as well as a spiritual existence. I felt a kind of tenderness for her;
an affection, not as if she were one woman, but all womanhood in one.
Her modest attitude, which, before I saw her I had not liked, deeming
that it might be an artificial shame, is partly what unmakes her as the
heathen goddess, and softens her into woman. There is a slight degree of
alarm, too, in her face; not that she really thinks anybody is looking at
her, yet the idea has flitted through her mind, and startled her a
little. Her face is so beautiful and intellectual, that it is not
dazzled out of sight by her form. Methinks this was a triumph for the
sculptor to achieve. I may as well stop here. It is of no use to throw
heaps of words upon her; for they all fall away, and leave her standing
in chaste and naked grace, as untouched as when I began.

She has suffered terribly by the mishaps of her long existence in the
marble. Each of her legs has been broken into two or three fragments,
her arms have been severed, her body has been broken quite across at the
waist, her head has been snapped off at the neck. Furthermore, there
have been grievous wounds and losses of substance in various tender parts
of her person. But on account of the skill with which the statue has
been restored, and also because the idea is perfect and indestructible,
all these injuries do not in the least impair the effect, even when you
see where the dissevered fragments have been reunited. She is just as
whole as when she left the hands of the sculptor. I am glad to have seen
this Venus, and to have found her so tender and so chaste. On the wall
of the room, and to be taken in at the same glance, is a painted Venus by
Titian, reclining on a couch, naked and lustful.

The room of the Venus seems to be the treasure-place of the whole Uffizi
Palace, containing more pictures by famous masters than are to be found
in all the rest of the gallery. There were several by Raphael, and the