robably never to meet again. God bless her good heart, and every
inch of her little body, not forgetting her red nose, big as it is
in proportion to the rest of her! She is a most amiable little woman,
worthy to be the maiden aunt of the whole human race!"

Venerable Mrs. Jameson, author of a little library of writings on
Italian art, was likewise of our company occasionally; and she evinced
a marked liking for my father, which was remarkable, inasmuch as he was
able to keep no sort of pace with her in her didactic homilies, which
were delivered with a tranquil, ex-cathedra manner, befitting one who
was the authority on her subject; one would no more have thought of
questioning her verdicts than those of Ruskin; but I should have liked
to see the latter and her together, with a difference between them. Her
legs were less active than her mind, and most of our expeditions with
her were made in carriages, from which she dispensed her wisdom placidly
as we went along, laying the dust of our ignorance with the droppings
of her erudition, like a watering-cart. However, she so far condescended
from her altitudes as to speak very cordially of my father's books, for
which he expressed proper acknowledgment; and she had a motherly way
of holding his hand in hers when he took leave of her, and looking
maternally in his face, which made him somewhat uneasy. "Were we to meet
often," he remarked,

"I should be a little afraid of her embracing me outright--a thing to be
grateful for, but by no means to be glad of!" We drove one day to some
excavations which had just been opened near the tomb of Cecilia Metella,
outside the walls of Rome. Both Christian and Roman graves had been
found, and they had been so recently discovered that, as my father
observed, there could have been very little intervention of persons
(though much of time) between the departure of the friends of the
dead and our own visit. The large, excavated chambers were filled with
sarcophagi, beautifully sculptured, and their walls were ornamented with
free-hand decoration done in wet plaster, a marvellous testimony to the
rapid skill of the artists. The sarcophagi were filled with the bones
and the dust of the ancient people who had once, in the imperial prime
of Rome, walked about her streets, prayed to her gods, and feasted at
her banquets. My father remarked on the fact that many of the sarcophagi
were sculptured with figures that seemed anything but mournful in thei