goes directly
to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name. The sweet and sublime
face of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid
expectations! This familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance is as if
one should meet a friend. The knowledge of picture-dealers has its
value, but listen not to their criticisms when your heart is touched by
genius. It was not painted for them; it was painted for you--for such as
had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and lofty emotions."
Transcendentalists do not often indulge in remarks on material objects,
but when Emerson speaks about a picture it is worth quoting.

Only second to the _Transfiguration_ is Raphael's lovely _Madonna_, so
full of true womanly loveliness and purity of soul--a beauty that
expands the heart, and makes one feel purer and happier for having gazed
thereon. The inspired aim of these great painters seems to have been to
show us the marvellous love of God, and the exceeding beauty of his
creation. Many of the pictures represent painful scenes of the
sufferings of the early Christian martyrs. While looking at these
dreadful conceptions, so truthfully portrayed, and also when visiting
the Mamertine Prison, the Tarpeian Rock, and the Catacombs, I could not
but feel ashamed at the miserable little sacrifices we present-day
Christians are content to make for our religion. We can never be
sufficiently thankful that we are no longer required to prove our faith
in such a terrible and utterly self-denying way.

The sculpture-gallery came next. "Painting," says Hawthorne, "is
sunlight; sculpture is moonlight." Here group after group of beautifully
chiselled marble claimed our attention. The _Minerva Medica_, _Niobe_,
_Apollo_, the _Faun_, the _Torso Belvedere_, the _Apollo Belvedere_, and
a thousand others; above all, that miracle of ancient art--_the
Laocoon_:

"A father's love and mortal's agony,
With an immortal's patience blending:--vain
The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain
Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp."

By the way, both here and at St. Peter's much of the natural beauty of
the nude figures is artificially covered, which certainly greatly
detracts from the effect. This was done by the command of some prudish
Pope, who was as surely wa