It is another token of imperfect taste, no doubt, that queer pictures and
absurd pictures remain in my memory, when better ones pass away by the
score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a
small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I
shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by
Bardone,--a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament,
who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had
been carving a goose. What could possibly have stirred up this pudding
of a woman (unless it were a pudding-stick) to do such a deed! I looked
with much pleasure at an ugly, old, fat, jolly Bacchus, astride on a
barrel, by Rubens; the most natural and lifelike representation of a
tipsy rotundity of flesh that it is possible to imagine. And sometimes,
amid these sensual images, I caught the divine pensiveness of a Madonna's
face, by Raphael, or the glory and majesty of the babe Jesus in her arm,
with his Father shining through him. This is a sort of revelation,
whenever it comes.

This morning, immediately after breakfast, I walked into the city,
meaning to make myself better acquainted with its appearance, and to go
into its various churches; but it soon grew so hot, that I turned
homeward again. The interior of the Duomo was deliciously cool, to be
sure,--cool and dim, after the white-hot sunshine; but an old woman began
to persecute me, so that I came away. A male beggar drove me out of
another church; and I took refuge in the street, where the beggar and I
would have been two cinders together, if we had stood long enough on the
sunny sidewalk. After my five summers' experience of England, I may have
forgotten what hot weather is; but it does appear to me that an American
summer is not so fervent as this. Besides the direct rays, the white
pavement throws a furnace-heat up into one's face; the shady margin of
the street is barely tolerable; but it is like going through the ordeal