Either
it must be a celestial thing or an old lump of stone, dusty and
time-soiled, and tiring out your patience with eternally looking just the
same. Once in a while you penetrate through the crust of the old
sameness, and see the statue forever new and immortally young.
Leaving the gallery we walked towards the Duomo, and on our way stopped
to look at the beautiful Gothic niches hollowed into the exterior walls
of the Church of San Michele. They are now in the process of being
cleaned, and each niche is elaborately inlaid with precious marbles, and
some of them magnificently gilded; and they are all surmounted with
marble canopies as light and graceful as frost-work. Within stand
statues, St. George, and many other saints, by Donatello and others, and
all taking a hold upon one's sympathies, even if they be not beautiful.
Classic statues escape you with their slippery beauty, as if they were
made of ice. Rough and ugly things can be clutched. This is nonsense,
and yet it means something.
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