[Footnote 47:  “Il Conte Guiccioli doveva per affari ritornare a Ravenna; lo stato della mia salute esiggeva che io ritornassi in vece a Venezia.  Egli acconsenti dunque che Lord Byron, mi fosse compagno di viaggio.  Partimmo da Bologna alli 15 di Sre.—­visitammo insieme i Colli Euganei ed Arqua; scrivemmo i nostri nomi nel libro che si presenta a quelli che fanno quel pellegrinaggio.  Ma sopra tali rimembranze di felicita non posso fermarmi, caro Signr.  Moore; l’opposizione col presente e troppo forte, e se un anima benedetta nel pieno godimento di tutte le felicita celesti fosse mandata quaggiu e condannata a sopportare tutte le miserie della nostra terra non potrebbe sentire piu terribile contrasto fra il passato ed il presente di quello che io sento dacche quella terribile parola e giunta alle mie orecchie, dacche ho perduto la speranza di piu vedere quello di cui uno sguardo valeva per me piu di tutte le felicita della terra.  Giunti a Venezia i medici mi ordinarono di respirare l’aria della campagna.  Egli aveva una villa alla Mira,—­la cedesse a me, e venne meco.  La passammo l’autunno, e la ebbi il bene di fare la vostra conoscenza.”—­MS.]

[Footnote 48:  The title of Segretario is sometimes given, as in this case, to a head-servant or house-steward.]

[Footnote 49:  That this was the case with Milton is acknowledged by Richardson, who admired both Milton and the Arts too warmly to make such an admission upon any but valid grounds.  “He does not appear,” says this writer, “to have much regarded what was done with the pencil; no, not even when in Italy, in Rome, in the Vatican.  Neither does it seem Sculpture was much esteemed by him.”  After an authority like this, the theories of Hayley and others, with respect to the impressions left upon Milton’s mind by the works of art he had seen in Italy, are hardly worth a thought.  Though it may be conceded that Dante was an admirer of the Arts, his recommendation of the Apocalypse to Giotto, as a source of subjects for the pencil, shows, at least, what indifferent judges poets are, in general, of the sort of fancies fittest to be embodied by the painter.]

* * * * *

From the time of his misunderstanding with Madame A * * *, the visits of the noble poet were transferred to the house of the other great rallying point of Venetian society, Madame B * * *,—­a lady in whose manners, though she had long ceased to be young, there still lingered much of that attaching charm, which a youth passed in successful efforts to please seldom fails to leave behind.  That those powers of pleasing, too, were not yet gone, the fidelity of, at least, one devoted admirer testified; nor is she supposed to have thought it impossible that Lord Byron himself might yet be linked on at the end of that long chain of lovers, which had, through so many years, graced the triumphs of her beauty.  If, however, there could have been, in any case, the slightest