perish the snipe, perish all my own pleasures,
so that Progress may march unchecked ou her
way!"

A PORTRAIT IN THE NATIONAL
GALLERY.

ONE of the recently-acquired pictures in the
National Gallery, is a portrait which at once
rivets attention. It is reputed to be the work
of Alessandro Bonvicino, commonly called "Il
Moretto," the great master of whom Brescia is
so justly proud; though it seems far more likely
that it was by his pupil, Moroni.

The picture represents a young man who maybe
about seven or eight-and-twenty years of age; he
is seated in a high-backed, red velvet arm-chair,
leaning his head upon his right hand, in an
attitude of deep thought; his face is handsome, but
has somewhat of a sensual expression. It has
a small moustache and beard of reddish brown,
full lips, and a cheek slightly flushed, and in his
eyes— which are large and unevenly set in his
head, the eyebrows being very wide apart— is
something not altogether to be trusted; either
his nature is false, or a feeling is at work
within which masters the effort to conceal it.
There are the traces, too, of dissipation on his
features, and one can scarcely err in supposing
that he has known some deep grief, the
remembrance of which cannot be swept away; neither
can it be doubted that the original is one in
whom a fixed and unalterable purpose is
combined with utter recklessness of the
consequences of any act he maybe moved to perform.
From his costume, which is in the fashion of the
middle of the sixteenth century, it is evident
that he is of high rank. He wears a dark-green
quilted silk doublet, bordered with a narrow
embroidery of gold, and fastened with gold buttons
that reach from the throat to the waist. A
black velvet cloak, very full at the shoulders,
and puffed and slashed with ermine, with which
fur it is faced, gives that peculiar squareness to
the figure which is noticeable in all the portraits
of the period. At his waist hangs a scarcello,
or large purse, also of black velvet, lined with
ermine; his collar and the cuffs beneath his
doublet are of narrow point-lace; the golden hilt
of his sword peeps from beneath his cloak; on
the little finger of his right hand is a ring of
twisted gold; and upon the table which supports
his arm are an antique bronze lamp or inkstand,
a statuette of the same metal, and some small
round boxes for holding medallions, such as Cellini
wrought, two or three of which are lying about.
But the picture is not yet wholly described. There
remains, to complete it, a black velvet hat with
a flowing white feather, the band like a string of
golden wasps, and the brim, which is broad and
turned up in front, decorated with an ornament
of singular form. This ornament, closely
examined, shows an inscription in Greek
characters, and furnishes a key to the history of the
portrait, which is that of Count Sciarra Martinengo,
the head— at the time he lived— of one
of the most illustrious families of the city of
Brescia. It is the brief but eventful history of
this nobleman, which, as I have gathered it
from Italian and French sources, I mean to tell.

Something, first of all, concerning Count
Sciarra's father, which is essential to the story.
His name was Giorgio, and by way of sobriquet,
the French, with whom he greatly associated,
called him "il superbo Italiano;" and
the Brescian chronicler, Ottavio Rossi, who
relates this fact, amongst others (Elogi Historici
di Bresciani Illustri. Brescia, 1620), says of
him that "there never yet was one who, in the
rank of a private gentleman, equalled Count
Giorgio Martinengo in greatness of soul;" and
that the inward qualities by which he was adorned
shone out from a majestic and beautiful countenance,
not less expressive of reverence for
religion than for its high military bearing. He
adds, that Count Giorgio excelled even princes
in liberality, which led him into expenses beyond
his condition, though that was a noble one.

In the long and bitter rivalry between Francis
the First and the Emperor Charles the Fifth,
Count Giorgio took the side of the French king;
serving his cause, and afterwards that of his
son Henry the Second, with great distinction as
a skilful condottiere. For this reason, and, as
the chronicler suspects, on account of a private
pique, he made a deadly enemy of the famous
Marquis del Vasto (otherwise du Guast); but
he acquired, on the other hand, the close friendship
of the no less celebrated Marshal Strozzi,
in whom, by the way, if the manner of his death
be truly reported, reverence for religion was
not the distinguishing characteristic; for it is
said that when Strozzi, mortally wounded, was
lying in the agonies of death, he repelled the
ghostly counsels of the Duke of Guise by saying
he supposed his fate would be that of everybody
for the last six thousand years. Strozzi was a
mere soldier, but Giorgio Martinengo was also
a man of letters, profound scholarship lending
its graces to his mind. The great qualities that
were in him naturally excited the envy of his
contemporaries, but he could scarcely have been
the head of a proud and powerful Lombard
family without being the object of something
more than envy. We have the familiar instance
of an Italian vendetta in the immortal quarrel
of Verona, and the strife between the Brescian
houses of Martinengo and Avogadro was not
less fatal to them both. That Count Giorgio
was prompt and sudden in his revenge, is testified
by the fact that he was known to have
accompanied the governor of Brescia to mass
on one particular morning; to have killed on
the same day at Padua (distant nearly a hundred
miles) an enemy of his brother, the Abbate
Girolamo Martinengo; and again to have been
seen early on the following morning in the
principal square of Brescia, walking towards his
own palace. At the present time, with a railway
between the two cities, the journey to and
fro is of easy accomplishment. In default of
steam, Count Giorgio employed relays of the
fleetest horses, with which he was well provided,
it being his custom always to keep a band of