; these openings, with their crimson
curtains, doubled by the reflection, produce a most charming perspective.
From the ceiling hangs a splendid ormolu chandelier, the floor is covered
with a Persian carpet (brought I believe from Portugal), so sumptuous
that one is afraid to walk on it, and a noble mosaic table of Florentine
marble, bought in at an immense price at Fonthill, is in the centre of
the room. Several rows of the rarest books cover the lower part of the
walls, and above them hang many fine portraits, which Mr. Beckford
immediately, without losing any time in compliments, began to show us and
describe.

First we were shown a portrait by de Vos of Grotius; next to it one of
Rembrandt, painted by himself. "You see," said Mr. Beckford, "that he is
trying to assume an air of dignity not natural to him, by throwing back
his head, but this attempt at the dignified is neutralized by the
expression of the eyes, which have rather too much of sly humour for the
character which he wishes to give himself." To praise individual
pictures seems useless when everyone you meet has excellencies peculiar
to itself; in fact, whatever our ideas of the great masters may be, and
we certainly do gain from prints and pictures a tolerable idea of their
style and different beauties (and I have myself seen the Louvre and many
celebrated pictures) there is in Mr. Beckford's _chef d'oeuvres_
something still more lovely than our imagination, than our expectation. I
speak not now of the St. Catherine, The Claud, The Titian, &c., but all
the pictures, whether historical, landscape, or low life, have this
unique character of excellence. You look at a picture. You are sure it
is by Gaspar, but you never saw one of Poussin's that had such an
exquisite tone of colour, so fresh and with such free and brilliant
execution.

But I digress. I forgot that it was the library and its pictures I was
attempting to describe. Well, at the other end hangs a portrait of Pope
Gregory, by Passerotti; the expression of the face Italian, attitude like
Raphael. Over the door a portrait of Cosmo de Medici by Bronzino Allori,
fresh as if painted yesterday. "The works of that master," I said, "are
rare, but a friend of mine, Mr. Day, had a noble one at his rooms in
Piccadilly, St. John in the Wilderness. The conception of the figure and
poetical expression of the face always seemed to me astonishingly fine.
Pray, Sir, do you know that picture?" "Perfectl