little. I am of opinion that good pictures are quite as rare as good
poets; and I do not see why we should pique ourselves on admiring any but
the very best. One in a thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause
of men, from generation to generation, till its colors fade or blacken
out of sight, and its canvas rots away; the rest should be put in
garrets, or painted over by newer artists, just as tolerable poets are
shelved when their little day is over. Nevertheless, there was one long
gallery containing many pictures that I should be glad to see again under
more favorable circumstances, that is, separately, and where I might
contemplate them quite undisturbed, reclining in an easy-chair. At one
end of the long vista of this gallery is a bust of the present Prince
Doria, a smooth, sharp-nosed, rather handsome young man, and at the other
end his princess, an English lady of the Talbot family, apparently a
blonde, with a simple and sweet expression. There is a noble and
striking portrait of the old Venetian admiral, Andrea Doria, by Sebastian
del Piombo, and some other portraits and busts of the family.

In the whole immense range of rooms I saw but a single fireplace, and
that so deep in the wall that no amount of blaze would raise the
atmosphere of the room ten degrees. If the builder of the palace, or any
of his successors, have committed crimes worthy of Tophet, it would be a
still worse punishment for him to wander perpetually through this suite
of rooms on the cold floors of polished brick tiles or marble or mosaic,
growing a little chiller and chiller through every moment of eternity,--
or, at least, till the palace crumbles down upon him.

Neither would it assuage his torment in the least to be compelled to gaze
up at the dark old pictures,--the ugly ghosts of what may once have been
beautiful. I am not going to try any more to receive pleasure from a
faded, tarnished, lustreless picture, especially if it be a landscape.