worn by intense application to earthly, not to heavenly matters. He appears more as if he was solving a problem in politics, than thinking of the contents of his prayer-book, which evidently do not form part of his meditations. His beard is long, and grey; and I could not help exclaiming,

"Is this the gallant gay Lothario?"

when I thought of the love letters at Milan, and of the lock of fair hair.

This picture was the portrait of Cardinal Bembo, the most distinguished and universal person of his time in Europe; the best historian, and the most eloquent speaker of those days; a good Latin poet, and also an Italian and a Spanish poet: a patrician of Venice, an ambassador to the court of France, an ambassador from Rome to the republic of Venice ; the favourite of two successive Popes, Leo the Tenth and Paul the Third-the friend of Ariosto, who wrote his Orlando Furioso upon

his counsel the friend of Raffaelle, and of Titian; employed by Leo the Tenth to persuade Titian to give his talents to Rome and to the papal court of the Medicis, at the same time that Francis the First was desirous of gaining both Titian and Leonardo da Vinci to reside at the court of France.

Gardinal Bembo appears to have been like the hero of the French vaudeville of these days, "Il fait tout, il voit tout,

Il sait tout, est partout."

One moment he is heard of, erecting a monument to the memory of Dante, the next being complimented upon his eloquence by the Venetian republic; then drinking chocolate according to the newest Spanish fashion; then in vogue at Madrid, and in fashion in Italy with Elizabeth, Duchess d' Urbino, and Madame Emilia Pia, the exquisites of those days; then writing Raffaelle's epitaph in the Pantheon (that same epitaph that served Pope as a model for his epitaph on Sir Godfrey Kneller in Westminster

Abbey). Afterwards hearing the Orlando Furioso read to him, while his valet de chambre dressed his hair-and the sages of those days say, emulating Virgil and Cicero in his compositions, and from the purity and elegance of his style, said to be a second Petrarch in his sonnets. Cardinal Bembo was the devoted friend, and admirer, and adviser of the two most witty and learned ladies of their times, Vittoria Colonna, and Veronica Gambara. Vittoria Colonna was the first person of the age in charms of person and mind; she was the wife of that d'Avalos Marquis de Pescera, who bore so great a name in the history of those days-who won the battle of Pavia. The sonnets she addressed to Cardinal Bembo, in which she excuses herself for making her love for her husband the theme of her verse, are as interesting as they are feeling.

The portrait painted by Michel Angelo, and finished by his scholar Venusti, which Cammuccini possesses of her at Rome, either does her

injustice, or, more probably, was painted when care and grief had made all grace and beauty vanish. She is always named as a piece of divine excellence, as well as of earthly beauty.

And friends in all the aged she found,

And lovers in the young.

Amongst her list of friends and admirers, besides Bembo, she had Ariosto and Bernardo Tasso, the poets, and Michel Angelo, and the English Cardinal, Reginald Pole.

Cardinal Bembo's other friend and pupil, was the accomplished Veronica Gambara, Countess of Correggio, who attributed her love of learning to his advice and instructions; some of her poetry is in Mr. Matthias' Collection.

The noble Italians of those days were as different from the modern Italian ladies, as the English ladies of the reign of William the Fourth are from those of the times of Elizabeth and James. Strong of purpose, religious, passionate to excess, and high-minded, many of them had often what Bossuet calls

une âme toute royale. Affectation was not then, nor is it now, in the character of the Italian women; a deep and strong passion so engrossed them, that the vanities and prettinesses of life were banished, for want of room to flourish. When heiresses, they often received an education that would have made them Doctors of Law; and, like Shakspeare's Portia, young, rich, beautiful, and learned, many of them might have pleaded a cause, or gained a lawsuit in any court.

Such a character was the Countess of Correggio, and like Vittoria Colonna, she was also a widow early in life. She passed her youth in simple grandeur, given up to literature and to the education of two children, in her magnificent Palace at Correggio-a palace decorated by the celebrated painter Allegri, since known as "Il Correggio."

There she held a court or academy for the learned, and her reputation drew the attention of the Emperor Charles V., who went twice to