I have not yet, I believe, spoken of more than one or two of the pictures that uncle bought while in Europe the first time. He then spent ten thousand dollars on paintings, a piece or two of sculpture, and a few little curiosities of art in the way of mosaics and antiquities from different ruins of Italy, which, for a man who was by no means a Stewart or an Astor, showed great liberality. Uncle could not afford, like ostentatious millionnaires, to dazzle the public with paintings bought by the yard; but for a man of his means he displayed, I think, a true love for art and a strong desire to encourage it. His purchases, too, were very different from the second-rate pictures so often purchased abroad by uncultivated eyes, for instead of depending merely upon his own judgment, he asked the assistance of the sculptor Story in choosing his souvenirs; and his collection, though small, is admirable, containing two or three _bona-fide_ old masters, purchased at the sales of private galleries in Florence and Rome. The pictures, like the books, have been kept hitherto in the house in the woods, but this spring Ida moved them all to the roadside house that we might constantly enjoy them, and the parlor now presents quite the appearance of a museum. It is over the music-room, and its long French windows open upon a balcony, from which we daily admire our tender, Italian-like sunsets. To the right it is overhung by the branches of our favorite apple-tree, from whose clusters of tiny fruit we each chose an apple some days since. Gabrielle then marked them with the owner's initial cut out of paper, the form of which we will find in the autumn indelibly impressed in the apple's rosy cheek.