in that family-room, reached after passage through stately vestibules and
grand stairways; and O, I would be cheated to the bone, if only I might
look out again from some such windows as were there, upon some such damp,
mouldy, broken-statued, ruinous, enchanted garden as lay below! In that
room sat the advocate's mother and hunchback sister, with their smoky
_scaldini_ and their snuffy priest; and there the wife of the
foreigner, self-elected the taste of his party, inflicted the pang courted
by the advocate, and asked if you were for sale. And then the ruined
advocate clasped his hands, rubbed them, set his head heart-brokenly on
one side, took you down, heaved a sigh, shrugged his shoulders, and sold
you--you! a family heirloom! Well, at least you are old, and you represent
to me acres of dim, religious canvas in that beloved land; and here is the
dollar now asked for you: I could not have bought you for so little at
home.

The Madonna is neighbored by several paintings, if the kind called Grecian
for a reason never revealed by the inventor of an art as old as
potichomanie itself. It was an art by which ordinary lithographs were
given a ghastly transparency, and a tone as disagreeable as chromos; and I
doubt if it could have been known to the Greeks in their best age. But I
remember very well when it passed over whole neighborhoods in some parts
of this country, wasting the time of many young women, and disfiguring
parlor walls with the fruit of their accomplishment. It was always taught
by Professors, a class of learned young men who acquired their title by
abandoning the plough and anvil, and, in a suit of ready-made clothing,
travelling about the country with portfolios under their arms. It was an
experience to make loafers for life of them: and I fancy the girls who
learnt their art never afterwards made so good butter and cheese.

"Non-ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa."