narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so
uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them
is a penitential pilgrimage; so indescribably ugly, moreover; so cold,
so alley-like, into which the sun never falls and where a chill wind
forces its deadly breath into our lungs; the immense seven-storied,
yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in
domestic life seems magnified and multiplied; those staircases which
ascend from a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables
and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and
ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable
sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian
trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till
then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her
ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when
passing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and
squalor of ancient Rome. In these surroundings one's cab stops at "No.
44," and ringing the bell the door is open, whether by super-normal
agency or by some invisible terrestrial manipulation one is unable to
determine; but in the semi-darkness of the narrow hall he discerns
before him a flight of steep stairs, and, as no other vista opens, he
reasons that, by the law of exclusion, this must be the appointed way.
Along the wall are seen, here and there, some antique casts from
Trajan's Column, and reliefs from Canova and Thorwaldsen. The galleries
above hold only a small and a comparatively unimportant collection of
pictures. There are marines from Vernet and Claude Lorraine; a "Venus
Crowned by the Graces" from Rubens; Giulio Romano's copy of Raphael's
"Galatea,"--the original of which (in the Villa Farnesina) represents
Galatea surrounded by Nymphs, Cupids, and Tritons, being carried in a
shell across the sea. There is a Cupid, and also the "Fortuna" of Guido
Reni,--the latter a figure of ineffable grace floating in the air. One
of Raphael's early works representing "St. Luke Painting the Madonna" is
here. There are several works by Titian, but these have less than would
be expected of the glory usually associated with his name; and a Vandyke
representing the Virgin and Child, with two angels playing, the one on a
lute, the other on the violin.

[Illustration: "LA FORTUNA," ACCADEMIA DI SAN LUCA, ROME