tion of his Lombard villa.

We left Venice the following morning, and, proceeding by easy journeys
through Padua and Verona, we reached the villa on the evening of the
third day, and installed ourselves in the least decayed apartments of
the ruinous but still imposing and spacious mansion. On the ensuing
day I rose early, and hastened to examine some large fresco paintings
in the saloon, which had powerfully excited my curiosity during a
cursory view by lamp-light. They were admirably designed, and, from
the recurrence in all of the remarkable form and features of a young
man of great personal beauty, they were evidently a connected series;
but, with the exception of two, the colouring and details were nearly
obliterated by time and the humid air from the contiguous lake. Upon
scrolls beneath the two least injured paintings were the inscriptions
of _La Scoperta_ and _La Vendetta_; and the incidents delineated in
them were so powerfully drawn, and so full of dramatic expression,
that a novelist of moderate ingenuity would readily have constructed
from them an effective romance. The picture subscribed _La Scoperta_
represented the interior of an elegant saloon decorated in Italian
taste with pictures, busts, and candelabra. In the foreground was
seated a young artist in the plain garb rendered familiar to modern
eyes by the portraits of Raphael and other painters of the sixteenth
century; a short cloak and doublet of black cloth, and tight black
pantaloons of woven silk. The form and features of this youth were
eminently noble. His countenance beamed with dignity and power, and
his tall figure displayed a classic symmetry and grandeur which
forcibly reminded me of that magnificent statue, the reposing
Discobolus. Before him were an easel and canvass, on which was
distinguishable the roughly sketched likeness of a robust and
middle-aged man sitting opposite to him in the middle-ground of the
picture, and richly attired in a Spanish mantle of velvet. His sleeves
were slashed and embroidered in the fashion of the period, and his
belt and dagger glittered with adornments of gold and jewels; while
his golden spurs, and the steel corselet which covered his ample
chest, indicated a soldier of distinguished rank. In the background
stood a tall and handsome youth leaning with folded arms against the
window-niche. He was attired in the splendid costume of the Venetian
nobles, as represented in the portraits of Titian and Paul Veron