but there is no trace of admiring to order in his comments upon pictures or statues.  Familiarity with the great works of antique and Italian art would doubtless have altered some of the opinions he at first expressed; just as longer residence among the people made him modify his views about their character.  Meanwhile, the spirit of modest and unprejudiced attention in which he began his studies of sculpture and painting, might well be imitated in the present day by travellers who think that to pin their faith to some famous critic’s verdict is the acme of good taste.  If there were space for a long quotation from these letters, I should choose the description of Pompeii (January 26, 1819), or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, 1819).  As it is, I must content myself with a short but eminently characteristic passage, written from Ferrarra, November 7, 1818:—­

“The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of mind; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is a checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters into a smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word.  It is the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its own depth, and admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet.  You know I always seek in what I see the manifestation of something beyond the present and tangible object; and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not agree now.  But my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to attempt to inspire others with them.”

In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di Lucca, and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice.  He arrived at midnight in a thunderstorm.  “Julian and Maddalo” was the literary fruit of this excursion—­a poem which has rightly been characterized by Mr. Rossetti as the most perfect specimen in our language of the “poetical treatment of ordinary things.”  The description of a Venetian sunset, touched to sadness amid all its splendour by the gloomy presence of the madhouse, ranks among Shelley’s finest word-paintings; while the glimpse of Byron’s life is interesting on a lower level.  Here is the picture of the sunset and the island of San Lazzaro:—­

    Oh! 
    How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
    Of heaven descends upon a land like thee,
    Thou paradise of exiles, Italy,
    Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers
    Of cities they encircle!—­it was ours
    To stand on thee, beholding it:  and then,
    Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men
    Were waiting for us with the gondola. 
    As those who pause on some delightful way,
    Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
    Looking upon the evening, and the flood
    Which lay between the city and the shore,