of no less a person than Louise de Stolberg, Countess
of Albany, widow of no less a person than Charles
Edward Stuart, the second pretender to the British
crown. Surely no woman ever was associated senti-
mentally with three figures more diverse, - a disqualified
sovereign, an Italian dramatist, and a bad French
painter. The productions of M. Fabre, who followed
in the steps of David, bear the stamp of a cold me-
diocrity; there is not much to be said even for the
portrait of the genial countess (her life has been written
by M. Saint-Rene-Taillandier, who depicts her as de-
lightful), which hangs in Florence, in the gallery of
the Uffizzi, and makes a pendant to a likeness of
Alfieri by the same author. Stendhal, in his "Me-
moires d'un Touriste," says that this work of art
represents her as a cook who has pretty hands. I am
delighted to have an opportunity of quoting Stendhal,
whose two volumes of the "Memoires d'un Touriste"
every traveller in France should carry in his port-
manteau. I have had this opportunity more than once,
for I have met him at Tours, at Nantes, at Bourges;
and everywhere he is suggestive. But he has the de-
fect that he is never pictorial, that he never by any
chance makes an image, and that his style is per-
versely colorless, for a man so fond of contemplation.
His taste is often singularly false; it is the taste of the
early years of the present century, the period that
produced clocks surmounted with sentimental "sub-
jects." Stendhal does not admire these clocks, but
he almost does. He admires Domenichino and Guer-