artist, for 50 pounds." "Is it
possible? I wish I had known that he wanted to dispose of it. I should
have liked it beyond anything. It was most wonderful."

Above the picture of King Lear hangs a noble picture by Titian, the
composition of which reminded me much of Raphael. The Virgin's face is
extremely beautiful, but it is the sort of beauty we sometimes meet with,
that we sometimes may have seen. The St. Catherine is of a more elevated
style of beauty, more intellectual; in short, it possesses a combination
of charms that has never yet fallen to the lot of any mortal. The infant
is extremely fine. On this side is also a portrait of himself
exquisitely coloured and finished.

Near these paintings is a Canaletti, not a real view, but an assemblage
of various fine buildings; in fact, a sort of union of Rome and Venice.
In the centre is the Mole of Hadrian, round which he has amused himself
by putting an elegant colonnade; on the right hand is a bridge. The
colouring is clear, the shadows rich, and the water softly painted and
extremely transparent. This is the most beautiful Canaletti I ever saw.
I observed that the generality of his pictures had a hardness, dryness,
and blackness that we saw nothing of here. "You are quite right," he
said, "and the reason is that very few of those generally attributed to
him are really genuine, but of mine there can be no doubt, as this
painting and several others that I have were got directly from the artist
himself by means of the English Consul at Venice; but not a quarter of
the pictures that one sees and that are called his were ever painted by
Canaletti." There were several very fine pictures by this master
destroyed in the lifetime of Alderman Beckford at the fire which consumed
the old mansion at Fonthill nearly a hundred years ago.

This Canaletti partakes of the same character of high excellence that Mr.
Beckford's other pictures possess; in fact, as with so many of his
pictures, you see the hand of the master, whose common works you know,
but in this house you find paintings still finer, which give you more
elevated and correct ideas of the style and manner of the genuine
productions of the great masters. There really seems some charm, some
magic in the walls, so great is the similarity of colouring in these
_chefs d'oeuvres_, the clear, the subdued, the pearly tints, a variety of
delicious colour, and none of the dirty hues you see in mediocre old
paintings