tints of latest sunset; it does not seem painted around and beyond the
figure, but everything seems to have absorbed, and to have been
penetrated by its hues. I do not think we saw any other of Correggio,
but this specimen gives me a very exalted idea of his powers.

We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,
Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any purpose,
here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing a novel. I saw
many more of Guido. One, a Samson drinking water out of an ass's
jaw-bone, in the midst of the slaughtered Philistines. Why he is
supposed to do this, God, who gave him this jaw-bone, alone knows--but
certain it is, that the painting is a very fine one. The figure of
Samson stands in strong relief in the foreground, coloured, as it were,
in the hues of human life, and full of strength and elegance. Round him
lie the Philistines in all the attitudes of death. One prone, with the
slight convulsion of pain just passing from his forehead, whilst on his
lips and chin death lies as heavy as sleep. Another leaning on his arm,
with his hand, white and motionless, hanging out beyond. In the
distance, more dead bodies; and, still further beyond, the blue sea and
the blue mountains, and one white and tranquil sail.

There is a Murder of the Innocents, also, by Guido, finely coloured,
with much fine expression--but the subject is very horrible, and it
seemed deficient in strength--at least, you require the highest ideal
energy, the most poetical and exalted conception of the subject, to
reconcile you to such a contemplation. There was a Jesus Christ
crucified, by the same, very fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever may
be the conception and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous and
agonised form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of
torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross with the look of
passive and gentle despair beaming from beneath her bright flaxen hair,
and the figure of St. John, with his looks uplifted in passionate
compassion; his hands clasped, and his fingers twisting themselves
together, as it were, with involuntary anguish; his feet almost writhing
up from the ground with the same sympathy; and the whole of this arrayed
in colours of diviner nature, yet most like nature's self. Of the
contemplation of this one would never weary.

There was a "Fortune," too, of Guido; a piece of mere beauty. There was
the figure of Fortune on a