id Doctor,
Splendiano Accoramboni.

* * * * * *

Antonio Scacciati comes to high honour through the intervention of
Salvator Rosa.--He confides to Salvator the causes of his
continual sorrowfulness, and Salvator comforts him, and promises
him help.

What Antonio promised came to pass. The simple, healing medicines of
Father Bonifazio, the careful nursing of Dame Caterina and her
daughters, the mild season of the year which just then came on, had
such a speedy effect on Salvator's strong constitution, that he soon
felt well enough to begin thinking of his art, and, as a beginning,
made some magnificent sketches for pictures which he intended to paint
at a future time.

Antonio scarcely left Salvator's room. He was all eye when the master
was sketching, and his opinions on many matters showed him to be
initiated in the mysteries of art himself.

"Antonio," said Salvator, one day, "you know so much about art that I
believe you have not only looked on at a great deal with correct
understanding, but have even wielded the pencil yourself!"

"Remember, dear master," answered Antonio, "that when you were
recovering from unconsciousness, I told you there were many things
lying heavy on my heart. Perhaps it is time, now, for me to divulge my
secrets to you fully. Although I am the surgeon who opened a vein for
you, I belong to Art with all my heart and soul. I intend now to devote
myself to it altogether, and throw the hateful handicraft entirely to
the winds."

"Ho, ho, Antonio!" said Salvator, "bethink you what you are going to
do. You are a clever surgeon, and perhaps will never be more than a
bungler at painting. Young as you are in years, you are too old to
begin with the crayon. A man's whole life is scarcely enough in which
to attain to one single perception of the True, still less to the power
of representing it poetically."

"Ah, my dear master," said Antonio, smiling gently, "how should I
entertain the mad idea of beginning now to turn myself to the difficult
art of painting, had I not worked at it as hard as I could ever since I
was a child, had not heaven so willed it that, though I was kept away
from art, and everything in the shape of it, by my father's obstinacy
and folly, I made the acquaintance, and enjoyed the society, of masters
of renown. Even the great Annibale interested himself in the neglected
boy, and I have the happiness to be able to say I