The contents of the
gem-room especially require to be looked at separately in order to
convince one's self of their minute magnificences; for, among so many,
the eye slips from one to another with only a vague outward sense that
here are whole shelves full of little miracles, both of nature's material
and man's workmanship. Greater [larger] things can be reasonably well
appreciated with a less scrupulous though broader attention; but in order
to estimate the brilliancy of the diamond eyes of a little agate bust,
for instance, you have to screw your mind down to them and nothing else.
You must sharpen your faculties of observation to a point, and touch the
object exactly on the right spot, or you do not appreciate it at all. It
is a troublesome process when there are a thousand such objects to be
seen.
I stood at an open window in the transverse corridor, and looked down
upon the Arno, and across at the range of edifices that impend over it on
the opposite side. The river, I should judge, may be a hundred or a
hundred and fifty yards wide in its course between the Ponte alle Grazie
and the Ponte Vecchio; that is, the width between strand and strand is at
least so much.
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