pleasant awfulness. She bore a sweet Italian diminutive for
her Christian name, added to one of the noblest old ducal names of
Venice, which was that of her family.

I have since known that she was attached to the person of, and warmly
personally attached to, the unfortunate Caroline of Brunswick, Princess
of Wales,--then only unfortunate; so that I can now guess at the drift
of much sad and passionate talk with indignant lips and tearful eyes, of
which the meaning was then of course incomprehensible to me, but which I
can now partly interpret by the subsequent history of that ill-used and
ill-conducted lady.

The face of my friend with the great Venetian name was like one of
Giorgione's pictures,--of that soft and mellow colorlessness that
recalls the poet's line,--

"E smarrisce 'l bel volto in quel colore
Che non e pallidezza, ma candore,"--

or the Englishman's version of the same thought,--

"Her face,--oh, call it fair, not pale!"

It seemed to me, as I remember it, cream-colored; and her eyes, like
clear water over brown rocks, where the sun is shining. But though the
fair visage was like one of the great Venetian master's portraits, her
voice was purely English, low, distinct, full, and soft,--and in this
enchanting voice she used to tell me the story of the one large picture
which adorned the room.

Over and over again, at my importunate beseeching, she told
it,--sometimes standing before it, while I held her hand and listened
with upturned face, and eyes rounding with big tears of wonder and pity,
to a tale which shook my small soul with a sadness and strangeness
far surpassing the interest of my beloved tragedy, "The Babes in the
Wood,"--though at this period of my existence it has happened to me to
interrupt with frantic cries of distress, and utterly refuse to hear,
the end of that lamentable ballad.

But the picture.--In the midst of a stormy sea, on which night seemed
fast settling down, a helmless, mastless, sailless bark lay weltering
giddily, and in it sat a man in the full flower of vigorous manhood.
His attitude was one of miserable dejection, and, oh, how I did long to
remove the hand with which his eyes were covered, to see what manner of
look in them answered to the bitter sorrow which the speechless lips
expressed! His other hand rested on the fair curls of a girl-baby of
three years old, who clung to his knee, and, with wide, wondering blue
eyes and laughing lips, looked up into