could achieve that free and generous surrender of myself which I have
already said is essential to the proper estimate of anything excellent.
Besides, how is it possible to give one's soul, or any considerable part
of it, to a single picture, seen for the first time, among a thousand
others, all of which set forth their own claims in an equally good light?
Furthermore, there is an external weariness, and sense of a thousand-fold
sameness to be overcome, before we can begin to enjoy a gallery of the
old Italian masters. . . . . I remember but one painter, Francia, who
seems really to have approached this awful class of subjects (Christs and
Madonnas) in a fitting spirit; his pictures are very singular and
awkward, if you look at them with merely an external eye, but they are
full of the beauty of holiness, and evidently wrought out as acts of
devotion, with the deepest sincerity; and are veritable prayers upon
canvas. . . . .

I was glad, in the very last of the twelve rooms, to come upon some Dutch
and Flemish pictures, very few, but very welcome; Rubens, Rembrandt,
Vandyke, Paul Potter, Teniers, and others,--men of flesh and blood, and
warm fists, and human hearts. As compared with them, these mighty
Italian masters seem men of polished steel; not human, nor addressing
themselves so much to human sympathies, as to a formed, intellectual
taste.


March 1st.--To-day began very unfavorably; but we ventured out at about
eleven o'clock, intending to visit the gallery of the Colonna Palace.
Finding it closed, however, on account of the illness of the custode, we
determined to go to the picture-gallery of the Capitol; and, on our way
thither, we stepped into Il Gesu, the grand and rich church of the
Jesuits, where we found a priest in white, preaching a sermon, with vast