Beauty, like all other “Beaux Arts,” has its distinctions. The same public opinion that enthrones the sculptor or the musician, confers its crown on female loveliness; and by this acclaim were they declared Queens of Beauty. To any one visiting Italy for the first time, there would have seemed something very strange in the sort of homage rendered them: a reverence and respect only accorded elsewhere to royalties,--a deference that verged on actual humiliation,--and yet all this blended with a subtle familiarity that none but an Italian can ever attain to. The uncovered head, the attitude of respectful attention, the patient expectancy of notice, the glad air of him under recognition, were all there; and yet, through these, there was dashed a strange tone of intimacy, as though the observances were but a thin crust over deeper feelings. “La Contessa”--for she was especially “the Countess,” as one illustrious man of our own country was “the Duke”--possessed every gift which claims preeminence in this fair city. She was eminently beautiful, young, charming in her manners, with ample fortune; and, lastly,--ah! good reader, you would surely be puzzled to supply that “lastly,” the more as we say that in it lies an excellence without which all the rest are of little worth, and yet with it are objects of worship, almost of adoration,--she was--separated from her husband! There must have been an epidemic, a kind of rot, among husbands at one period; for we scarcely remember a very pretty woman, from five-and-twenty to five-and-thirty, who had not been obliged to leave hers from acts of cruelty or acts of brutality, etc., that only husbands are capable of, or of which their poor wives are ever the victims.