American clipper-ship quite opposed to this in taste.

After making the circuit of the grand-ducal apartments, we went into a
door in the left wing of the palace, and ascended a narrow flight of
stairs,--several tortuous flights indeed,--to the picture-gallery. It
fills a great many stately halls, which themselves are well worth a visit
for the architecture and frescos; only these matters become commonplace
after travelling through a mile or two of them. The collection of
pictures--as well for their number as for the celebrity and excellence of
many of them--is the most interesting that I have seen, and I do not yet
feel in a condition, nor perhaps ever shall, to speak of a single one.
It gladdened my very heart to find that they were not darkened out of
sight, nor apparently at all injured by time, but were well kept and
varnished, brilliantly framed, and, no doubt, restored by skilful touches
if any of them needed it. The artists and amateurs may say what they
like; for my part, I know no drearier feeling than that inspired by a
ruined picture,--ruined, that is, by time, damp, or rough treatment,--and
I would a thousand times rather an artist should do his best towards
reviving it, than have it left in such a condition. I do not believe,
however, that these pictures have been sacrilegiously interfered with; at
all events, I saw in the masterpieces no touch but what seemed worthy of
the master-hand.

The most beautiful picture in the world, I am convinced, is Raphael's
"Madonna della Seggiola." I was familiar with it in a hundred engravings
and copies, and therefore it shone upon one as with a familiar beauty,
though infinitely more divine than I had ever seen it before. An artist
was copying it, and producing certainly something very like a fac-simile,
yet leaving out, as a matter of course, that mysterious something that
renders the picture a miracle. It is my present opinion that the