and air of an old woman, and Laura looks by no means like a young one, or a pretty one.  What struck me most in the general collection was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the mass of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day among the existing Italians.  The queen of Cyprus and Giorgione’s wife, particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same eyes and expression, and, to my mind, there is none finer.

“You must recollect, however, that I know nothing of painting; and that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think it possible to see, for which reason I spit upon and abhor all the Saints and subjects of one half the impostures I see in the churches and palaces; and when in Flanders, I never was so disgusted in my life, as with Rubens and his eternal wives and infernal glare of colours, as they appeared to me; and in Spain I did not think much of Murillo and Velasquez.  Depend upon it, of all the arts, it is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of mankind is most imposed upon.  I never yet saw the picture or the statue which came a league within my conception or expectation; but I have seen many mountains, and seas, and rivers, and views, and two or three women, who went as far beyond it,—­besides some horses; and a lion (at Veli Pacha’s) in the Morea; and a tiger at supper in Exeter Change.

“When you write, continue to address to me at Venice.  Where do you suppose the books you sent to me are?  At Turin!  This comes of ‘the Foreign Office’ which is foreign enough, God knows, for any good it can be of to me, or any one else, and be d——­d to it, to its last clerk and first charlatan, Castlereagh.

     “This makes my hundredth letter at least.

     “Yours,” &c.

* * * * *

TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, April 14. 1817.

     “The present proofs (of the whole) begin only at the 17th page; but
     as I had corrected and sent back the first Act, it does not
     signify.

“The third Act is certainly d——­d bad, and, like the Archbishop of Grenada’s homily (which savoured of the palsy), has the dregs of my fever, during which it was written.  It must on no account be published in its present state.  I will try and reform it, or rewrite it altogether; but the impulse is gone, and I have no chance of making any thing out of it.  I would not have it published as it is on any account.  The speech of Manfred to the Sun is the only part of this act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me.

“I am very glad indeed that you sent me Mr. Gifford’s opinion without deduction.  Do you suppose me such a booby as not to be very