lives to gladden the world, incapable of decay and death; as young and
fair to-day as she was three thousand years ago, and still to be young
and fair as long as a beautiful thought shall require physical
embodiment. I wonder how any sculptor has had the impertinence to aim at
any other presentation of female beauty. I mean no disrespect to Gibson
or Powers, or a hundred other men who people the world with nudities, all
of which are abortions as compared with her; but I think the world would
be all the richer if their Venuses, their Greek Slaves, their Eves, were
burnt into quicklime, leaving us only this statue as our image of the
beautiful. I observed to-day that the eyes of the statue are slightly
hollowed out, in a peculiar way, so as to give them a look of depth and
intelligence. She is a miracle. The sculptor must have wrought
religiously, and have felt that something far beyond his own skill was
working through his hands. I mean to leave off speaking of the Venus
hereafter, in utter despair of saying what I wish; especially as the
contemplation of the statue will refine and elevate my taste, and make it
continually more difficult to express my sense of its excellence, as the
perception of it grows upon one. If at any time I become less sensible
of it, it will be my deterioration, not any defect in the statue.

I looked at many of the pictures, and found myself in a favorable mood
for enjoying them. It seems to me that a work of art is entitled to
credit for all that it makes us feel in our best moments; and we must
judge of its merits by the impression it then makes, and not by the
coldness and insensibility of our less genial moods.

After leaving the Uffizi Palace, . . . . I went into the Museum of
Natural History, near the Pitti Palace. It is a very good collection of
almost everything that Nature has made,--or exquisite copies of what she
has made,--stones, shells, vegetables, insects, fishes, animals, man; the