Our principal object this morning was to see the pencil drawings by
eminent artists. Of these the Louvre has a very rich collection,
occupying many apartments, and comprising sketches by Annibale Caracci,
Claude, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, and
almost all the other great masters, whether French, Italian, Dutch, or
whatever else; the earliest drawings of their great pictures, when they
had the glory of their pristine idea directly before their minds' eye,--
that idea which inevitably became overlaid with their own handling of it
in the finished painting. No doubt the painters themselves had often a
happiness in these rude, off-hand sketches, which they never felt again
in the same work, and which resulted in disappointment, after they had
done their best. To an artist, the collection must be most deeply
interesting: to myself, it was merely curious, and soon grew wearisome.

In the same suite of apartments, there is a collection of miniatures,
some of them very exquisite, and absolutely lifelike, on their small
scale. I observed two of Franklin, both good and picturesque, one of
them especially so, with its cloud-like white hair. I do not think we
have produced a man so interesting to contemplate, in many points of
view, as he. Most of our great men are of a character that I find it
impossible to warm into life by thought, or by lavishing any amount of
sympathy upon them. Not so Franklin, who had a great deal of common and
uncommon human nature in him.

Much of the time, while my wife was looking at the drawings, I sat
observing the crowd of Sunday visitors. They were generally of a lower
class than those of week-days; private soldiers in a variety of uniforms,
and, for the most part, ugly little men, but decorous and well behaved.
I saw medals on many of their breasts, denoting Crimean service; some