pensive air, but is still, I think, pitiless at heart. The third sister
looks closely and coldly into the eyes of the second, meanwhile cutting
the thread with a pair of shears. Michael Angelo, if I may presume to
say so, wished to vary the expression of these three sisters, and give
each a different one, but did not see precisely how, inasmuch as all the
fatal Three are united, heart and soul, in one purpose. It is a very
impressive group. But, as regards the interpretation of this, or of any
other profound picture, there are likely to be as many interpretations as
there are spectators. It is very curious to read criticisms upon
pictures, and upon the same face in a picture, and by men of taste and
feeling, and to find what different conclusions they arrive at. Each man
interprets the hieroglyphic in his own way; and the painter, perhaps, had
a meaning which none of them have reached; or possibly he put forth a
riddle, without himself knowing the solution. There is such a necessity,
at all events, of helping the painter out with the spectator's own
resources of feeling and imagination, that you can never be sure how much
of the picture you have yourself made. There is no doubt that the public
is, to a certain extent, right and sure of its ground, when it declares,
through a series of ages, that a certain picture is a great work. It is
so; a great symbol, proceeding out of a great mind; but if it means one
thing, it seems to mean a thousand, and, often, opposite things.


June 27th.--I have had a heavy cold and fever almost throughout the past
week, and have thereby lost the great Florentine festivity, the Feast of
St. John, which took place on Thursday last, with the fireworks and
illuminations the evening before, and the races and court ceremonies on
the day itself. However, unless it were more characteristic and peculiar
than the Carnival, I have not missed anything very valuable.