September 28th.--I went to the Pitti Palace yesterday, and to the Uffizi
to-day, paying them probably my last visit, yet cherishing an
unreasonable doubt whether I may not see them again. At all events, I
have seen them enough for the present, even what is best of them; and, at
the same time, with a sad reluctance to bid them farewell forever, I
experience an utter weariness of Raphael's old canvas, and of the
time-yellowed marble of the Venus de' Medici. When the material
embodiment presents itself outermost, and we perceive them only by the
grosser sense, missing their ethereal spirit, there is nothing so heavily
burdensome as masterpieces of painting and sculpture. I threw my
farewell glance at the Venus de' Medici to-day with strange
insensibility.
The nights are wonderfully beautiful now. When the moon was at the full,
a few nights ago, its light was an absolute glory, such as I seem only to
have dreamed of heretofore, and that only in my younger days. At its
rising I have fancied that the orb of the moon has a kind of purple
brightness, and that this tinge is communicated to its radiance until it
has climbed high aloft and sheds a flood of white over hill and valley.
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