or the first
time, I saw the hues as laid on by the original painter. In spite of
time, they were pure and exquisite beyond description; these lovely
figures seemed made of light and morning. Another favorite picture of
mine was the same artist's "Michael Overcoming the Evil One," and I
even had the sense to like the painting better than the mosaic copy.
Raphael's "Transfiguration" I also knew well from the old engraving of
it that used to hang on our parlor wall from my earliest recollections;
it still hangs yonder. But I never cared for this picture; it was too
complicated and ingenious--it needed too much co-operation from
the observer's mind. Besides, I had never seen a boy with anything
approaching the muscular development of the epileptic youth in the
centre. The thing in the picture that I most approved of was the end of
the log in the little pool, in the foreground; it looked true to life.

But my delight in the statues was endless. It seems to me that I knew
personally every statue and group in the Vatican and in the Capitol.
Again and again, either with my parents, or with Eddy, or even alone,
I would pass the warders at the doors and enter those interminable
galleries, and look and look at those quiet, stained-marble effigies.
My early studies of Flaxman had, in a measure, educated me towards
appreciation of them. I never tired of them, as I did of the Cleopatras
and the Greek Slaves. What superb figures! What power and grace and
fleetness and athletic loins! The divine, severe Minerva, musing under
the shadow of her awful helmet; the athlete with the strigil, resting
so lightly on his tireless feet; the royal Apollo, disdaining his own
victory; the Venus, half shrinking from the exquisiteness of her own
beauty; the swaying poise of the Discobulus, caught forever as he drew
his breath for the throw; the smooth-limbed, brooding Antinous; the
terrible Laocoon, which fascinated me, though it always repelled me,
too; the austere simplicity of the Dying Gladiator's stoop to death--the
most human of all the great statues; the heads of heroic Miltiades,
of Antony, of solitary Caesar, of indifferent Augustus; the tranquil
indolence of mighty Nile, clambered over by his many children--these,
and a hundred others, spoke to me out of their immortal silence. I can
conceive of no finer discipline for a boy; I emulated while I adored
them. Power, repose, beauty, nobility, were in their message: "Do you,
too, possess limbs