met indeed with a most valuable ally, without whom I believe I should have been beaten; and that was Paolo Feroni, a Florentine nobleman and artist, to whom I have before expressed and now repeat my best acknowledgments. At the end of this long contention against obstacles which often eluded my grasp, the Grand Duke, in consequence of a second memorial I presented to him, issued a decree appointing a commission to carry out the proposed experiments. This commission was composed of two members I had myself proposed, viz. the sculptor Bartolini, and the Marchese Feroni, of myself, of the Direttore of the Edifizi Pubblici Machese Nerli, and of the Direttore of the Accademia delle Arti, the two latter ex-officio: further, the decree declines the proposed voluntary subscriptions, and places at the disposal of the Commissioners a sum of money which proved more than sufficient to cover all the expenses of the restoration of the fresco. The Commissioners employed the painter Marini, and the happy result of his carefulness and ability is now before the world. "I will now conclude by asserting, that I had nothing to do with what has been said or written at Florence of this recovery, either in the _Strenna_, or at the meeting of the Scienziati, which was held in 1841, I believe, and at which the fresco of Giotto was naturally a great object of interest. I left Florence in May 1840, before the portrait of Dante was actually uncovered, so that I only saw a portion of the fresco. I have never heard, or read, or said, or written, anything tending to disparage the real cooeperation of Mr. Kirkup, or of my late lamented friend Mr. Wilde, or of anybody else in this matter,--nay, that it was at my request that the editor of the English translation of Kugler's Handbook of the History of Painting, published in 1842, has in the preface of that book mentioned Mr. Kirkup as having assisted materially in the recovery. Besides the Marchese Feroni and the artist Signor Marini, there are many disinterested witnesses who have stated, and if called upon will repeat again, all the material points of my narrative; but, better than all, there is now in London an English gentleman, whom I am happy to be allowed to call my friend, who was in Florence part of the time, and saw with his own eyes the share I had in this laborious undertaking, which ought not to have brought this bitter contention upon me: he was an intimate friend of Mr. Wilde, with whom he had a long correspondence on this very subject, after Mr. Wilde's return to America."