I have not yet, I believe, spoken of more than one or two of the pictures that uncle bought while in Europe the first time.  He then spent ten thousand dollars on paintings, a piece or two of sculpture, and a few little curiosities of art in the way of mosaics and antiquities from different ruins of Italy, which, for a man who was by no means a Stewart or an Astor, showed great liberality.  Uncle could not afford, like ostentatious millionnaires, to dazzle the public with paintings bought by the yard; but for a man of his means he displayed, I think, a true love for art and a strong desire to encourage it.  His purchases, too, were very different from the second-rate pictures so often purchased abroad by uncultivated eyes, for instead of depending merely upon his own judgment, he asked the assistance of the sculptor Story in choosing his souvenirs; and his collection, though small, is admirable, containing two or three bona-fide old masters, purchased at the sales of private galleries in Florence and Rome.

The pictures, like the books, have been kept hitherto in the house in the woods, but this spring Ida moved them all to the roadside house that we might constantly enjoy them, and the parlor now presents quite the appearance of a museum.  It is over the music-room, and its long French windows open upon a balcony, from which we daily admire our tender, Italian-like sunsets.  To the right it is overhung by the branches of our favorite apple-tree, from whose clusters of tiny fruit we each chose an apple some days since.  Gabrielle then marked them with the owner’s initial cut out of paper, the form of which we will find in the autumn indelibly impressed in the apple’s rosy cheek.

But to return to our museum.  Upon ascending the stairs one’s eyes first rest upon the “very saddest face ever painted or conceived,” as Hawthorne describes the beautiful Cenci.  While in Rome I resided upon the Piazza Barberini, opposite the palace containing this exquisite painting, and I visited it with a devotion almost equalling Hilda’s.  Much excitement prevailed that winter in art circles concerning the authenticity of this picture, and hot discussions took place wherever the believers and unbelievers chanced to meet.  No possible proof existed, one party would declare, that Guido had ever painted Beatrice Cenci; and no one had thought of it as other than a fancy head until Shelley had aroused the interest of the public in the half-forgotten tragedy of poor Beatrice’s sad life by the sombre drama, “The Cenci.”  From that time, they say, caprice has christened this picture Beatrice Cenci, and Hawthorne has added much to its interest by the prominence he gives it in the “Marble Faun.”  They, however, are unable to find the traces of sorrow, the “tear-stained cheeks” and “eyes that have wept till they can weep no more,” so eloquently described by all writers and art-critics of the present day; and so far I agree with them—­the face does not impress me with such depths of woe.