Up stairs, on the third floor, is kept his Majesty’s COLLECTION of ENGRAVED PORTRAITS—­which amount, as Mr. Young informed me, to not fewer than 120,000 in number.  They commence with the earliest series, from the old German and Italian masters, and descend regularly to our own times.  Of course such a collection contains very much that is exquisite and rare in the series of British Portraits.  Mr. Young is an Italian by birth; but has been nurtured, from earliest youth, in the Austrian dominions.  He is a man of strong cultivated parts, and so fond of the literature of the “Zodiacus Vitae” of Marcellus Palingenius—­translated by our Barnabe Googe:  of the editions of which translation he was very desirous that I should procure him a copious and correct list.  But it is the gentle and obliging manners—­the frank and open-hearted conversation—­and, above all, the high-minded devotedness to his Royal master and to his interests, that attach, and ever will attach, Mr. Young to me—­by ties of no easily dissoluble nature.  We have parted ... perhaps never to meet again; but he may rest assured that the recollection of his kindnesses ("Semper honos nomenque,” &c.) will never be obliterated from my memory.[150]

Scarcely a stone’s throw from the Imperial Library, is the noble mansion of the venerable DUKE ALBERT of Saxe-Teschen: the husband of the lady to whose memory Canova has erected the proudest trophy of his art.  This amiable and accomplished nobleman has turned his eightieth year; and is most liberal and kind in the display of all the treasures which belong to him.[151] These “treasures” are of a first-rate character; both as to Drawings and Prints.  He has no rival in the former department, and even surpasses the Emperor in the latter.  I visited and examined his collection (necessarily in a superficial manner) twice; paying only particular attention to the drawings of the Italian school—­including those of Claude Lorraine.  I do not know what is in our own royal collection, but I may safely say that our friend Mr. Ottley has some finer Michel Angelos and Raffaelles—­and the Duke of Devonshire towers, beyond all competition, in the possession of Claude Lorraines.  Yet you are to know that the drawings of Duke Albert amount to nearly 12,000 in number.  They are admirably well arranged—­in a large, light room—­overlooking the ramparts.  Having so recently examined the productions of the earlier masters in the German school, at Munich—­but more particularly in Prince Eugene’s collection of prints, in the Imperial Library here—­I did not care to look after those specimens of the same masters which were in the port folios of the Duke Albert.  The Albert Durer drawings, however, excited my attention, and extorted the warmest commendation.  It is quite delightful to learn (for so M. Bartsch told me—­the Duke himself being just now at Baden) that this dignified and truly respectable old man, yet takes delight in the treasures of his own incomparable collection.  “Whenever I visit him (said my “fidus Achates” M.B.) he begs me to take a chair and sit beside him; and is anxious to obtain intelligence of any thing curious, or rare, or beautiful, which may add to the worth of his collection.”