finished designs by men,
celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the
academies has left to silence and to me. What think you," said he,
turning abruptly as he spoke--"what think you of this Madonna della
Pieta?"

"It is Guido's own!" I said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I
had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. "It is Guido's
own!--how _could_ you have obtained it?--she is undoubtedly in painting
what the Venus is in sculpture."

"Ha!" said he thoughtfully, "the Venus--the beautiful Venus?--the Venus
of the Medici?--she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair? Part of
the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty,)
and all the right, are restorations; and in the coquetry of that right
arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all affectation. Give _me_ the
Canova! The Apollo, too, is a copy--there can be no doubt of it--blind
fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo!
I cannot help--pity me!--I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it
not Socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of
marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet--

'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto
Che un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.'"

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true
gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the
vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such
difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full
force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that
eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament
and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which
seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings,
than by calling it a _habit_ of intense and continual thought,
pervading even his most trivial actions--intruding upon his moments
of dalliance--and interweaving itself with his very flashes of
merriment--like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning
masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.

I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled
tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon
matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation--a degree of
nervous _unction_ in action and in speech--an unquiet excitability of