, a nicety of finish
in the detail; affectation instead of grace, distortion instead of
power, and prettiness instead of beauty. Yet the artists who execute
these works, and those who buy them, have free access to the marvels
of the gallery, and the treasures of the Pitti Palace. Are they sans
eyes, sans souls, sans taste, sans every thing, but money and
self-conceit?

_Nov. 22._--Our mornings, however otherwise occupied, are generally
concluded by an hour in the gallery or at the Pitti Palace; the
evenings are spent in the Mercato Nuovo, in the workshops of artists,
or at the Cascina.

To-day at the gallery I examined the Dutch school and the Salle des
Portraits, and ended as usual with the Tribune. The Salle des
Portraits contains a complete collection of the portraits of painters
down to the present day. In general their respective countenances are
expressive of their characters and style of painting. Poor Harlow's
picture, painted by himself, is here.

The Dutch and Flemish painters (in spite of their exquisite pots and
pans, and cabbages and carrots, their birch-brooms, in which you can
count every twig, and their carpets, in which you can reckon every
thread) do not interest me; their landscapes too, however natural, are
mere Dutch nature (with some brilliant exceptions), fat cattle,
clipped trees, boors, and windmills. Of course I am not speaking of
Vandyke, nor of Rubens, he that "in the colours of the rainbow lived,"
nor of Rembrandt, that king of clouds and shadows; but for mine own
part, I would give up all that Mieris, Netscher, Teniers, and Gerard
Douw ever produced, for one of Claude's Eden-like creations, or one of
Guido's lovely heads--or merely for the pleasure of looking at
Titian's Flora once a day, I would give a whole gallery of Dutchmen,
if I had them.

In the daughter of Herodias, by Leonardo da Vinci, there is the same
eternal face he always paints, but with a peculiar expression--she
turns away her head with the air of a fine lady, whose senses are
shocked by the sight of blood and death, while her heart remains
untouched either by remorse or pity.

His ghastly Medusa made me shudder while it fascinated me, as if in
those loathsome snakes, writhing and glittering round the expiring
head, and those abhorred and fiendish abominations crawling into life,
there still lurked the fabled spell which petrified the beholder. Poor
Medusa! was this the guerdon of thy love? and were those the tresses