re
also has again drawn me out of reality. For as even the most correct
engravings furnish no adequate idea of these buildings, so the case is
the same with respect to the marble original of this statue, as compared
with the plaster models of it, which, however, I formerly used to look
upon as beautiful.

Here I am now living with a calmness and tranquility to which I have for
a long while been a stranger. My practise to see and take all things as
they are, my fidelity in letting the eye be my light, my perfect
renunciation of all pretension, have again come to my aid, and make me
calmly, but most intensely, happy. Every day has its fresh remarkable
object--every day its new grand unequaled paintings, and a whole which a
man may long think of, and dream of, but which with all his power of
imagination he can never reach.

Yesterday I was at the Pyramid of Cestius, and in the evening on the
Palatine, on the top of which are the ruins of the palace of the Caesars,
which stand there like walls of rock. Of all this, however, no idea can
be conveyed! In truth, there is nothing little here; altho, indeed,
occasionally something to find fault with--something more or less absurd
in taste, and yet even this partakes of the universal grandeur of all
around....

Yesterday I visited the nymph Egeria, and then the Hippodrome of
Caracalla, the ruined tombs along the Via Appia, and the tomb of
Metella, which is the first to give one a true idea of what solid
masonry really is. These men worked for eternity--all causes of decay
were calculated, except the rage of the spoiler, which nothing can
resist. The remains of the principal aqueduct are highly venerable. How
beautiful and grand a design, to supply a whole people with water by so
vast a structure! In the evening we came upon the Coliseum, when it was
already twilight. When one looks at it, all else seems little; the
edifice is so vast, that one can not hold the image of it in one's
soul--in memory we think it smaller, and then return to it again to find
it every time greater than before.

We entered the Sistine Chapel, which we found bright and cheerful, and
with a good light for the pictures. "The Last Judgment" divided our
admiration with the paintings on the roof by Michael Angelo. I could
only see and wonder. The mental confidence and boldness of the master,
and his grandeur of conception, are beyond all expression. After we had
looked at all of them over and over again, w