To-night, after resting a little, I went out to view the effect of the city and surrounding scenery, by moonlight.  It is not alone the brilliant purity of the skies and atmosphere, nor the peculiar character of the scenery which strikes a stranger; but here art harmonizes with nature:  the style of the buildings, their flat projecting roofs, white walls, balconies, colonnades and statues, are all set off to advantage by the radiance of an Italian moon.

I walked across the first bridge, from which I had a fine view of the Ponte della Trinita, with its graceful arches and light balustrade, touched with the sparkling moonbeams and relieved by dark shadow:  then I strolled along the quay in front of the Corsini palace, and beyond the colonnade of the Uffizi, to the last of the four bridges; on the middle of which I stood and looked back upon the city—­(how justly styled the Fair!)—­with all its buildings, its domes, its steeples, its bridges, and woody hills and glittering convents, and marble villas, peeping from embowering olives and cypresses; and far off the snowy peaks of the Apennines, shining against the dark purple sky:  the whole blended together in one delicious scene of shadowy splendour.  After contemplating it with a kind of melancholy delight, long enough to get it by heart, I returned homewards.  Men were standing on the wall along the Arno, in various picturesque attitudes, fishing, after the Italian fashion, with singular nets suspended to long poles; and as I saw their dark figures between me and the moonlight, and elevated above my eye, they looked like colossal statues.  I then strayed into the Piazza del Gran Duca.  Here the rich moonlight, streaming through the arcade of the gallery, fell directly upon the fine Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini; and illuminating the green bronze, touched it with a spectral and supernatural beauty.  Thence I walked round the equestrian statue of Cosmo, and so home over the Ponte Alla Carrajo.

Nov. 11.—­I spent about two hours in the gallery, and for the first time saw the Niobe.  This statue has been for a long time a favourite of my imagination, and I approached it, treading softly and slowly, and with a feeling of reverence; for I had an impression that the original Niobe would, like the original Venus, surpass all the casts and copies I had seen both in beauty and expression:  but apparently expression is more easily caught than delicacy and grace, and the grandeur and pathos of the attitude and grouping easily copied—­for I think the best casts of the Niobe are accurate counterparts of the original; and at the first glance I was capriciously disappointed, because the statue did not surpass my expectations.  It should be contemplated from a distance.  It is supposed that the whole group once ornamented the pediment of a temple—­probably the temple of Diana or Latona.  I once saw a beautiful drawing by Mr. Cockerell, of the manner in which he supposed the whole group was distributed.  Many of the figures are rough and unfinished at the back, as if they had been placed on a height, and viewed only in front.