to his nation, as
Granger's to ours. The parent of this race of books may perhaps be the
Eulogiums of Paulus Jovius, which originated in a beautiful CABINET,
whose situation he has described with all its amenity.

Paulus Jovius had a country house, in an insular situation, of a most
romantic aspect. Built on the ruins of the villa of Pliny, in his time
the foundations were still to be traced. When the surrounding lake was
calm, in its lucid bosom were still viewed sculptured marbles, the
trunks of columns, and the fragments of those pyramids which had once
adorned the residence of the friend of Trajan. Jovius was an enthusiast
of literary leisure: an historian, with the imagination of a poet; a
Christian prelate nourished on the sweet fictions of pagan mythology.
His pen colours like a pencil. He paints rapturously his gardens bathed
by the waters of the lake, the shade and freshness of his woods, his
green hills, his sparkling fountains, the deep silence, and the calm of
solitude. He describes a statue raised in his gardens to NATURE; in his
hall an Apollo presided with his lyre, and the Muses with their
attributes; his library was guarded by Mercury, and an apartment devoted
to the three Graces was embellished by Doric columns, and paintings of
the most pleasing kind. Such was the interior! Without, the pure and
transparent lake spread its broad mirror, or rolled its voluminous
windings, by banks richly covered with olives and laurels; and in the
distance, towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre blushing
with vines, and the elevations of the Alps covered with woods and
pasturage, and sprinkled with herds and flocks.

In the centre of this enchanting habitation stood the CABINET, where
Paulus Jovius had collected, at great cost, the PORTRAITS of celebrated
men of the fourteenth and two succeeding centuries. The daily view of
them animated his mind to compose their eulogiums. These are still
curious, both for the facts they preserve, and the happy conciseness
with which Jovius delineates a character. He had collected these
portraits as others form a collection of natural history; and he pursued
in their characters what others do in their experiments.

One caution in collecting portraits must not be forgotten; it respects
their authenticity. We have too many supposititious heads, and ideal
personages. Conrad ab Uffenbach, who seems to have been the first
collector who projected a methodical arrangement, co