LETTER XIV.

Vienna-The Palace of Liechtenstein.

THE red-nosed German led on through the crowded Graben, jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and her handsome Hungarian cavalier, the phlegmatic smoker and the bearded Turk, alike. We passed the imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty bridge over the trench (casting a look below at the flower garden laid out in "the ditch" which encircles the wall), and entered upon the lovely Glacis-one step from the crowded street to the fresh greenness of a park.

Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded alley, that you are in the heart of the city still?

The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children and shy maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking lovers, and its idling soldiers, and we again enter the crowded street. A half hour more, and the throng thins again, the country opens, and here you are, in front of the palace of Liechstenstein, the first noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful and light architecture, rises from its clustering trees; servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and lean against the pillars of the portico, and with an explanation from my lying valet, who

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evidently makes me out an ambassador at least, by the ceremony with which I am received, a gray servitor makes his appearance and opens the immense glass door leading from the side of the

court.

One should step gingerly on the poli-hed marble of this superb staircase! It opens at once into a lofty ball, the ceiling of which is painted in fresco by an Italian master. It is a room of noble proportions. Few churches in America are larger, and yet it seems in keeping with the style of the palace, the staircaseeverything but the creature meant to inhabit it.

How different are the meds in which one sees pictures! Today I am in the humor to give it to the painter's delusion. The scene is real. Asmodeus is at my elbow, and I am witched from spot to spot, invisible myself, gazing on the varied scenes revealed only to the inspired vision of genius.

A landscape opens.* It is one of the woody recesses of Lake Nervi, at the very edge of "Dian's Mirror." The huntress queen is bathing with her nymphs. The sandal is half laced over an ankle that seems fit for nothing else than to sustain a goddess, when casting her eye on the lovely troop emerging from the water, she sees the unfortunate Calista surrounded by her astonished sisters, and fainting with shame. Poor Calista! one's heart pleads for her. But how expressive is the cold condemning look in the beautiful face of her mistress queen! Even the dogs have started from their reclining position on the grass, and stand gazing at the unfortunate, wondering at the silent astonishment of the virgin troop. Pardon her, imperial Dian!

* By Franceschini. He passed his life with the Prince Liechtenstein, and his pictures are found only in this collection. He is a delicious painter, full of poetry, with the one fault of too voluptuous a style.

Come to the baptism of a child! It is a vision of. Guido Reni's.* A young mother, apparently scarce sixteen, has brought her first child to the altar. She kneels with it in her arms, looking earnestly into the face of the priest while he sprinkles the water on its pure forehead, and pronounces the words of consecration. It is a most lovely countenance, made lovelier by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes are moist, her throat swells with emotion-my own sight dims while I gaze upon her. We have intruded on one of the most holy moments of nature. A band of girls, sisters by the resemblance, have accompanied the young mother, and stand, with love and wonder in their eyes, gazing on the face of the child. How strangely the mingled thoughts, crowding through their minds, are expressed in their excited features. It is a scene worthy of an audience of angels.

We have surprised Giorgione's wife (the "Flora" of Titian, the "love in life" of Byron) locking at a sketch by her husband. It stands on his easel, outlined in crayons, and represents Lucretia the moment before she plunges the dagger into her bosom. She was passing through his studio, and you see by the half suspended foot, that she stopped but for a momentary glance, and has forgotten herself in thoughts that have risen unaware. The head of Lucretia resembles her own, and she is wondering what Giorgione thought while he drew it. Did he resemble her to the Roman's wife in virtue as well as in feature? There is an embarrassment in the expression of her face, as if she doubted he had drawn it half in mischief. We will leave the lovely Venetian to her thoughts. When she sits again to Titian, it will be with a colder modesty.

One of the loveliest pictures that divine painter ever drew.

Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene for you. It is an old man, who has thrust his head through a prison gate, and is looking into the street with the listless patience and curiosity of one whom habit has reconciled to his situation. His beard is neglected, his hair is slightly grizzled, and on his head sits a shabby fur cap, that has evidently shared all his imprisonment, and is quite past any pride of appearance. What a vacant face! How perfectly he seems to look upon the street below, as upon something with which he has nothing more to do. There is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past that. He looks at the playing children, and watches the zigzag trot of an idle dog with the quiet apathy of one who can find nothing better to help off the hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented, unthinking misery.

Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot at his mother's knee, while she pares an apple for him! With what an amused and playful love she listens to his hurrying entreaties, stealing a glance at him as he pleads, with a deeper feeling than he will be able to comprehend for years! It is one of the commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with speculation!

On-on-what an endless gallery! I have seen twelve rooms, with forty or fifty pictures in each, and there are thirteen halls more! The delusion begins to fade. These are pictures merely. Beautiful ones, however! If language could convey to your eye the impressions that this waste and wealth of beauty have conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture. There is not an indifferent one here. All Italy together has not so many works by the Flemish masters as are contained in this single gallery-certainly none so fine. A most princely fortune for many generations must have been devoted to its purchase.

I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by Corregio. They were the gems of the galleries in which they exist, but always small, and seemed to me to want a certain finish. Here is a Corregio, a large picture, and no miniature ever had so elaborate a beauty. It melts into the eye. It is a conception of female beauty so very extraordinary, that it seems to me it must become, in the mind of every one who sees it, the model and the standard of all loveliness. It is a nude Venus, sitting lost in thought, with Cupid asleep in her lap. She is in the sacred retirement of solitude, and the painter has thrown into her attitude and expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all presence, that you feel like a daring intruder while you gaze upon the picture. Surely such softness of coloring, such faultless proportions, such subdued and yet eloquent richness of teint in the skin, was never before attained by mortal pencil. I am here, some five thousand miles from America, yet would I have made the voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this ravishing image of woman.

In the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of female beauty, both in degree and in variety, than his anticipations had promised. Three or four heads at the most, of the many hundreds that he sees, are imprinted in his memory, and serve as standards in his future observations Even when standing before the most celebrated pictures, one often returns to recollections of living beauty in his own country, by which the most glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suffer in comparison. In my own experience this has been often true, and it is perhaps the only thing in which my imagination of foreign wonders was too fervent. To this Venus of Corregio's, however, I unhesitatingly submit all knowledge, all conception even, of female love