In the interior, to furnish it, that is to say, to render it habitable, all smiles and happy memories,—this again is to enlarge oneself, to complete oneself: and it is here that woman’s art is absolutely indispensable. A human dwelling in the nature of the case can make no claim to a proud immortality. Every passing season attacks and tends to destroy it; whilst the objects of nature renew themselves unceasingly by the automatic movement of their latent vitality, it is needful for us at every moment more or less to reconstruct our shelter, under pain of seeing it crumble and fall before our eyes. It is like one of the fruits of our life. Thus, while it should be as solid as possible, while reminding us of the persons with whom it has successively lived, it must show itself supple and give expression to our present life, if only by fleeting suggestions, corresponding to the various impressions of our existence, and dying when we die. It was in this direction that the fine taste of prelates and ladies gave itself free and glorious scope. A lover of the beautiful is so keenly conscious that everything about him ought to be the manifestation of some flash of thought! A chair, a couch, a piece of tapestry, all must speak to us and exhort us to live the life of the heart, without allowing ourselves to be crushed or numbed. At Rome, the home of this dominant spirit, and even at Naples, the rays of its influence extended almost inimitably; and it so well attained its object that a people wonderfully sensitive, amiable, enthusiastic, ignorant of physical wants, became enamoured of these glories of high culture of which, however, it barely caught the reflection, and attuned itself to them. Men hoped the time was at hand when all mankind would delight in beauty, they fancied that they were born to live under glorious ceilings, among palm-trees, gushing fountains and marvels of art. To this day the humblest of flymen dilates with pride in the artistic treasures of his city. And how diplomatically Isabella of Mantua went to work to surround herself with splendid objects! What care Vittoria Colonna took in the mere ordering of a casket! They appreciated equally the charm of collecting antiques, diamonds, pictures, pottery, plate; the sole desideratum was that the object of their quest should be beautiful or rare, the expression of an artistic idea or an evocation of the past, that it should add to the Attic charm of life, play its part in the cultivation of taste; in a word, that it should be loved. Life thus, in its superb radiance, assumed a grandeur and delightfulness of which we too caught the secret, in those days when the palaces at Rome still had their galleries, the villas their delightful rows of oleanders, the ruins their majesty. It was a genuine and glorious sumptuousness, well calculated to elevate men’s minds! No wonder that the desire of sharing in it spread through the world, and