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178 good taste to select the attitude most pleasing, the folds of drapery the most harmonious." "Lady Mandeville only contends," said Edward, "that Nature should make, not a sacrifice, but an offering to the Graces." "Few things have struck me more since my arrival in Italy," said Mr. Brande, "than the little real love my countrymen have for the fine arts; they may affect 'a taste,' but 'they have it not.' I should have wondered still more at this want, had I not felt it in myself. I have seen others hurrying, and I have hurried, from collection to collection, from gallery to gallery, with nothing but the fear of the future before my eyes—that future which, when we return home, makes it an imperative necessity to say we have seen such things. We rise up early in the morning, and late take rest—we crowd time and memory, for the sake of one pleasant remark, 'Well, I do declare it is quite wonderful that you could manage to see so much in so short a time!'" "Our English taste for the fine arts," said Lord Mandeville, "may be classed under two heads—ostentatious and domestic. Our nobility and gentry buy fine pictures and statues as they do fine furniture, to put in fine rooms.