Next comes an exquisite Madonna and Child by Carlo Dolce (a copy).  The mother’s face is youthful and radiant with divine beauty:  the Infant Jesus stands upon her knee, and extends a plump little hand in benediction.

Next, a portrait of uncle painted in 1839—­two years earlier than the one that hangs in the dining-room.  This picture, mamma says, was an excellent likeness of him when he was twenty-eight years old; and the biographers who are so prone to describe him in his younger days as having been “uncouth” and “awkward,” would be, I think, much startled if they could see it.  His coat is black, with a black tie, like other gentlemen, and his air, instead of being “rustic” or “gawky,” is expressive of gentle dignity, while his face, so often described as plain, is to me beautiful enough to have represented a young saint.

Next these pictures is another medallion—­the “Mother of the Gracchi,” and under them a small table upon which stand several marble curiosities:  a model of the tomb of Scipio, Minerva issuing from the head of Jupiter, and two busts of Roman soldiers in the time of Titus—­antiques, and quite yellow and valuable.

In the centre of the parlor is a round table bought in Rome, and made of variegated marble taken from the ruins of the palace of the Caesars.

In a corner, upon a handsome pedestal, stands Powers’ bust of Proserpine, of which uncle was especially proud.  He speaks of it in his “Glances at Europe,” in these words: 

“I defy Antiquity to surpass—­I doubt its ability to rival—­Powers’ Proserpine and his Psyche with any models of the female head that have come down to us; and while I do not see how they could be excelled in their own sphere, I feel that Powers, unlike Alexander, has still realms to conquer, and will fulfil his destiny.”

A very prominent picture, and one that was a great favorite with uncle, is an original portrait of Luther, by Lucas Cranach, one of the great lights of the Flemish school of painting.  I have seen in the Dresden Gallery the counterpart to this picture, painted by the same artist, but representing Luther after death.  I much prefer the animated expression of the living picture, for it is hard to think of the fiery reformer as dead, even at this late day.

Over the sofa is a large Holy Family, a painting in the school of Raphael, and underneath it hangs one of our most valuable pictures—­a veritable Guercino, painted in 1648.  The subject is St. Mary Magdalen.

I wish that I had time to write in detail of all the beautiful things in the parlor—­a card-table made like the centre-table of classic marble from the ruins of Rome, an exquisite moonlight view of a Benedictine Convent upon the Bay of Naples, with a young girl kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna; a Venetian scene—­the Doge’s palace with its graceful, Moorish architecture; St. Peter and St. Paul; the Cumaean Sybil, a beautiful female