alked across the first bridge, from which I had a fine view of the
Ponte della Trinita, with its graceful arches and light balustrade,
touched with the sparkling moonbeams and relieved by dark shadow: then
I strolled along the quay in front of the Corsini palace, and beyond
the colonnade of the Uffizi, to the last of the four bridges; on the
middle of which I stood and looked back upon the city--(how justly
styled the Fair!)--with all its buildings, its domes, its steeples,
its bridges, and woody hills and glittering convents, and marble
villas, peeping from embowering olives and cypresses; and far off the
snowy peaks of the Apennines, shining against the dark purple sky: the
whole blended together in one delicious scene of shadowy splendour.
After contemplating it with a kind of melancholy delight, long enough
to get it by heart, I returned homewards. Men were standing on the
wall along the Arno, in various picturesque attitudes, fishing, after
the Italian fashion, with singular nets suspended to long poles; and
as I saw their dark figures between me and the moonlight, and elevated
above my eye, they looked like colossal statues. I then strayed into
the Piazza del Gran Duca. Here the rich moonlight, streaming through
the arcade of the gallery, fell directly upon the fine Perseus of
Benvenuto Cellini; and illuminating the green bronze, touched it with
a spectral and supernatural beauty. Thence I walked round the
equestrian statue of Cosmo, and so home over the Ponte Alla Carrajo.

_Nov. 11._--I spent about two hours in the gallery, and for the first
time saw the Niobe. This statue has been for a long time a favourite
of my imagination, and I approached it, treading softly and slowly,
and with a feeling of reverence; for I had an impression that the
original Niobe would, like the original Venus, surpass all the casts
and copies I had seen both in beauty and expression: but apparently
expression is more easily caught than delicacy and grace, and the
grandeur and pathos of the attitude and grouping easily copied--for I
think the best casts of the Niobe are accurate counterparts of the
original; and at the first glance I was capriciously disappointed,
because the statue did not _surpass_ my expectations. It should be
contemplated from a distance. It is supposed that the whole group once
ornamented the pediment of a temple--probably the temple of Diana or
Latona. I once saw a beautiful drawing by Mr. Cockerell, of the manner