n her as they fly. Their
outstretched gaze sees only the island. But the princess, as she lies
facing backward, sees the danger. In despairing, motionless silence, she
looks at the sinking sun, with no color in her cheeks but that which he
casts upon her. The red, warning sun looks awfully back, face to face
with her, in the narrowing strip of blue sky between two horizontal bars
of thundering clouds, which the lightning is beginning to chain
together, that the night may come before its time, and the enchanted
princes and their sister may drown in darkness.

Church did the water very well, and Paul Weber the island. Rosa Bonheur
was so kind as to paint the swans--I need not say how. But the rest of
the picture was such a perplexity to me that I could think of nothing
better than to send for Mr. Laroy Sunderland to call one day when I was
out, and knock up Raphael to draw the princess, and Salvator Rosa, the
clouds, and Titian to see to the sky and light. When I came in again,
the completed whole met me as a pleasant surprise.

Not far off are Landseer's 'Challenge,' and a few other Arctic pieces of
his, which I look at in July to keep myself cool. But the chief of my
pictures are in the picture gallery, at the top of my castle, lighted
from above. _Connoisseurs_ assure me, with rare candor, that the
'Transfiguration,' 'Last Judgment,' 'Assumption of the Virgin,' and so
forth, there, are duplicates rather than copies of the originals.

In my library there is scarcely a single picture to be found, nor a
statue, nor a bust even, except of the duskiest, self-hiding bronze
overhead--only some dim, dark engraving, or brown, antiquated autograph,
fading in a little black frame, or a signet ring hanging against the
book written by the crumbled hand that once wore it--only relics having
the power to excite thought without distracting attention--- unobtrusive
memorials of the dead with whom I am soon to live. Rich, black, old
bookcases, carved all over in high relief, hold their immortal works or
the records of their undying deeds. Even the writings of the living are
sparingly admitted here. I stand on my guard constantly, lest I be
enslaved by their influence. It is less by obsequiousness to the Present
than by listening to the admonitions of the Past, that we may hope to
gain a hearing from the Future.

Saints and seraphs, such as they appeared to _Fra Angelico_, look in
upon me through the stained-glass windows, that I may