There are exceptions; for instance, the perceptions and pictures of Browning seem as delicate and just here on the spot as they did at a distance; but, take them as a class, they have the vulgar familiarity of Mrs.Trollope without her vivacity, the cockneyism of Dickens without his graphic power and love of the odd corners of human nature.

I admired the English at home in their island; I admired their honor, truth, practical intelligence, persistent power.

But they do not look well in Italy; they are not the figures for this landscape.

I am indignant at the contempt they have presumed to express for the faults of our semi-barbarous state.

What is the vulgarity expressed in our tobacco-chewing, and way of eating eggs, compared to that which elbows the Greek marbles, guide-book in hand,--chatters and sneers through the Miserere of the Sistine Chapel, beneath the very glance of Michel Angelo's Sibyls,--praises St.Peter's as "_nice_"-- talks of "_managing_" the Colosseum by moonlight,--and snatches "_bits_" for a "_sketch_" from the sublime silence of the Campagna.
Yet I was again reconciled with them, the other day, in visiting the studio of Macdonald.