he original. The face is modest and
beautiful, and filled with an expression of ardent and tender
attachment. I never tire looking upon either of these two.

Let me not forget, while we are in this peerless hall, to point out
Guercino's Samian Sybil. It is a glorious work. With her hands clasped
over her volume, she is looking up with a face full of deep and
expressive sadness. A picturesque turban is twined around her head, and
bands of pearls gleam amidst her rich, dark brown tresses. Her face
bears the softness of dawning womanhood, and nearly answers my ideal of
female beauty. The same artist has another fine picture here--a sleeping
Endymion. The mantle has fallen from his shoulders, as he reclines
asleep, with his head on his hand, and his crook beside him. The silver
crescent of Dian looks over his shoulder from the sky behind, and no
wonder if she should become enamored, for a lovelier shepherd has not
been seen since that of King Admetus went back to drive his chariot in
the heavens.

The "Drunken Bacchus" of Michael Angelo is greatly admired, and indeed
it might pass for a relic of the palmiest times of Grecian art. The
face, amidst its half-vacant, sensual expression, shows traces of its
immortal origin, and there is still an air of dignity preserved in the
swagger of his beautiful form. It is, in a word, the ancient idea of _a
drunken god_. It may be doubted whether the artist's talents might not
have been employed better than in ennobling intoxication. If he had
represented Bacchus as he really is--degraded even below the level of
humanity--it might be more beneficial to the mind, though less beautiful
to the eye. However, this is a question on which artists and moralists
cannot agree. Perhaps, too, the rich blood of the Falernian grape
produced a more godlike delirium than the vulgar brandy which oversets
the moderns!

At one end of the gallery is a fine copy in marble of the Laocoon, by
Bandinelli, one of the rivals of Michael Angelo. When it was finished,
the former boasted it was better than the original, to which Michael
made the apt reply: "It is foolish for those who walk in the footsteps
of others, to say they go before them!"

Let us enter the hall of Niobe. One starts back on seeing the many
figures in the attitude of flight, for they seem at first about to
spring from their pedestals. At the head of the room stands the
afflicted mother, bending over the youngest daughter who clings to her
kn