and Hebrew, all of which he adorned with gold and silver, esteeming them the chiefest treasure of his spacious palace.’  When Cesare Borgia entered Urbino as conqueror in 1502, he is said to have carried off loot to the value of 150,000 ducats, or perhaps about a quarter of a million sterling.  Vespasiano, the Florentine bookseller, has left us a minute account of the formation of the famous library of manuscripts, which he valued at considerably over 30,000 ducats.  Yet wandering now through these deserted halls, we seek in vain for furniture or tapestry or works of art.  The books have been removed to Rome.  The pictures are gone, no man knows whither.  The plate has long been melted down.  The instruments of music are broken.  If frescoes adorned the corridors, they have been whitewashed; the ladies’ chambers have been stripped of their rich arras.  Only here and there we find a raftered ceiling, painted in fading colours, which, taken with the stonework of the chimney, and some fragments of inlaid panel-work on door or window, enables us to reconstruct the former richness of these princely rooms.

Exception must be made in favour of two apartments between the towers upon the southern facade.  These were apparently the private rooms of the Duke and Duchess, and they are still approached by a great winding staircase in one of the torricini.  Adorned in indestructible or irremovable materials, they retain some traces of their ancient splendour.  On the first floor, opening on the vaulted loggia, we find a little chapel encrusted with lovely work in stucco and marble; friezes of bulls, sphinxes, sea-horses, and foliage; with a low relief of Madonna and Child in the manner of Mino da Fiesole.  Close by is a small study with inscriptions to the Muses and Apollo.  The cabinet connecting these two cells has a Latin legend, to say that Religion here dwells near the temple of the liberal arts: 

  Bina vides parvo discrimine juncta sacella,
    Altera pars Musis altera sacra Deo est.

On the floor above, corresponding in position to this apartment, is a second, of even greater interest, since it was arranged by the Duke Frederick for his own retreat.  The study is panelled in tarsia of beautiful design and execution.  Three of the larger compartments show Faith, Hope, and Charity; figures not unworthy of a Botticelli or a Filippino Lippi.  The occupations of the Duke are represented on a smaller scale by armour, batons of command, scientific instruments, lutes, viols, and books, some open and some shut.  The Bible, Homer, Virgil, Seneca, Tacitus, and Cicero, are lettered; apparently to indicate his favourite authors.  The Duke himself, arrayed in his state robes, occupies a fourth great panel; and the whole of this elaborate composition is harmonised by emblems, badges, and occasional devices of birds, articles of furniture, and so forth.  The tarsia, or inlaid wood of different kinds and colours, is among the best in this kind of art to be found in Italy, though perhaps it hardly deserves to rank with the celebrated choir-stalls of Bergamo and Monte Oliveto.  Hard by is a chapel, adorned, like the lower one, with excellent reliefs.  The loggia to which these rooms have access looks across the Apennines, and down on what was once a private garden.  It is now enclosed and paved for the exercise of prisoners who are confined in one part of the desecrated palace!