Putting out of the question, then, this mode of their livelihood, you will find all these squires essentially "captaines," head, or chief persons, occupied in maintaining good order, and putting things to rights, so that they naturally become chief Lawyers without Wigs, (otherwise called Kings,) in the districts accessible to them. Of whom I have named first, the Athenian Theseus, "setter to rights," or "settler," his name means; he being both the founder of the first city whose history you are to know, and the first true Ruler of beasts: for his mystic contest with the Minotaur is the fable through which the Greeks taught what they knew of the more terrible and mysterious relations between the lower creatures and man; and the desertion of him by Ariadne, (for indeed he never deserted her, but she him,--involuntarily, poor sweet maid,--Death calling her in Diana's name,) is the conclusive stroke against him by the Third Fors. Of this great squire, then, you shall really have some account in next letter. I have only further time now to tell you that this month's frontispiece is a facsimile of two separate parts of an engraving originally executed by Sandro Botticelli. An impression of Sandro's own plate is said to exist in the Vatican; I have never seen one. The ordinarily extant impressions are assuredly from an inferior plate, a copy of Botticelli's. But his manner of engraving has been imitated by the copyist as far as he understood it, and the important qualities of the design are so entirely preserved that the work has often been assigned to the master himself. It represents the seven works of Mercy, as completed by an eighth work in the centre of all; namely, lending without interest, from the Mount of Pity accumulated by generous alms. In the upper part of the design are seen the shores of Italy, with the cities which first built Mounts of Pity: Venice, chief of all;--then Florence, Genoa, and Castruccio's Lucca; in the distance prays the monk of Ancona, who first thought--inspired of heaven--of such war with usurers; and an angel crowns him, as you see. The little dashes, which form the dark background, represent waves of the Adriatic; and they, as well as all the rest, are rightly and manfully engraved, though you may not think it; but I have no time to-day to give you a lecture on engraving, nor to tell you the story of Mounts of Pity, which is too pretty to be spoiled by haste; but I hope to get something of Theseus and Frederick the Second, preparatorily, into next letter. Meantime I must close this one by answering two requests, which, though made to me privately, I think it right to state my reasons for refusing, publicly. The first was indeed rather the offer of an honour to me, than a request, in the proposal that I should contribute to the Maurice Memorial Fund.