early in the center of the
composition. These devils exhibit every variety of horror in form and
feature."--Vol. iii., pp. 130-134.

* * *

71. We wish our author had been more specific in his account of this
wonderful fresco. The portrait of Castruccio ought to have been
signalized as a severe disappointment to the admirers of the heroic
Lucchese: the face is flat, lifeless, and sensual, though fine in
feature. The group of mendicants occupying the center are especially
interesting, as being among the first existing examples of hard study
from the model: all are evidently portraits--and the effect of deformity
on the lines of the countenance rendered with appalling truth; the
retractile muscles of the mouth wrinkled and fixed--the jaws
projecting--the eyes hungry and glaring--the eyebrows grisly and stiff,
the painter having drawn each hair separately: the two stroppiati with
stumps instead of arms are especially characteristic, as the observer
may at once determine by comparing them with the descendants of the
originals, of whom he will at any time find two, or more, waiting to
accompany his return across the meadow in front of the Duomo: the old
woman also, nearest of the group, with gray disheveled hair and gray
coat, with a brown girdle and gourd flask, is magnificent, and the
archetype of all modern conceptions of witch. But the crowning stroke of
feeling is dependent on a circumstance seldom observed. As Castruccio
and his companions are seated under the shade of an orange grove, so the
mendicants are surrounded by a thicket of _teasels_, and a branch of
ragged thorn is twisted like a crown about their sickly temples and
weedy hair.

72. We do not altogether agree with our author in thinking that the
devils exhibit every variety of horror; we rather fear that the
spectator might at first be reminded by them of what is commonly known
as the Dragon pattern of Wedgwood ware. There is invention in them
however--and energy; the eyes are always terrible, though simply
drawn--a black ball set forward, and two-thirds surrounded by a narrow
crescent of white, under a shaggy brow; the mouths are frequently
magnificent; that of a demon accompanying a thrust of a spear with a
growl, on the right of the picture, is interesting as an example of the
development of the canine teeth noticed by Sir Charles Bell ("Essay on
Expression," p. 138)--its capacity of laceration is unlimited: another,
snarling like a