letting in the sunshine, which whitens a carved tombstone on the pavement
of the church, disclosing, perhaps, the letters of the name and
inscription, a death's-head, a crosier, or other emblem; then the curtain
falls and the bright spot vanishes.


May 8th.--This morning my wife and I went to breakfast with Mrs. William
Story at the Barberini Palace, expecting to meet Mrs. Jameson, who has
been in Rome for a month or two. We had a very pleasant breakfast, but
Mrs. Jameson was not present on account of indisposition, and the only
other guests were Mrs. A------ and Mrs. H------, two sensible American
ladies. Mrs. Story, however, received a note from Mrs. Jameson, asking
her to bring us to see her at her lodgings; so in the course of the
afternoon she called on us, and took us thither in her carriage. Mrs.
Jameson lives on the first piano of an old palazzo on the Via di Ripetta,
nearly opposite the ferry-way across the Tiber, and affording a pleasant
view of the yellow river and the green bank and fields on the other side.
I had expected to see an elderly lady, but not quite so venerable a one
as Mrs. Jameson proved to be; a rather short, round, and massive
personage, of benign and agreeable aspect, with a sort of black skullcap
on her head, beneath which appeared her hair, which seemed once to have
been fair, and was now almost white. I should take her to be about
seventy years old. She began to talk to us with affectionate
familiarity, and was particularly kind in her manifestations towards
myself, who, on my part, was equally gracious towards her. In truth, I
have found great pleasure and profit in her works, and was glad to hear
her say that she liked mine. We talked about art, and she showed us a
picture leaning up against the wall of the room; a quaint old Byzantine
painting, with a gilded background, and two stiff figures (our Saviour
and St. Catherine) standing shyly at a sacred distance from one another,