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THE VEILED PORTRAIT.

In spite of the power of steam and the enterprise of railway companies, there are many who yet derive their impressions of Italy from descriptions written at Kensington, or sketches filled up in the Alpha Road. Many from whom the hospitable St. Bernardines have never demanded more than would satisfy the most unscrupulous Swiss landlord, and others who, having made the acquaintance of Royal Academic Venetian Canals with their eyes, have not ripened the intimacy at Venice by their noses. These fortunate idealists, who have been taught to believe that south of the Alps there are no tints in Nature’s colour-box but chrome yellow and cobalt, will have some difficulty in recognising the picture that I paint for them.

I look out upon it through the mouth of a