y, it partakes of the
sublime and is amazingly fine." "Your portrait of Cosmo has the
expression of a resolute, determined man, and I think it conveys well the
idea of the monstrous parent, who could with his own hand destroy his
only surviving son after discovering he had murdered his brother. What a
horrible piece of business! The father of two sons, one of whom murdered
the other, and that father is himself the executioner of the survivor."
"It was dreadful certainly," said Mr. Beckford. "However, we have the
consolation of knowing that two broods of vipers were destroyed."

Mr. Beckford next showed us a Titian, a portrait of the Constable
Montmorency, in armour richly chased with gold; a fine picture, but sadly
deficient in intellectual expression. And no wonder, for as Mr. Beckford
observed, "He could neither read nor write, but he was none the worse for
that." "There is, then, before us," I rejoined, "the portrait of the man
of whom his master, Henri Quatre, said: 'Avec un Counetable qui re sait
pas ecrire, et un Chancelier qui ne sait pas le Latin, j'ai reussi dans
toutes mes entreprises.' It is the very portrait for which he sat." "The
face," I said, "has no great pretensions to intellect, but then Titian
knew nothing of the refined flattery so fashionable now-a-days that
throws a halo of mind and expression over faces more stupid than
Montmorency's, and whose possessors never performed the chivalrous deeds
of the Constable."

"Witness Sir Thomas Lawrence's fine picture of Sir Wm. Curtis, where the
Court painter has thrown a poetical expression over a personage that
never in his life betrayed any predilection for anything but turtle soup
and gormandizing." Mr. Beckford burst out laughing. "Well," said he,
"here is a picture that will perhaps please you. Holbein has certainly
not been guilty of the refined flattery you complain of here; it is the
portrait of Bishop Gardiner, painted at the time he was in Holland and in
disgrace. What think you of it?" "It is admirably painted, and has
scarcely anything of his dry and hard manner, the hands are done
inimitably, but the eyes are small, and the expression cold-hearted and
brutal. It conveys to my mind the exact idea of the cold-blooded wretch,
who consigned so many of his innocent countrymen to the flames." I did
not express all I thought, but I certainly wondered how the effigy of
such a monster should have found an asylum in this palace of taste.
S