Joseph, the infant Jesus, and John, in various attitudes.  A little perverse imp in my heart suggested the questions, “If a modern artist had painted these, what would be thought of them?  If I did not know it was Raphael, what should I think?” And I confess that, in that case, I should think that there was in one or two of them a certain hardness and sharpness of outline that was not pleasing to me.  Neither, any more than Murillo, has he in these pictures shadowed forth, to my eye, the idea of Mary.  Protestant as I am, no Catholic picture contents me.  I thought to myself that I had seen among living women, and in a face not far off, a nobler and sweeter idea of womanhood.

It is too much to ask of any earthly artist, however, to gratify the aspirations and cravings of those who have dreamed of them for years unsatisfied.  Perhaps no earthly canvas and brash can accomplish this marvel.  I think the idealist must lay aside his highest ideal, and be satisfied he shall never meet it, and then he will begin to enjoy.  With this mood and understanding I did enjoy very much an Assumption of the Virgin, by Guido, and more especially Diana and her Nymphs, by Titian:  in this were that softness of outline, and that blending of light and shadow into each other, of which I felt the want in the Raphaels.  I felt as if there was a perfection of cultivated art in this, a classical elegance, which, so far as it went, left the eye or mind nothing to desire.  It seemed to me that Titian was a Greek painter, the painter of an etherealized sensuousness, which leaves the spiritual nature wholly unmoved, and therefore all that he attempts he attains.  Raphael, on the contrary, has spiritualism; his works enter a sphere where at is more difficult to satisfy the soul; nay, perhaps from the nature of the case, impossible.

There were some glorious pieces of sunshine by Cuyp.  There was a massive sea piece by Turner, in which the strong solemn swell of the green waves, and the misty wreathings of clouds, were powerfully given.

There was a highly dramatic piece, by Paul de la Roche, representing Charles I. in a guard room, insulted by the soldiery.  He sits, pale, calm, and resolute, while they are puffing tobacco smoke in his face, and passing vulgar jokes.  His thoughts appear to be far away, his eyes looking beyond them with an air of patient, proud weariness.

Independently of the pleasure one receives from particular pictures in these galleries, there is a general exaltation, apart from, critical considerations, an excitement of the nerves, a kind of dreamy state, which is a gain in our experience.  Often in a landscape we first single out particular objects,—­this old oak,—­that cascade,—­that ruin,—­and derive from them, an individual joy; then relapsing, we view the landscape as a whole, and seem, to be surrounded by a kind of atmosphere of thought, the result of the combined influence of all.  This state, too, I think is not without its influence in educating the aesthetic sense.