“Florence, May 12, 1831. I have at length completed the two pictures which you were so kind as to commission me to execute for you, and they are packed in a case, ready to send to you from Leghorn by the first opportunity, through Messrs. Bell, de Yongh & Co. of that city.

“As your request was that these pictures should be heads, I have chosen two of the most celebrated in the gallery of portraits in the Florence Gallery.  These are the heads of Rubens and Titian from the portraits by themselves.  As the portraits of the two great masters of color they will alone be interesting, but they are more so from giving a fair specimen of their two opposite styles of color.  That of Rubens, from its gaiety, will doubtless be more popular, but that of Titian, from its sobriety and dignity, pleases me better.  In hanging the pictures they should be placed apart.  The styles are so opposed that, were they placed near to each other, they would mutually affect each other unfavorably.  Rubens may be placed in more obscurity, but Titian demands to be more in the light.

“I have no time to add, as I am preparing to leave Florence on Monday for Bologna and Venice.”

Travelling in Italy in those days was fraught with many annoyances, for, in addition to the slow progress made in the vetture, there seems to have been (judging from the journal) a dogana, or custom-house, every few miles, where the luggage and clothing of travellers were examined, sometimes hastily and courteously, sometimes with more rigor.  And yet this leisurely rate of progress, the travellers walking up most of the hills, must have had a charm unknown to the present-day tourist, who is whisked unseeing through the most characteristic parts of a foreign country.  The beautiful scenery of the Apennines was in this way enjoyed to the full by the artist, but I shall not linger over the journey nor shall I include any notes concerning Bologna.  He found the city most interesting—­“A piece of porphyry set in verd antique”—­and those to whom he had letters of introduction more hospitable than in any other city in Italy.

From Bologna the route lay through Ferrara and then to Pontelagoscuro on the river Po, where he was to take the courier boat for Venice, down the Po and through a canal.  To add to the discomforts of this part of the trip it rained steadily for several days, and, on May 22, Morse paints this dreary picture:—­

“When we waked this morning we found it still raining and, apparently, so to continue all day.  The rainy day at a country inn, so exquisitely described by Irving in all its disagreeable features, is now before us.  A solitary inn with nothing indoors to attract; cold and damp and dark.  The prospect from the windows is a low muddy foreground, the north bank of the muddy Po; a pile of brushwood, a heap of offal, a melancholy group of cattle, who show no other signs of life than the occasional sly attack