We have passed a day in visiting palaces. There are some eight or ten in Venice, whose galleries are still splendid. We landed first at the stairs of the _Palazzo Grimani_, and were received by an old family servant, who sat leaning on his knees, and gazing idly into the canal. The court and staircase were ornamented with statuary, that had not been moved for centuries. In the ante-room was a fresco painting by Georgione, in which there were two _female_ cherubs, the first of that sex I ever saw represented. They were beautifully contrasted with the two male cherubs, who completed the picture, and reminded me strongly of Greenough's group in sculpture. After examining several rooms, tapestried and furnished in such a style as befitted the palace of a Venetian noble, when Venice was in her glory, we passed on to the gallery. The best picture in the first room was a large one by Cigoli, _the bath of Cleopatra_. The four attendants of the fair Egyptian are about her, and one is bathing her feet from a rich vase. Her figure is rather a voluptuous one, and her head is turned, but without alarm, to Antony, who is just putting aside the curtain and entering the room. It is a piece of fine coloring, rather of the Titian school, and one of the few good pictures left by the English, who have bought up almost all the private galleries of Venice. We stopped next at the stairs of the noble old _Barberigo_ Palace, in which Titian lived and died. We mounted the decaying staircases, imagining the choice spirits of the great painter's time, who had trodden them before us, and (as it was for ages the dwelling of one of the proudest races of Venice) the beauty and rank that had swept up and down those worn slabs of marble on nights of revel, in the days when Venice was a paradise of splendid pleasure. How thickly come romantic fancies in such a place as this. We passed through halls hung with neglected pictures to an inner room, occupied only with those of Titian. Here he painted, and here is a picture half finished, as he left it when he died. His famous _Magdalen_, hangs on the wall, covered with dirt; and so, indeed, is everything in the palace. The neglect is melancholy. On a marble table stood a plaster bust of Titian, moulded by himself in his old age. It is a most noble head, and it is difficult to look at it, and believe he could have painted a picture which hangs just against it--_his own daughter in the arms of a satyr_. There is an engraving from it in one of the souvenirs; but instead of a satyr's head, she holds a casket in her hands, which, though it does not sufficiently account for the delight of her countenance, is an improvement upon the original. Here, too, are several slight sketches of female heads, by the same master. Oh how beautiful they are! There is one, less than the size of life, which I would rather have than his Magdalen. * * * * *