Grand Duke's private apartments, only brought into the public gallery for
the purpose of being copied. It is the holiest of all Raphael's
Madonnas, with a great reserve in the expression, a sense of being apart,
and yet with the utmost tenderness and sweetness; although she drops her
eyelids before her like a veil, as it were, and has a primness of eternal
virginity about the mouth. It is one of Raphael's earlier works, when he
mixed more religious sentiment with his paint than afterwards.
Perugino's pictures give the impression of greater sincerity and
earnestness than Raphael's, though the genius of Raphael often gave him
miraculous vision.


July 28th.--Last evening we went to the Powers's, and sat with them on
the terrace, at the top of the house, till nearly ten o'clock. It was a
delightful, calm, summer evening, and we were elevated far above all the
adjacent roofs, and had a prospect of the greater part of Florence and
its towers, and the surrounding hills, while directly beneath us rose the
trees of a garden, and they hardly sent their summits higher than we sat.
At a little distance, with only a house or two between, was a theatre in
full action, the Teatro Goldoni, which is an open amphitheatre, in the
ancient fashion, without any roof. We could see the upper part of the
proscenium, and, had we been a little nearer, might have seen the whole
performance, as did several boys who crept along the tops of the
surrounding houses. As it was, we heard the music and the applause, and
now and then an actor's stentorian tones, when we chose to listen. Mrs.
P------ and my wife, U---- and Master Bob, sat in a group together, and
chatted in one corner of our aerial drawing-room, while Mr. Powers and
myself leaned against the parapet, and talked of innumerable things.
When the clocks struck the hour, or the bells rang from the steeples, as
they are continually doing, I spoke of the sweetness of the Florence