A more intrepid talker than myself would have shouted his ideas across
the gulf; but, for me, there must first be a close and unembarrassed
contiguity with my companion, or I cannot say one real word. I doubt
whether I have ever really talked with half a dozen persons in my life,
either men or women.

To-day my wife and I have been at the picture and sculpture galleries of
the Capitol. I rather enjoyed looking at several of the pictures, though
at this moment I particularly remember only a very beautiful face of a
man, one of two heads on the same canvas by Vandyke. Yes; I did look
with new admiration at Paul Veronese's "Rape of Europa." It must have
been, in its day, the most brilliant and rejoicing picture, the most
voluptuous, the most exuberant, that ever put the sunshine to shame. The
bull has all Jupiter in him, so tender and gentle, yet so passionate,
that you feel it indecorous to look at him; and Europa, under her thick
rich stuffs and embroideries, is all a woman. What a pity that such a
picture should fade, and perplex the beholder with such splendor shining
through such forlornness!

We afterwards went into the sculpture-gallery, where I looked at the Faun
of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan
beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. The lengthened, but
not preposterous ears, and the little tail, which we infer, have an
exquisite effect, and make the spectator smile in his very heart. This
race of fauns was the most delightful of all that antiquity imagined. It
seems to me that a story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might
be contrived on the idea of their species having become intermingled with
the human race; a family with the faun blood in them, having prolonged
itself from the classic era till our own days. The tail might have
disappeared, by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals;