afterwards destroyed by fire in the Capitol. The figure
is in a sitting posture; naturally, it is in the dress of a Roman
general; and if it does not look much like George Washington, it does
resemble Julius Caesar.

The custodian of the gallery had been Canova'a body-servant, and he
loved to talk of his master. He had so far imbibed the family spirit
that he did not like to allow that Canova had ever been other than
rich and grand, and he begged us not to believe the idle stories of
his first essays in art. He was delighted with our interest in the
imperial Washington, and our pleasure in the whole gallery, which we
viewed with the homage due to the man who had rescued the world from
Swaggering in sculpture. When we were satisfied, he invited us, with
his mistress's permission, into the house of the Canovas adjoining
the gallery; and there we saw many paintings by the sculptor,--pausing
longest in a lovely little room decorated after the Pompeian manner
with _scherzi_ in miniature panels representing the jocose classic
usualities: Cupids escaping from cages, and being sold from them, and
playing many pranks and games with Nymphs and Graces.

Then Canova was done, and Possagno was finished; and we resumed our
way to Treviso, a town nearly as much porticoed as Padua, and having a
memory and hardly any other consciousness. The Duomo, which is perhaps
the ugliest duomo in the world, contains an "Annunciation," by Titian,
one of his best paintings; and in the Monte di Pieta is the grand and
beautiful "Entombment," by which Giorgione is perhaps most worthily
remembered. The church of San Nicolo is interesting from its quaint
and pleasing frescos by the school of Giotto. At the railway station
an admirable old man sells the most delicious white and purple grapes.

VI.

COMO.

My visit to Lake Como has become to me a dream of summer,--a vision
that remains faded the whole year round, till the blazing heats of
July bring out the sympathetic tints in which it was vividly painted.
Then I behold myself again in burning Milan, amidst noises and
fervors and bustle that seem intolerable after my first six months
in tranquil, cool, mute Venice. Looking at the great white Cathedral,
with its infinite pinnacles piercing the cloudless blue, and gathering
the fierce sun upon it, I half expect to see the whole mass calcined
by the heat, and crumbling, statue by statue, finial by finial, arch
by arch, into a vast heap of lime o