On the ceiling at which you are looking, there is no gilding, and little painting--a mere trellis of vines bearing grapes, and the heads, shoulders, and arms rising from the cornice only, of boys and girls climbing up to steal them, and scrambling for them: nothing overhead; no giants tumbling down, no Jupiter thundering, no Mars and Venus caught at mid-day, no river-gods pouring out their urns upon us; for, as I think nothing so insipid as a flat ceiling, I think nothing so absurd as a storied one. Before I was aware, and without my participation, the painter had adorned that of my bedchamber with a golden shower, bursting from varied and irradiated clouds. On my expostulation, his excuse was that he knew the Danae of Scopas, in a recumbent posture, was to occupy the centre of the room. The walls, behind the tapestry and pictures, are quite rough. In forty-three days the whole fabric was put together and habitable. The wine has probably lost its freshness: will you try some other? _Caesar._ Its temperature is exact; its flavour exquisite. Latterly I have never sat long after dinner, and am curious to pass through the other apartments, if you will trust me. _Lucullus._ I attend you. _Caesar._ Lucullus, who is here? What figure is that on the poop of the vessel? Can it be---- _Lucullus._ The subject was dictated by myself; you gave it. _Caesar._ Oh, how beautifully is the water painted! How vividly the sun strikes against the snows on Taurus! The grey temples and pierhead of Tarsus catch it differently, and the monumental mound on the left is half in shade. In the countenance of those pirates I did not observe such diversity, nor that any boy pulled his father back: I did not indeed mark them or notice them at all. _Lucullus._ The painter in this fresco, the last work finished, had dissatisfied me in one particular. 'That beautiful young face,' said I, 'appears not to threaten death.' 'Lucius,' he replied, 'if one muscle were moved it were not Caesar's: beside, he said it jokingly, though resolved.' 'I am contented with your apology, Antipho; but what are you doing now? for you never lay down or suspend your pencil, let who will talk and argue. The lines of that smaller face in the distance are the same.' 'Not the same,' replied he, 'nor very different: it smiles, as surely the goddess must have done at the first heroic act of her descendant.' _Caesar._ In her exultation and impatience to press forward she seems to forget that she is standing at the extremity of the shell, which rises up behind out of the water; and she takes no notice of the terror on the countenance of this Cupid who would detain her, nor of this who is flying off and looking back. The reflection of the shell has given a warmer hue below the knee; a long streak of yellow light in the horizon is on the level of her bosom, some of her hair is almost lost in it; above her head on every side is the pure azure of the heavens.