A despotic
government has perhaps destroyed their principle of cohesion, and
crumbled them to atoms. Italian crowds are noted for their civility;
possibly they deserve credit for native courtesy and gentleness;
possibly, on the other hand, the crowd has not spirit and
self-consciousness enough to be rampant. I wonder whether they will ever
hold another parliament in the Piazza of Santa Croce!
I paid a visit to the gallery of the Pitti Palace. There is too large an
intermixture of Andrea del Sarto's pictures in this gallery; everywhere
you see them, cold, proper, and uncriticisable, looking so much like
first-rate excellence, that you inevitably quarrel with your own taste
for not admiring them. . . . .
It was one of the days when my mind misgives me whether the pictorial art
be not a humbug, and when the minute accuracy of a fly in a Dutch picture
of fruit and flowers seems to me something more reliable than the
master-touches of Raphael. The gallery was considerably thronged, and
many of the visitors appeared to be from the country, and of a class
intermediate between gentility and labor.
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