It was the misfortune of the present writer to be recognized by the employe (formerly of Venice) who gives the permissions to travellers to visit the palace, and to be addressed in the presence of the Custode by the dignified title to which his presence did so little honor.  This circumstance threw upon the Custode, a naturally tedious and oppressive old man, the responsibility of being doubly prolix and garrulous.  He reveled in his office of showing the palace, and did homage to the visitor’s charge and nation by an infinite expansion upon all possible points of interest, lest he should go away imperfectly informed of anything.  By dint of frequent encounter with strangers, this Custode had picked up many shreds and fragments of many languages, and did not permit the travellers to consider themselves as having at all understood him until he had repeated everything in Italian, English, French, and German.  He led the way with his polyglot babble through an endless number of those magnificent and uninteresting chambers which palaces seem specially built to contain, that men may be content to dwell in the humbler dullness of their own houses; and though the travellers often prayed him to show them the apartments containing the works of Mantegna, they really got to see nothing of this painter’s in the Ducal Palace, except, here and there, some evanescent frescoes, which the Custode would not go beyond a si crede in attributing to him.  Indeed, it is known that the works of Mantegna suffered grievously in the wars of the last century, and his memory has faded so dim in this palace where he wrought, that the guide could not understand the curiosity of the foreigners concerning the old painter; and certainly Giulio Romano has stamped himself more ineffaceably than Mantegna upon Mantua.

In the Ducal Palace are seen vividly contrasted the fineness and strength, the delicacy and courage of the fancy, which, rather than the higher gift of imagination, characterize Giulio’s work.  There is such an airy refinement and subtile grace in the pretty grotesques with which he decorates a chamber; there is such daring luxury of color and design in the pictures for which his grand halls are merely the frames.  No doubt I could make fine speeches about these paintings; but who, not seeing them, would be the wiser, after the best description and the choicest critical disquisition?  In fact, our travellers themselves found it pleasanter, after a while, to yield to the guidance of the Custode, and to enjoy the stupider marvels of the place, than to do the set and difficult admiration of the works of art.  So, passing the apartments in good preservation (the Austrian Emperors had taken good care of some parts of the palace of one of their first Italian possessions), they did justice to the splendor of the satin beds and the other upholstery work; they admired rich carpentering and costly toys; they dwelt on marvelous tapestries (among which the tapestry