petrifying thought, and had been condemned to sit in marble on his own monument, considering how he should straighten a labyrinth of crooked Italian politics till doomsday. But this is the only poetry I have seen in his doings. He is great, because he made the first great stride in art after the long slumber of sculpture. Before his time, they were making figures little better than skeletons in skin. He added the muscular tissue. His men are real mountebank athletes, fit and ready to do any wonderful feat, except the expression of sublime beauty, whether of form or feeling. His being the first to make a great stride, is no excuse for the want of an inspired genius. The first great painter has never been surpassed, and probably never will be. What was to prevent Buonarotti going by Phidias and Praxiteles as much as we suppose Rafael to have exceeded Zeuxis and Apelles? Though, by the way, we calmly take it for granted, without much acquaintance with those artists, "Liquidis coloribus sollertes nunc hominem ponere nunc deum.” I saw the tomb of Galileo in the church of Santa Croce. By the way, I don't remember whether I told you I saw the longchained bronze lamp which, vibrating from the roof of Pisa's cathedral, gave him the idea of planets revolving round suns, which new light he subsequently hung up in the temple of science by a chain of reasoning. At an evening party at the house of a hospitable and accomplished Marquis, I met another Marquis, who was Prefect of the palace, and asked me to come and see the Grand Duke's plate. I saw some very pretty smaltato cups by Benvenuto Cellini, cups fit for a gentleman or a king to drink out of, wrought in the purest gold, and richly sculptured, chased, and enamelled. Also, among the plate, there were some ancient engravings on large plates of silver, which would have made impressions, but they had been made merely as pictures. The custode informed me that the art of printing from plates had been discovered by this engraver, Tommaso Finiquerra. When I had done with the plate, I took a turn in the Pitti Gallery, which is also in the palace. I don't like Carlo Dolce: the cadaverous sentimentality of whose sacred subjects make him very popular with enthusiastic ladies. Andrea del Sarto is my choice of a sacred subject painter in Florence. There are two lovely angel babes at the foot of Rafael's Baldacchino leaning on each other's shoulders to read a scroll. I liked Allori's Judith, and Roselli's Dancing before the Ark. Also some portraits by Sustermanns, of whom I never heard before. I was not very much astonished by the Pitti gallery, but I shall take another look before I go to Rome, though I dare say you will not be troubled with the result. HERE I am in love-and in London; rich in the possession of a young lady's tender regard; but, otherwise, "poor indeed," save in my "good name" and in the bountiful estimation of several good friends. In the hospitable house of Mr. B and his sons, I find a temporary home; and on each succeeding day, for some weeks, I tramp about in search of employment. Kindly reception and regretful expressions of "no need for assistance at present," continue to be the only responses to my numerous applications at the offices of the leading practitioners. They have heard of me from Mr. Britton and others, and they express themselves much pleased with my portfolio of Italian drawings and sketches, or, at all events, with the industry they exhibit. They take my name and address, and promise to "bear me in mind." It must be confessed, the contrast between my late period of studious travel and my present position of humiliating solicitation, is trying to my sensibilities. Wholly abstracted in the "pursuit of knowledge," I had been for a whole year without a thought of the "difficulties" which might subsequently attend the application of that knowledge to any beneficial result. During the past twelvemonth, it had been my undivided duty to "deserve success." Not only were all fears of possible failure precluded from influencing my single-purposed mind; but even the hope of probable reward remained uncared for as a stimulant. So pleasant had been my earnest pursuit, so conformable to my taste and enthusiasm, that it more resembled the remunerative fruits of past pains than the forerunner of further pains to come. To revel, with my sketch-book, among the ruins of the Roman Forum; to ramble as a gleaner among the miscellaneous fragments of the Vatican Museum; to sit contemplative in the shadow of the Florentine Duomo; and to wander enchanted under the arcades of the Venetian Piazza, San Marco;-all this was vastly different from pacing the streets and lanes of London (" stony hearted stepmother") in search of means for living and loving. As Carlyle says in his "Chartism," "a man willing to work and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that Fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun." Such continued to be my own condition for so long a time, that I began to feel myself a pauper without a pauper's rights, and despairingly to entertain the question whether I ought not at once to release the fair object of my affections from any |