. . . On the
forty-fifth day I stepped ashore in France; but not without more
regret than I thought possible, for the ship; and one of the crew, of
my own age, with whom I had seen the stars fade in the morning during
his watch, had become very dear to me. Yet in Marseilles everything
was quaint. . . . The same features I had always known in a
city,--men, houses, streets, squares; but with an expression unknown
before. At night, with my sailor friend, I threaded some of the
narrower streets, which were like corridors in an unshapely Titan
palace. At the doors of the smallest shops on each side sat the
spinsters in the moonlight, gossiping and knitting; while over them
bent old French tradesmen, in long yarn stockings and velvet
knee-breeches. The street was barely wide enough for a carriage, and
they talked across; and all was as gay and happy as Arcadia. Every day
[in Florence], I was in the galleries, which are freely open to every
one, and here saw the grandest works of Raphael in his middle and best
style. Of the wonderful feminine grace and tenderness of these, of
which no copy can give an idea, I cannot properly speak. From him only
have I received the idea of the Immaculate Mother--the union of
celestial superiority with human maternity. The innumerable other
Madonnas are beautiful pictures; but they are either mere mothers or
mere angels. It is the same union in kind with what you may observe in
his portrait, where masculine character is so blended and tempered
with feminine grace and flexibility.
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