he day fixed for our
return to Padua, when our route would lead us to his door; and we were
welcomed with all the cordiality which was to be expected from so
friendly a bidding. Such traits of kindness in such a man deserve to be
recorded on account of the numerous slanders thrown upon him by some of
the tribes of tourists, who resented, as a personal affront, his
resolution to avoid their impertinent inroads upon his retirement. So
far from any appearance of indiscriminate aversion to his countrymen,
his enquiries about his friends in England (_quorum pars magna fuisti_)
were most anxious and particular.

"He expressed some opinions," continues my informant, "on matters of
taste, which cannot fail to interest his biographer. He contended that
Sculpture, as an art, was vastly superior to Painting;--a preference
which is strikingly illustrated by the fact that, in the fourth Canto of
Childe Harold, he gives the most elaborate and splendid account of
several statues, and none of any pictures; although Italy is,
emphatically, the land of painting, and her best statues are derived
from Greece. By the way, he told us that there were more objects of
interest in Rome alone than in all Greece from one extremity to the
other. After regaling us with an excellent dinner, (in which, by the by,
a very English joint of roast beef showed that he did not extend his
antipathies to all John-Bullisms,) he took me in his carriage some miles
of our route towards Padua, after apologising to my fellow-traveller for
the separation, on the score of his anxiety to hear all he could of his
friends in England; and I quitted him with a confirmed impression of the
strong ardour and sincerity of his attachment to those by whom he did
not fancy himself slighted or ill treated."

* * * * *

LETTER 295. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Sept. 4. 1817.

"Your letter of the 15th has conveyed with its contents the
impression of a seal, to which the 'Saracen's Head' is a seraph,
and the 'Bull and Mouth' a delicate device. I knew that calumny had
sufficiently _blackened_ me of later days, but not that it had
given the features as well as complexion of a negro. Poor Augusta
is not less, but rather more, shocked than myself, and says 'people
seem to have lost their recollection strangely' when they engraved
such a 'blackamoor.' Pray don't seal (at least to me) with such a
caricature of the h