ose muscles are
strained and expanded; a charming Apollo of sixteen years whose compact
form has all the suppleness of the freshest adolescence; an admirable
Faun instinct with the animality of his species, unconsciously joyous
and dancing with all his might; and finally, the "Venus de Medici," a
slender young girl with a small delicate head, not a goddess like her
sister of Milo, but a perfect mortal and the work of some Praxiteles
fond of "hetairae," at ease in a nude state and free from that somewhat
mawkish delicacy and bashful coquetry which its copies, and the restored
arms with their thin fingers by Bernini, seem to impose on her.

She is, perhaps, a copy of that Venus of Cnidus of which Lucian relates
an interesting story; you imagine while looking at her, the youths'
kisses prest on the marble lips, and the exclamations of Charicles who,
on seeing it, declared Mars to be the most fortunate of gods. Around the
statues, on the eight sides of the wall, hang the masterpieces of the
leading painters. There is the "Madonna of the Goldfinch" by Raphael,
pure and candid, like an angel whose soul is a bud not yet in bloom; his
"St. John," nude, a fine youthful form of fourteen, healthy and
vigorous, in which the purest paganism lives over again; and especially
a superb head of a crowned female, radiant as a summer noonday, with
fixt and earnest gaze, her complexion of that powerful southern
carnation which the emotions do not change, where the blood does not
pulsate convulsively and to which passion only adds a warmer glow, a
sort of Roman muse in whom will still prevails over intellect, and whose
vivacious energy reveals itself in repose as well as in action.

In one corner a tall cavalier by Van Dyck, in black and with a broad
frill, seems as grandly and gloriously proud in character as in
proportions, primarily through a well-fed body and next through the
undisputed possession of authority and command. Three steps more and we
come to the "Flight into Egypt," by Correggio, the Virgin with a
charming spirited face wholly suffused with inward light in which the
purity, archness, gentleness and wildness of a young girl combine to
shed the tenderest grace and impart the most fascinating allurements.
Alongside of this a "Sibyl" by Guercino, with her carefully adjusted
coiffure and drapery, is the most spiritual and refined of sentimental
poetesses.

I pass twenty others in order to reserve the last look for Titian's two