There were many beautiful specimens of antique, ideal sculpture all along
the gallery,--Apollos, Bacchuses, Venuses, Mercurys, Fauns,--with the
general character of all of which I was familiar enough to recognize them
at a glance. The mystery and wonder of the gallery, however, the Venus
de' Medici, I could nowhere see, and indeed was almost afraid to see it;
for I somewhat apprehended the extinction of another of those lights that
shine along a man's pathway, and go out in a snuff the instant he comes
within eyeshot of the fulfilment of his hopes. My European experience
has extinguished many such. I was pretty well contented, therefore, not
to find the famous statue in the whole of my long journey from end to end
of the gallery, which terminates on the opposite side of the court from
that where it commences. The ceiling, by the by, through the entire
length, is covered with frescos, and the floor paved with a composition
of stone smooth and polished like marble. The final piece of sculpture,
at the end of the gallery, is a copy of the Laocoon, considered very
fine. I know not why, but it did not impress me with the sense of mighty
and terrible repose--a repose growing out of the infinitude of trouble--
that I had felt in the original.

Parallel with the gallery, on both sides of the palace-court, there runs
a series of rooms devoted chiefly to pictures, although statues and
bas-reliefs are likewise contained in some of them. I remember an
unfinished bas-relief by Michael Angelo of a Holy Family, which I touched
with my finger, because it seemed as if he might have been at work upon
it only an hour ago. The pictures I did little more than glance at, till
I had almost completed again the circuit of the gallery, through this
series of parallel rooms, and then I came upon a collection of French and
Dutch and Flemish masters, all of which interested me more than the
Italian generally. There was a beautiful picture by Claude, almost as