Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/245

 but I must not send you a mere catalogue. From room to room we wandered; sometimes desirous of seeing all, and so penetrating into every nook—sometimes satisfied to sit for hours before a master-piece.

Yes, I dedicated hours this morning,—I know not how many,—to a painting that has given me more delight than any I ever saw. I had often heard the first style of Raphael preferred to his third, and thought it a superstition; but I am a convert—entirely a convert. Apart, locked up in a room with some of the gold-grounded deformed productions of the Byzantine artists, stands, except one, the largest painting of Raphael’s in the world; the subject is the adoration of the Magi. It is in his first style—it is half destroyed—the outline of some of the figures only remains; no sacrilegious hand has ever touched to restore it, and in its ruin it is divine. The Baby Jesus is lying on the ground, and Mary, with an angel at each hand, kneels before the lowly couch of her child; on the other side are the kings bearing their gifts; and far in the back-ground are the shepherds visited by angels, announcing peace and good-will to man. I never saw such perfect grace and ideal beauty as in the kneeling figures of the Virgin and her attendant angels. Composed majesty and