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professorship, and that his best defence would be a collation of the two editions; though, in turning over the leaves of his English copy, he showed us, by accident,
Chersonesus used as a feminine, and
quem as a relative consequent to
cenotaphium, which, though I conceive them to be no disgrace to
Porson, and little to his publishers, are still an entire justification of all
Schaffer had said in his preface . . . .
Farewell. It is late, and I am tired, as I always am in a strange place, if it be only from seeing unwonted objects and faces.
Still your Yankee friend,
Journal.
September 22.—In the afternoon we went through the gallery of pictures which has made
Dresden so famous through the world; and, though I had read the admiration of Lessing,
Herder, and
Winckelmann, it surpassed my expectations.
From looking at a collection of above thirteen hundred pieces an hour or two, I cannot of course say anything; but of the effect of one piece on my unpractised eye I cannot choose but speak, for I would not willingly lose the recollection of what I now feel.
I mean the picture called the Madonna di San Sisto . . . I had often heard of the power of fine paintings, and I knew that Raphael was commonly reckoned the master of all imitation, and that this was one of the highest efforts of his skill; but I was not prepared for such a vision.
I did not before imagine it had been within the compass of human talent to have formed a countenance of such ideal beauty as the
Madonna's, on which a smile would have seemed earthly and unholy, or a child like Jesus, where the innocence of infancy is consecrated and elevated, but not marred in any of its natural sweetness and fascination by the inspiration of the divinity which beams forth in the mild but fixed earnestness of his looks.
I was not prepared for this, for I had never before seen a work of one of the great masters; and even now that I have felt the influence of Raphael's genius descend upon me, I find it almost impossible to believe that there is still a point in the art that ought to produce the effect that this picture produced on me as I stood before it.
1
Berlin,
October 9, 1816.—I dined with
Mr. Rose, the
English minister, and a considerable party of strangers, the Bavarian envoy, the
Count de Chastellux, a beautiful English lady by the name of
Atterson, etc.
Mr. Rose is about forty-five or fifty years old, has long been in the
English diplomacy, and came here directly from