*'I  have  got  remarkably  good  apartments  in  a
private  house ;  I  see  something  of  the  inhabitants,
(having  had  a  good  many  letters  to  some  of  them ;)
I  have  got  my  gondola ;  I  read  a  little,  and  luckily
could  speak  itolian  (more  fluently  than  correctly;
long  ago.  I  am  studying,  out  of  curiosity,  the
Venetian  dialect,  which  is  very  naive,  and  soft,  and
peculiar,  though  not  at  all  classical ;  I  go  out  fre-
quently, and  am  in  very  good  contentment.
"  The  Helen  of  Canova  (a  bust  which  is  in  the
house  of  Madame  the  Countess  d'Albrizri,  whom  I
know),  is  without  exccmtion,  to  any  mind,  the  most
perfecUy  beautiful  of  human  conceptions,  and  far
beyond  my  ideas  of  human  execution.
