f the author. The style is
rich and tender, and well suited to this class of works,
although we cannot help thinking some of the details
unnecessarily protracted. In the volume it occupies 22 pages.

In an ancient chronicle of Arezzo, which still remains in manuscript
in the church of St. Angelo, in that city,[4] there is found the very
extraordinary story of the painter Spinello Aretino, to which Lanzi
alludes briefly, in his History of Painting in Italy. No farther notice
has, I believe, been taken of it by any other writer whatever, although
it appears to me to be singularly well calculated to gratify or to
excite the curiosity of those who love to pry into the mysteries of
human nature, and to mark the strange avenues by which mortals sometimes
approach the gates of death.

[4] Vide Catal Manuscript. Sanct Ang. No. 817. 4to. Rom. 1532.

When Spinello first arrived at Arezzo, he took lodgings in the house
of an artist, who, although he possessed no great share of genius, had
contrived to amass considerable wealth. This artist was no other than
Bernardo Daddi, whose son, also named Bernardo, afterwards became the
pupil of Spinello, and almost eclipsed his father's reputation. Besides
this son, Bernardo had several other children, and among the rest a
daughter named Beatrice, then just verging upon womanhood. With this
daughter it was to be expected that Spinello would immediately be in
love; but our young artist had left behind him, in his native village,
a charming girl, to whom he was in a manner betrothed; and he was the
last man in the world to look upon another with a wandering heart. He,
therefore, lived in the same house, and ate at the same table with
Beatrice, without even discovering that she was beautiful; while they
who merely caught a glance of her at church, or as she moved, like a
vision, along the public walk, pretended to be consumed with passion.

Fathers, whether their children are beautiful or not, are often desirous
of preserving an image of them during their golden age, when time, like
the summer sun, is only ripening the fruit he will afterwards wither,
and cause to drop from the bough. Bernardo was possessed by this desire;
and as he never dreamed that any pencil in Arezzo, but his own, could
reproduce upon canvass the lovely countenance of Beatrice, he spent, as
from his opulence he could now afford to do, a considerable portion
of his time in painting her portra