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me original plan of your own, or were to go mare's-nest hunting amidst the ruins with certain German _Barbatuli_,--the Bunsenists of a season--ten days will be more than sufficient,) we charge you not to fail calling at No. 23, Via della Vite, where, if you should possess any lurking propensities for natural history, they are sure to be elicited. As to your first reception, if this should be of a somewhat abnormal kind, why, so was ours;--for Cadet and her mother are certainly originals: but that you should not be disconcerted, and in order to prepare you for the personal appearance, as well as the unusual qualities of our friends, we transcribe the memorandum of our own introduction to them. Prince Musignano, whose birds they mounted, professor Metaxa, who sent rare insects for them to determine, and W----who affirmed, (_par parenthese_,) that no one could stuff birds like them but himself, had all proeconised their accomplishments to us; so one morning with a note-book full of queries, and a bottle full of insects, we descended the _Scalinata_, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a cord pulled from above, while a female voice demanded, _more solito_, "_chi c'e?_" On answering, that our visit was to the _Signore_ who prepared insects, the _voice_ said, "Come up, go in at the door to the right, and we will join you as soon as we have made ourselves tidy." Obeying this Little-red-riding-hood invitation, we entered the reception room, and began to amuse ourselves with a survey of a score or two of queer-looking pictures, (for the most part without frames,) with which the walls were adorned; strange landscapes were there, and allegorical subjects, treated with an equal perversity. On one that first caught our eye, a waning moon, resting on the grass with its horns upwards, formed a couch for Diana and Endymion; from this we had turned to a naked nymph with a pretty face, and a torso half hidden under a cataract of dishevelled tresses, "not penitent enough for a Magdalen," thought we, when mother and daughter entering together, "_Ecco la mia madre_," said the girl pointing to the picture in question. "_Come?_" asked we, "that your mother?" "Certainly, it was painted by my own father, six months after their marriage; she was then as you see, _una bella giovanne assai_." "Was your father, then, a painter by profession?" "Not originally," interposed the old dame: "he was designed for a missionary by his patron, who brought
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