he says, "as I was informed by the Keeper of the Vatican,
that many of those whom he had conducted through the various apartments
of that edifice when about to be dismissed, have asked for the works of
Raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the
room where they are preserved, so little impression had those
performances made on them. One of the first painters now in France once
told me that this circumstance happened to himself, though he now looks
on Raphael with that veneration which he deserves from all painters and
lovers of the art. I remember very well my own disappointment when I
first visited the the Vatican: but on confessing my feelings to a
brother student, of whose ingenuousness I had a high opinion, he
acknowledged that the works of Raphael had the same effect on him, or
rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was
a great relief to my mind, and on inquiry further of other students I
found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be
incapable of ever relishing those divine performances, made pretensions
to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them.

"In justice to myself, however, I must add that though disappointed and
mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great
master, I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of
Raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their
reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary,
my not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of
the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me. I found
myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was
unacquainted: I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. All the indigested
notions of painting which I had brought with me from England where the
art was in the lowest state it had ever been in (it could not indeed be
lower) were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. It was
necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should
become _as a little child_.

"Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those
excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel
their merit and to admire them more than I really did. In a short time a
new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced
that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection o