i, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.[A] Published
only in the voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari,
it seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to translate it in
despair: for we feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender
eloquence.

[Footnote A: It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the
great sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would
beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to assert
his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a
somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to
his dying domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attendance at
his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who
was himself at the time eighty-two years of age.--ED.]

MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASARI.

"My Dear George,--I can but write ill, yet shall not your letter remain
without my saying something. You know how Urbino has died. Great was the
grace of God when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the
grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he kept
me living; and in dying he has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with
regret, but with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years had he
served me, and I found him a most rare and faithful man; and now that I
had made him rich, and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose
of my old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than that of
seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of God was this happy death to him;
yet, even more than this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in
this world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself
has departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneliness of
life."

Even the throne has not been too far removed from this sphere of humble
humanity, for we discover in St. George's Chapel a mural monument erected
by order of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant
of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic
affection in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a cherished
inmate.

King George III.
Caused to be interred near this place the body of
MARY GASCOIGNE,
Servant to the Princess Amelia;
and this stone
to be inscribed in testimony of his grate