bre; and I suppose some of the pieces in
the museum of his native town used to hang in the sunny saloons of that
fine old palace on the Arno which is still pointed out to the stranger
in Florence as the residence of Alfieri.

The institution has had other benefactors, notably a certain M. Bruyas,
who has enriched it with an extraordinary number of portraits of
himself. As these, however, are by different hands, some of them
distinguished, we may suppose that it was less the model than the
artists to whom M. Bruyas wished to give publicity. Easily first are two
large specimens of David Teniers, which are incomparable for brilliancy
and a glowing perfection of execution. I have a weakness for this
singular genius, who combined the delicate with the grovelling, and I
have rarely seen richer examples. Scarcely less valuable is a Gerard Dow
which hangs near them, though it must rank lower, as having kept less of
its freshness. This Gerard Dow did me good, for a master is a master,
whatever he may paint. It represents a woman paring carrots, while a boy
before her exhibits a mouse-trap in which he has caught a frightened
victim. The goodwife has spread a cloth on the top of a big barrel which
serves her as a table, and on this brown, greasy napkin, of which the
texture is wonderfully rendered, lie the raw vegetables she is preparing
for domestic consumption. Beside the barrel is a large caldron lined
with copper, with a rim of brass. The way these things are painted
brings tears to the eyes; but they give the measure, of the Musee Fabre,
where two specimens of Teniers and a Gerard Dow are the jewels. The
Italian pictures are of small value; but there is a work by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, said to be the only one in France--an infant Samuel in prayer,
apparently a repetition of the picture in England which inspired the
little plaster image, disseminated in Protestant lands, that we used to
admire in our childhood. Sir Joshua, somehow, was an eminently
Protestant painter; no one can forget that, who in the National Gallery
in London has looked at the picture in which he represents several young
ladies as nymphs, voluminously draped, hanging garlands over a statue--a
picture suffused indefinably with the Anglican spirit and exasperating
to a member of one of the Latin races. It is an odd chance therefore
that has led him into that part of France where Protestants have been
least _bien vus_. This is the country of the dragonnades of Lo