come out of the one devoted to his native tongue, taking leave of his
confessor, with an affectionate reverence, which--as well as the benign
dignity of the good father--it was good to behold. . . . .

I returned home early, in order to go with my wife to the Barberini
Palace at two o'clock. We entered through the gateway, through the Via
delle Quattro Fontane, passing one or two sentinels; for there is
apparently a regiment of dragoons quartered on the ground-floor of the
palace; and I stumbled upon a room containing their saddles, the other
day, when seeking for Mr. Story's staircase. The entrance to the
picture-gallery is by a door on the right hand, affording us a sight of a
beautiful spiral staircase, which goes circling upward from the very
basement to the very summit of the palace, with a perfectly easy ascent,
yet confining its sweep within a moderate compass. We looked up through
the interior of the spiral, as through a tube, from the bottom to the
top. The pictures are contained in three contiguous rooms of the lower
piano, and are few in number, comprising barely half a dozen which I
should care to see again, though doubtless all have value in their way.
One that attracted our attention was a picture of "Christ disputing with
the Doctors," by Albert Duerer, in which was represented the ugliest,
most evil-minded, stubborn, pragmatical, and contentious old Jew that
ever lived under the law of Moses; and he and the child Jesus were
arguing, not only with their tongues, but making hieroglyphics, as it
were, by the motion of their hands and fingers. It is a very queer, as
well as a very remarkable picture. But we passed hastily by this, and
almost all others, being eager to see the two which chiefly make the
collection famous,--Raphael's Fornarina, and Guido's portrait of Beatrice
Cenci. These were found in the last of the three rooms, and as regards
Beatrice Cenci, I might as well not try to say anything; for its spell is
indefinable, and the painter has wrought it in a way more like magic than