excellence of which it is capable." In the
same letter he wrote of what remained always a delight in his memory,
the charm of the more private collections. He found magnificent
portraits and paintings in the private palaces, where he thought them
seen to greater advantage than in galleries; because in numbers not so
large as to distract attention or confuse the eye. "There are portraits
innumerable by Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vandyke; heads by Guido,
and Domenichino, and Carlo Dolci; subjects by Raphael, and Correggio,
and Murillo, and Paul Veronese, and Salvator; which it would be
difficult indeed to praise too highly, or to praise enough. It is a
happiness to me to think that they cannot be felt, as they should be
felt, by the profound connoisseurs who fall into fits upon the longest
notice and the most unreasonable terms. Such tenderness and grace, such
noble elevation, purity, and beauty, so shine upon me from some
well-remembered spots in the walls of these galleries, as to relieve my
tortured memory from legions of whining friars and waxy holy families. I
forgive, from the bottom of my soul, whole orchestras of earthy angels,
and whole groves of St. Sebastians stuck as full of arrows according to
pattern as a lying-in pincushion is stuck with pins. And I am in no
humour to quarrel even with that priestly infatuation, or priestly
doggedness of purpose, which persists in reducing every mystery of our
religion to some literal development in paint and canvas, equally
repugnant to the reason and the sentiment of any thinking man."

[92] The last two lines he has printed in the _Pictures_, p. 249,
"certain of" being inserted before "his employers."

[93] I find the evening mentioned in the diary which Mr. Barham's son
quotes in his Memoir. "December 5, 1844. Dined at Forster's with Charles
Dickens, Stanfield, Maclise, and Albany Fonblanque. Dickens read with
remarkable effect his Christmas story, the _Chimes_, from the
proofs. . . ." (ii. 191.)

CHAPTER VIII.

LAST MONTHS IN ITALY.

1845.

Jesuit Interferences--Travel Southward--Carrara
and Pisa--A Wild Journey--At Radicofani--A
Beggar and his Staff--At Rome--Terracina--Bay
of Naples--Lazzaroni--Sad English News--At
Florence--Visit to Landor's Villa--At Lord
Holland's--Return to Genoa--Italy's Best
Season--A Funeral--Nautical Incident--Fireflies
at Night--Returning by Switzerland--At