Their actual business (though they talked about it very
much as other men talk of cotton, politics, flour barrels, and sugar)
necessarily illuminated their conversation with something akin to the
ideal....
As interesting as any of these relics was a large portfolio of old
drawings, some of which, in the opinion of their possessor, bore
evidence on their faces of the touch of master-hands.
... According to the judgment of several connoisseurs, Raphael's own
hand had communicated its magnetism to one of these sketches; and if
genuine, it was evidently his first conception of a favorite Madonna,
now hanging in the private apartment of the Grand Duke, at Florence....
There were at least half a dozen others, to which the owner assigned as
high an origin. It was delightful to believe in their authenticity, at
all events; for these things make the spectator, more vividly sensible
of a great painter's power, than the final glow and perfected art of the
most consummate picture that may have been elaborated from them. There
is an effluence of divinity in the first sketch; and there, if any
where, you find the pure light of inspiration, which the subsequent toil
of the artist serves to bring out in stronger lustre, indeed, but
likewise adulterates it with what belongs to an inferior mood.
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