Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/246

 deep humility are combined in the attitudes. The countenances show their souls abstracted from all earthly thought, and absorbed by pure and humble adoration. Adoration from the adorable: this is what only an artist of the highest class can portray. You perceive that the painter imagined perfect beings, who deserve a portion of the worship which they pay unreservedly to the Creator, and such are saints and angels in the mind of a Catholic. You who so much admire the unfinished ideas of Leonardo da Vinci, would delight in this relic of a greater man: will you receive any from this attempt to convey what I felt? I read somewhere the other day, that speech is one mode of communicating our thoughts—painting another—music another—neither can, with any success, go beyond its own department to that of the other—thus, words can never show forth the beauty of which painting presents the living image to the eyes.

It may be a defect, that I take more pleasure in graceful lines, and attitudes, and expression, than in colouring. Sir Thomas Lawrence told me that it was one, and that an uncultivated eye was, therefore, often better pleased by statuary than painting; and he said this, because I looked with more delight on some inimitable bronze-statues standing on his mantel-piece, preferring them to a