likewise on a large scale, of mountain and plain. It is very idle and
foolish to talk of pictures; yet, after poring over them and into them,
it seems a pity to let all the thought excited by them pass into
nothingness.

The copyists of pictures are very numerous, both in the Pitti and Uffizi
galleries; and, unlike sculptors, they appear to be on the best of terms
with one another, chatting sociably, exchanging friendly criticism, and
giving their opinions as to the best mode of attaining the desired
effects. Perhaps, as mere copyists, they escape the jealousy that might
spring up between rival painters attempting to develop original ideas.
Miss Howorth says that the business of copying pictures, especially those
of Raphael, is a regular profession, and she thinks it exceedingly
obstructive to the progress or existence of a modern school of painting,
there being a regular demand and sure sale for all copies of the old
masters, at prices proportioned to their merit; whereas the effort to be
original insures nothing, except long neglect, at the beginning of a
career, and probably ultimate failure, and the necessity of becoming a
copyist at last. Some artists employ themselves from youth to age in
nothing else but the copying of one single and selfsame picture by
Raphael, and grow at last to be perfectly mechanical, making, I suppose,
the same identical stroke of the brush in fifty successive pictures.

The weather is very hot now,--hotter in the sunshine, I think, than a
midsummer day usually is in America, but with rather a greater
possibility of being comfortable in the shade. The nights, too, are
warm, and the bats fly forth at dusk, and the fireflies quite light up
the green depths of our little garden. The atmosphere, or something
else, causes a sort of alacrity in my mind and an affluence of ideas,
such as they are; but it does not thereby make me the happier. I feel an