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The School of Athens is perhaps the most
celebrated; and the longest side of the largest hall is occupied by a
battle-piece, of which the Emperor Constantine is the hero, and which
covers almost space enough for a real battle-field. There was a
wonderful light in one of the pictures,--that of St. Peter awakened in
his prison, by the angel; it really seemed to throw a radiance into the
hall below. I shall not pretend, however, to have been sensible of any
particular rapture at the sight of these frescos; so faded as they are,
so battered by the mischances of years, insomuch that, through all the
power and glory of Raphael's designs, the spectator cannot but be
continually sensible that the groundwork of them is an old plaster wall.
They have been scrubbed, I suppose,--brushed, at least,--a thousand times
over, till the surface, brilliant or soft, as Raphael left it, must have
been quite rubbed off, and with it, all the consummate finish, and
everything that made them originally delightful.


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