eloquent tale of triumph and of
gratified revenge.

His antagonist, a man of large and muscular proportions, was
apparelled as in the other picture, excepting that he had no mantle,
and was cased in back and breast armour of scaled steel. He had been
just disarmed; his sword, of formidable length, had flown above his
head; while a naked dagger lay on the ground under his left hand,
which hung lifeless by his side, and from a gaping wound in the wrist
issued a stream of blood.

The sword-point of the young painter was buried in the throat of his
mailed opponent, whose livid hue and rayless eyeballs already
indicated that his wound was mortal.

I was intently gazing upon these mysterious pictures when my friend
entered the saloon, and in reply to my eager inquiries, informed me
that the series of paintings around us portrayed some romantic family
incidents which had occurred in the sixteenth century; and that these
frescos had been designed by an able amateur artist, who was indeed
the hero of this romance of Italian life, and after whom this
apartment was still called the Saloon of Colonna. The late proprietor
of the villa, he continued, had mentioned some years since the
discovery of a manuscript in the library, which gave a detailed
account of the incidents on these pictured walls, and which, if we
could find it, would well reward the trouble of perusal.

My curiosity received a fresh impulse from this intelligence. Telling
my friend that I would investigate his books while he visited his
tenants, I proceeded after breakfast to the library; and, after some
hours of fruitless search, I discovered, in a mass of worm-eaten
manuscripts, an untitled, but apparently connected narrative, which
forcibly arrested my attention by the romantic charm of the incidents,
the energy of the language, and the spirited criticisms on fine art
with which it was interwoven. The hero of the tale was an ardent and
imaginative Italian; at once a painter and an improvisatore; a man of
powerful and expansive intellect; and glowing with intense enthusiasm
for classic and ancient lore, and for the beautiful in art and
nature. The diction of this manuscript was, like the man it portrayed,
lofty and impassioned; and, when describing the rich landscapes of
Italy, or the wonders of human art which adorn that favoured region,
it occasionally rose into a sustained harmony, a rhythmical beauty and
balance, of which no modern language but that of Ita