for over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle of costly vaults,

and in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to have been set up. The

expedition sent to Jerusalem to seize it got into trouble and could not

accomplish the burglary, and so the centre of the mausoleum is vacant

now. They say the entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy Sepulchre,

and was only turned into a family burying place after the Jerusalem

expedition failed--but you will excuse me. Some of those Medicis would

have smuggled themselves in sure.--What they had not the effrontery to

do, was not worth doing. Why, they had their trivial, forgotten exploits

on land and sea pictured out in grand frescoes (as did also the ancient

Doges of Venice) with the Saviour and the Virgin throwing bouquets to

them out of the clouds, and the Deity himself applauding from his throne

in Heaven! And who painted these things? Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul

Veronese, Raphael--none other than the world's idols, the "old masters."

Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must save them

for ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let him starve. Served

him right. Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine and

Marie de Medicis seated in heaven and conversing familiarly with the

Virgin Mary and the angels, (to say nothing of higher personages,) and

yet my friends abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old

masters--because I fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in their

productions. I can not help but see it, now and then, but I keep on

protesting against the groveling spirit that could persuade those masters

to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation of such monsters as

the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two and three hundred

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The Innocents Abroad