Her mother in the meantime had given her a dose of "Theriaca," that time–honoured Venetian medicine, which was then celebrated all over Europe. It is a very thick oily substance, compounded of some fifty different ingredients, the receipt for which is said, with much probability, to have been brought from the East by the Venetians at a very early period. It was a specific adapted to the then state of medical science, no doubt. But it is a curious fact worth noticing, that this "triaca" as the Lombards call it, is still manufactured at Venice from the old recipe, is still prepared by the principal—perhaps only—manufacturer annually on the same fixed day set apart for generations for this purpose; and quainter still, that on that day the persons employed in the process, dress themselves in fifteenth century costume, and thus accoutred make their fire, bring out their cauldrons, and concoct their medicament on one of the open "campi" of Venice, amid a concourse of people assembled to watch the annual ceremony. Theriaca now–a–days hardly finds its way beyond Venice and the neighbouring parts of Lombardy. But within those limits hardly a peasant's cottage would be found without its bottle of the drug, in which their ancestors placed their faith for so many generations. [Sidenote: THERIACA.] The Theriaca, however, as may be supposed, availed nothing to our poor Elisabetta; and the treatment of Dr. Mattaselani as little. The fainting–fits and cold–sweats continued the whole night. In the morning of the 28th came Dr. Gallerati, and ordered more purgatives, more ointment, and the application of the diaphragm of a sheep to the stomach! And when no advantage was found to result from this, he gave the patient the celebrated poison antidote "Bezoar," and the "Olio del Granduca;"—the Grand–duke's oil;—an antidote prepared, it should seem, in that Medicean laboratory of poisons in the Uffizi at Florence, which may well be believed to have been more successful in the preparation of them than in its providing antidotes against them. When the Bezoar and the Grand–duke's oil failed to produce any abatement in the symptoms, the parish priest was sent for! And thus the young artist life, so rich in promise, and in dreams of beauty yet to be embodied, of long years of labour, and praise to be won, was cut short in its spring.