e piu terribile contrasto fra il
passato ed il presente di quello che io sento dacche quella terribile
parola e giunta alle mie orecchie, dacche ho perduto la speranza di piu
vedere quello di cui uno sguardo valeva per me piu di tutte le felicita
della terra. Giunti a Venezia i medici mi ordinarono di respirare l'aria
della campagna. Egli aveva una villa alla Mira,--la cedesse a me, e
venne meco. La passammo l'autunno, e la ebbi il bene di fare la vostra
conoscenza."--MS.]

[Footnote 48: The title of Segretario is sometimes given, as in this
case, to a head-servant or house-steward.]

[Footnote 49: That this was the case with Milton is acknowledged by
Richardson, who admired both Milton and the Arts too warmly to make such
an admission upon any but valid grounds. "He does not appear," says this
writer, "to have much regarded what was done with the pencil; no, not
even when in Italy, in Rome, in the Vatican. Neither does it seem
Sculpture was much esteemed by him." After an authority like this, the
theories of Hayley and others, with respect to the impressions left upon
Milton's mind by the works of art he had seen in Italy, are hardly worth
a thought. Though it may be conceded that Dante was an admirer of the
Arts, his recommendation of the Apocalypse to Giotto, as a source of
subjects for the pencil, shows, at least, what indifferent judges poets
are, in general, of the sort of fancies fittest to be embodied by the
painter.]

* * * * *

From the time of his misunderstanding with Madame A * * *, the visits of
the noble poet were transferred to the house of the other great rallying
point of Venetian society, Madame B * * *,--a lady in whose manners,
though she had long ceased to be young, there still lingered much of
that attaching charm, which a youth passed in successful efforts to
please seldom fails to leave behind. That those powers of pleasing, too,
were not yet gone, the fidelity of, at least, one devoted admirer
testified; nor is she supposed to have thought it impossible that Lord
Byron himself might yet be linked on at the end of that long chain of
lovers, which had, through so many years, graced the triumphs of her
beauty. If, however, there could have been, in any case, the slightest
chance of such a conquest, she had herself completely frustrated it by
introducing her distinguished visitor to Madame Guiccioli,--a step by
which she at last lost, too, even the ornament of his