globe, eagerly proceeding onwards, and Love
was trying to catch her back by the hair, and her face was half turned
towards him; her long chestnut hair was floating in the stream of the
wind, and threw its shadow over her fair forehead. Her hazel eyes were
fixed on her pursuer, with a meaning look of playfulness, and a light
smile was hovering on her lips. The colours which arrayed her delicate
limbs were ethereal and warm.

But, perhaps, the most interesting of all the pictures of Guido which I
saw was a Madonna Lattante. She is leaning over her child, and the
maternal feelings with which she is pervaded are shadowed forth on her
soft and gentle countenance, and in her simple and affectionate
gestures--there is what an unfeeling observer would call a dulness in
the expression of her face; her eyes are almost closed; her lip
depressed; there is a serious, and even a heavy relaxation, as it were,
of all the muscles which are called into action by ordinary emotions:
but it is only as if the spirit of love, almost insupportable from its
intensity, were brooding over and weighing down the soul, or whatever it
is, without which the material frame is inanimate and inexpressive.

There is another painter here, called Franceschini, a Bolognese, who,
though certainly very inferior to Guido, is yet a person of excellent
powers. One entire church, that of Santa Catarina, is covered by his
works. I do not know whether any of his pictures have ever been seen in
England. His colouring is less warm than that of Guido, but nothing can
be more clear and delicate; it is as if he could have dipped his pencil
in the hues of some serenest and star-shining twilight. His forms have
the same delicacy and aerial loveliness; their eyes are all bright with
innocence and love; their lips scarce divided by some gentle and sweet
emotion. His winged children are the loveliest ideal beings ever created
by the human mind. These are generally, whether in the capacity of
Cherubim or Cupid, accessories to the rest of the picture; and the
underplot of their lovely and infantine play is something almost
pathetic from the excess of its unpretending beauty. One of the best of
his pieces is an Annunciation of the Virgin:--the Angel is beaming in
beauty; the Virgin, soft, retiring, and simple.

We saw, besides, one picture of Raphael--St. Cecilia: this is in another
and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it; and
yet it is most unlike