a summer residence, yet it is well provided with winter comforts ;-and the comforts of a place are as important to an invalid as the climate.

The daily charge at Schneiderf's, if you have only one room-which in Italy may serve for all purposes is seven pauls for lodging, ten pauls for dinner, and four pauls for breakfast-altogether about ten shillings English. For this, you have a good room, an excellent dinner of two courses, with a desert, and as much of the wine of the country as you like.-If a man wishes to drink genuine liquor-let him always drink the common wine of the country in which he happens to be. Mould candles are also thrown into the bargain; -if you burn wax you pay for them, and an extra charge is made for fire. The dinner alone in England would cost more than the whole daily expenditure.

The English abound so much in Florence, that a traveller has little occasion for any other language. At all the hotels, there is some one connected with the house that can speak English. English shops abound with all sorts of knickknacks-from Reading sauce to Woodstock gloves; —and the last new novels stare you in the face at the libraries.

The first thing every man goes to see in Flo

rence is the Gallery. It is thrown open to the public every day except Sundays and holidays, which last, by-the-by, occur too often in Italy, to the great interruption of business. The attendants are always civil and obliging, and without any interested motive, for notices are affixed to the doors to request that nothing may be given to them. Upon the same principle that a child picks out the plums, before he eats the rest of his pudding, I hurried at once to the Sanctum Sanctorum of this Temple of Taste-the Tribune ;—a small octagon room, the walls of which are decorated with a select few of the best paintings of the best masters, and in the area of the apartment are five of the most admired pieces of ancient sculp

ture.

First and foremost amongst these is "the statue that enchants the world"-the unimitated, inimitable Venus. She has now resumed her old station after her second visit to Paris;-for I am surprised the French did not argue that her adventure with the shepherd on Mount Ida, was clearly typical of her late trip to their metropolis.

One is generally disappointed after great expectations have been raised, but in this instance I was delighted at first sight, and each succeeding visit has charmed me more. It is indeed a won

derful work in conception and execution-but I doubt whether Venus be not a misnomer. Who can recognise in this divine statue, any traits of the queen of love and pleasure? It seems rather intended as a personification of all that is elegant, graceful, and beautiful; not only abstracted from all human infirmities, but elevated above all human feelings and affections;-for, though the form is female, the beauty is like the beauty of angels, who are of no sex. I was at first reminded of Milton's Eve; but in Eve-even in her days of innocence before "she damned us all"-there was some tincture of humanity, of which there is none in the Venus:-in whose eye* there is no heaven, and in whose gesture there is no love.

Immediately behind the statue, is the most famous of all the famous Venuses of Titian, who has represented the Goddess of Pleasure in her true character-the Houri of a Mahometan paradise; -and a most bewitching picture it is. But the triumph of the statue is complete ;-there is an all-powerful fascination about it that rivets the attention, and makes the spectator turn away from

* This passage has been censured as inconsistent and contradictory. If there be any inconsistency, it is in speaking of eye of the Venus at all; as, in point of fact, the eye of the statue is nothing but a cold and colourless blank.

the

the picture-like Hercules from the voluptuous blandishments of the Goddess of Pleasure-to devote an exclusive adoration to the celestial purity of her rival ;-for celestial she certainly is.

The peculiar attribute of her divinity is, not its ubiquity, but its individuality. It seems impossible to transfer any portion of her "glorious beauty" to a copy. None of the casts give any idea of the nameless grace of the original.-This incommunicable essence is always the criterion of transcendent excellence.

The arms are modern, and very inferior to the rest of the work. There is something finical and affected in the turn of the fingers, wholly at variance with the exquisite simplicity of the rest of the figure.

I must record though I would willingly forget -the only traces of humanity in the Venus; which escaped my notice in the first fervour of admiration. Her ears are bored for ear-rings, which probably once hung there; and her arm bears the mark of having been compressed by a bracelet. This last ornament might perhaps be excused, but for the other barbarous trinkets-what can be said? I would wish to think they were not the work of the original sculptor; but that they might have been added by some later proprietor, in the same

taste that the Squire in Smollett bestows fullcurled periwigs, by the hand of an itinerant limner, at so much per head, on the portraits of his ancestors painted by Vandyke.

Having said so much of the Venus, the others may be soon despatched.

The Apollino is a model of symmetry. The Wrestlers are admirable: but I should like them better if there were more contrast between the figures; for they are so alike, that they might be supposed to be twins. The arm of the vanquished is out of joint, from the violence of his overthrow.

The Knife Grinder, as it is called, may be any body. None of the suggestions that have yet been made are completely satisfactory.

The Faun is principally remarkable, as exhibiting the best instance of Michael Angelo's skill in restoration. He has added a new head, and I doubt if the original could have excelled the substitute. Besides these, which are in the Tribune; —there is the Hermaphrodite;—the attitude of which is an exquisite specimen of the skill of the ancients in imitating the ease and simplicity of nature. The disposition of the reclining figure is so delightfully natural, that you feel afraid to approach it, lest you should disturb its sleep. This felicity in catching the postures of nature is still