picture contents me. I thought to
myself that I had seen among living women, and in a face not far off, a
nobler and sweeter idea of womanhood.

It is too much to ask of any earthly artist, however, to gratify the
aspirations and cravings of those who have dreamed of them for years
unsatisfied. Perhaps no earthly canvas and brash can accomplish this
marvel. I think the idealist must lay aside his highest ideal, and be
satisfied he shall never meet it, and then he will begin to enjoy. With
this mood and understanding I did enjoy very much an Assumption of the
Virgin, by Guido, and more especially Diana and her Nymphs, by Titian:
in this were that softness of outline, and that blending of light and
shadow into each other, of which I felt the want in the Raphaels. I felt
as if there was a perfection of cultivated art in this, a classical
elegance, which, so far as it went, left the eye or mind nothing to
desire. It seemed to me that Titian was a Greek painter, the painter of
an etherealized sensuousness, which leaves the spiritual nature wholly
unmoved, and therefore all that he attempts he attains. Raphael, on the
contrary, has spiritualism; his works enter a sphere where at is more
difficult to satisfy the soul; nay, perhaps from the nature of the case,
impossible.

There were some glorious pieces of sunshine by Cuyp. There was a massive
sea piece by Turner, in which the strong solemn swell of the green
waves, and the misty wreathings of clouds, were powerfully given.

There was a highly dramatic piece, by Paul de la Roche, representing
Charles I. in a guard room, insulted by the soldiery. He sits, pale,
calm, and resolute, while they are puffing tobacco smoke in his face,
and passing vulgar jokes. His thoughts appear to be far away, his eyes
looking beyond them with an air of patient, proud weariness.

Independently of the pleasure one receives from particular pictures in
these galleries, there is a general exaltation, apart from, critical
considerations, an excitement of the nerves, a kind of dreamy state,
which is a gain in our experience. Often in a landscape we first single
out particular objects,--this old oak,--that cascade,--that ruin,--and
derive from them, an individual joy; then relapsing, we view the
landscape as a whole, and seem, to be surrounded by a kind of atmosphere
of thought, the result of the combined influence of all. This state,
too, I think is not without its influence in educating the aestheti