of a more select and beautiful kind. These words made a much deeper impression on the mind of Guido than Annibal was aware of; nor was it long before he wholly applied himself to the style thus indicated to him. Sweetness was his great object; he sought it equally in design, in the touch of his pencil, and in colouring; from that time he began to make use of white lead, a colour avoided by Lodovico, and at the same time predicted the durability of his tints, such as they have proved. His fellow pupils were indignant at his presuming to depart from the Caracci's method, and returning to the feeble undecided manner of the past century. Nor did he pretend to be indifferent to their remarks and advice. He still preserved that strength of style, so much aimed at by his school, while he softened it with more than its usual delicacy; and by degrees proceeding in the same direction, he, in a few years, attained to the degree of delicacy he had proposed. For this reason I have observed that in Bologna, more than elsewhere, his first is distinguished from his second manner, and it is made a question which of the two is preferable. Nor do all agree with Malvasia, who pronounced his former the most pleasing, his latter manner the most studied. In these variations, however, he never lost sight of that exquisite ease which so much attracts us in his works. He was more particularly attentive to the correct form of beauty, especially in his youthful heads. Here, in the opinion of Mengs, he surpassed all others, and, according to Passeri's expression, he drew faces of Paradise. In these Rome abounds more richly than Bologna itself. The Fortune in the capitol; the Aurora, belonging to the Rospigliosi; the Helen to the Spada; the Herodias to the Corsini; the Magdalen to the Barberini, with other subjects in possession of several princes, are regarded as the wonders of Guido's art. This power of beauty was, in the words of Albano, his most bitter and constant rival, the gift of nature; though the whole was the result of his own intense study of natural beauty, and of Raffaello, and of the ancient statues, medals, and cameos. He declared that the Medicean Venus and the Niobe were his most favourite models; and it is seldom we do not recognize in his paintings either Niobe herself, or one of her children, though diversified in a variety of manner with such exquisite skill, as in no way to appear borrowed. In the same way did Guido derive advantage from Raffaello, Coreggio, Parmigianino, and from his beloved Paul Veronese; from all of whom he selected innumerable beauties, but with such happy freedom of hand as to excite the envy of the Caracci. And, in truth, this artist aimed less at copying beautiful countenances, than at forming for himself a certain general and abstract idea of beauty, as we know was done by the Greeks, and this he modulated and animated in his own style. I find mention, that being