n their sacred subjects, lacking
in originality and initiative; and when they would represent mythology,
they engendered an apotheosis of nakedness. His conclusion was that
"there is something forced, if not feigned, in our taste for pictures
of the old Italian school." Of the profane subjects, he instances the
Fornarina, "with a deep bright glow on her face, naked below the waist,
and well pleased to be so, for the sake of your admiration--ready for
any extent of nudity, for love or money--the brazen trollop that she is!
Raphael must have been capable of great sensuality to have painted this
picture of his own accord, and lovingly." These are the iconoclasms
of the Goth and Vandal at their first advent to Rome. They remained to
alter their mood, and extol what they had before assaulted; and so did
my father, as we shall see presently. But at first he was sick and cold
and uncomfortable; and he consoled himself by hitting out at everything,
in the secret privacy of his diary, since opened to the world. With
warmer weather came equanimity and kinder judgments; but there is
a refreshing touch of truth and justice even in these mutterings of
exasperation.

It was not so much, I suppose, that Rome was cold as that my father had
expected it to be otherwise. When one is in a place where tradition and
association invite the soul forth to be warmed and soothed and rejoiced,
and the body, venturing out, finds nothing but chill winds and
frigid temperature and discomfort, the shock is much greater and
more disagreeable than if one had been in some northern Canada or
Spitzbergen, where such conditions are normal. Ice in the arctic circle
is all right and exhilarating, but in the Piazza of St. Peter's it is an
outrage, and affects the mind and heart even more than the flesh.

Circumstances caused my father to pass through several distinct phases
of feeling while he was in Rome. First, his own indisposition and the
inclement weather depressed and exasperated him.

Time, in due course, brought relief in these respects, and he began
to enjoy himself and his surroundings. Anon, the springs of creative
imagination, long dormant in him, were roused to activity by thoughts
connected with the Faun of Praxiteles in the Capitol. He now became
happy in the way of his genius and immediately took a new interest
in all things, looking at them from the point of view of possible
backgrounds or incidents for the romance which had begun to take fo