has been embalmed in a beautiful Latin ode, wherein her husband embodied those laments for his absence which he doubtless had often heard from her lips, expressing all the tenderness of nuptial love, and adorning a woman's pathos with a poet's fire. Nothing can be more beautiful than the allusion to her husband's portrait:-- "Your features portrayed by Raffaele's art Alone my longings can solace in part: On them I lavish jests and winning wiles, As if their words could echo back my smiles; At times they seem by gestures to respond, And answer in your wonted accents fond: Our boy his sire salutes with babbling phrase. Such are the thoughts deceive my lingering days." [Footnote *38: He was in England in 1506. Guidobaldo died in 1508. It was to Duke Francesco he attached himself on his return.] [Footnote *39: On the various designs for Castiglione's marriage, see CIAN, _op. cit._, p. 46, note 1.] In her epitaph, the Count summed up his wife's character and endowments, with a doubt whether her beauty or her virtue were more remarkable; to which her eulogist, Steffano Guazzo, has added a third grace--her learning. During the first anguish of widowhood he was supposed to have turned his thoughts to ecclesiastical orders; but whatever views of that nature he may have entertained were speedily abandoned; and in 1523 we find him again in Lombardy, with his gallant company, under the banner of the Gonzagas. On the accession of Clement VII., the Marquis of Mantua again sent him to represent his interests at Rome, where he was not long in obtaining from the new Pope the same favour which he had enjoyed under his uncle, Leo X. His diplomatic talents were now acknowledged as of the first order; and Clement, foreseeing, perhaps, the impending difficulties of his position with the Emperor, prevailed upon Castiglione to accept the nomination of nuncio to Madrid. His courtly qualities were not less agreeable to Charles V. and the grandees of Spain than they had been in Italy; and in the romantic project by which the Emperor proposed to decide in single combat his unquenchable rivalry with Francis I., the Count was selected as his second,--an honour which his diplomatic functions prevented his accepting. Even while the troops and name of Charles were used by Bourbon to inflict upon the Apostolic See the greatest blow which its capital had suffered since the temporal power of the Church rose on the ruins of the Roman empire, the Nuncio was receiving new honours at Madrid, and was only prevented by his own scruples from obtaining the temporalities of the bishopric of Avila, one of the richest in Spain. In this most delicate position he retained the confidence of his master, who seems to have been satisfied that to no remissness on his part were owing the horrors of the sack of Rome. But these miserable results of jealousies between the Pope and the Emperor, which all his tact and influence were powerless to