On my return, I spent an hour very pleasantly in the National Academy, in the same building as the National Gallery.  Many of the paintings here are of a fine order.  Oliver Cromwell looking upon the headless corpse of King Charles I., appeared to draw the greatest number of spectators.  A scene from “As You Like it,” was one of the best executed pieces we saw.  This was “Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando.”  The artist did himself and the subject great credit.  Kemble, in Hamlet, with that ever memorable skull in his hand, was one of the pieces which we viewed with no little interest.  It is strange that Hamlet is always represented as a thin, lean man, when the Hamlet of Shakspere was a fat, John Bull-kind of a man.  But the best piece in the Gallery was “Dante meditating the episode of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, S’Inferno, Canto V.”  Our first interest for the great Italian poet was created by reading Lord Byron’s poem, “The Lament of Dante.”  From that hour we felt like examining everything connected with the great Italian poet.  The history of poets, as well as painters, is written in their works.  The best written life of Goldsmith is to be found in his poem of “The Traveller,” and his novel of “The Vicar of Wakefield.”  Boswell could not have written a better life of himself than he has done in giving the Biography of Dr. Johnson.  It seems clear that no one can be a great poet without having been sometime during life a lover, and having lost the object of his affection in some mysterious way.  Burns had his Highland Mary, Byron his Mary, and Dante was not without his Beatrice.  Whether there ever lived such a person as Beatrice seems to be a question upon which neither of his biographers have thrown much light.  However, a Beatrice existed in the poet’s mind, if not on earth.  His attachment to Beatrice Portinari, and the linking of her name with the immortality of his great poem, left an indelible impression upon his future character.  The marriage of the object of his affections to another, and her subsequent death, and the poet’s exile from his beloved Florence, together with his death amongst strangers—­all give an interest to the poet’s writings, which could not be heightened by romance itself.  When exiled and in poverty, Dante found a friend in the father of Francesca.  And here, under the roof of his protector, he wrote his great poem.  The time the painter has chosen is evening.  Day and night meet in mid-air:  one star is alone visible.  Sailing in vacancy are the shadows of the lovers.  The countenance of Francesca is expressive of hopeless agony.  The delineations are sublime, the conception is of the highest order, and the execution admirable.  Dante is seated in a marble vestibule, in a meditating attitude, the face partly concealed by the right hand upon which it is resting.  On the whole, it is an excellently painted piece, and causes one to go back with a fresh relish to the Italian’s celebrated poem.  In coming out, we stopped a short while