I must now conduct you to the picture-gallery built by Elizabeth, and preserved exactly 'in statu quo.' The roof is of wainscot panelled, and in each panel a coat-of-arms, which has a most antique and magnificent effect. Very good models of the principal temples of antiquity stand in the ante-room. There are some excellent pictures. The one which charmed me the most was an authentic portrait of Mary of Scotland, by Zuccaro, painted just after her arrival from France, and brilliant in all the indescribable radiance and fascination of her youth and freshness. It is easy to understand how it was that this woman had only passionate adorers and devoted partisans, or furious enemies. A face more, in the true sense of the word, _charming_,--seductive,--can scarcely be imagined: with all its French graces, it however betrays the selfishness of the beauty, the recklessness of unbridled passion; but of malignity or vulgarity, such as we see, the former in Elizabeth, the latter in Catharine of Medicis, not a trace;--in short, a perfectly womanlike, and _therefore_ perfectly captivating character of countenance, with all the virtues and all the weaknesses and vices of her sex in their fullest proportions. I should think the possession of such a picture a real happiness,--that of the original might give one too much trouble. The same artist painted a portrait of Elizabeth, precisely like that at Warwick. The Earl of Leicester, taken shortly before his death, is extremely interesting. His face is as elegant and high-bred as it is handsome; and though not indicative of genius, has the expression of a sagacious, dignified, and powerful man. There are no remains of the brilliancy of youth, but a proud complacent consciousness of secure unalterable favour. In a copy of the School of Athens by Giulio Romano, I admired once more the exquisite face of the young duke of Urbino,--that ideal of soft youthful beauty:--the loveliest girl might be more than satisfied with the possession of it. Garrick's portrait, by Raphael Mengs, did not answer my idea of that great actor so perfectly as the one at Stratford-on-Avon. I was delighted with a picture of Charles the Twelfth, by Schröter,--every inch a grand Don Quixotte: and with a very characteristic Charles the Second, by Sir Peter Lely. Charles' aspect, like his age, seems to me entirely French, even to his features, which are strikingly like those of Bussy Rabutin. His father hangs near,--a more attractive picture than usual. He has unquestionably a fine face, with very speaking eyes; but the soft, melancholy, ideological expression too plainly shows that the bearer of such features was little fitted to encounter such a man as Cromwell, or such an age as that he lived in. It is the greatest calamity for a prince to fall upon an ill-suited time, unless he be strong enough to impress his own stamp upon it. The great Locke, by Gibson, is a pale attenuated student. Near him is a handsome portly Luther, by