whole of their pages, there is not, I
fear, one single allusion to any of those great masters of the pencil
and chisel, whose works, nevertheless, both had seen. That Lord Byron,
though despising the imposture and jargon with which the worship of the
Arts is, like other worships, clogged and mystified, felt deeply, more
especially in sculpture, whatever imaged forth true grace and energy,
appears from passages of his poetry, which are in every body's memory,
and not a line of which but thrills alive with a sense of grandeur and
beauty such as it never entered into the capacity of a mere connoisseur
even to conceive.

In reference to this subject, as we were conversing one day after dinner
about the various collections I had visited that morning, on my saying
that fearful as I was, at all times, of praising any picture, lest I
should draw upon myself the connoisseur's sneer for my pains, I would
yet, to _him_, venture to own that I had seen a picture at Milan
which--"The Hagar!" he exclaimed, eagerly interrupting me; and it was in
fact this very picture I was about to mention as having wakened in me,
by the truth of its expression, more real emotion than any I had yet
seen among the chefs-d'oeuvre of Venice. It was with no small degree of
pride and pleasure I now discovered that my noble friend had felt
equally with myself the affecting mixture of sorrow and reproach with
which the woman's eyes tell the whole story in that picture.

On the second evening of my stay, Lord Byron having, as before, left us
for La Mira, I most willingly accepted the offer of Mr. Scott to
introduce me to the conversazioni of the two celebrated ladies, with
whose names, as leaders of Venetian fashion, the tourists to Italy have
made every body acquainted. To the Countess A * *'s parties Lord Byron
had chiefly confined himself during the first winter he passed at
Venice; but the tone of conversation at these small meetings being much
too learned for his tastes, he was induced, the following year, to
discontinue his attendance at them, and chose, in preference, the less
erudite, but more easy, society of the Countess B * *. Of the sort of
learning sometimes displayed by the "blue" visitants at Madame A * *'s,
a circumstance mentioned by the noble poet himself may afford some idea.
The conversation happening to turn, one evening, upon the statue of
Washington, by Canova, which had been just shipped off for the United
States, Madame A * *, who w