I certainly meant to keep that promise, but I find I can not do it.

It is impossible to travel through Italy without speaking of pictures, and can I see them through others' eyes?
If I did not so delight in the grand pictures that are spread before me every day of my life by that monarch of all the old masters, Nature, I should come to believe, sometimes, that I had in me no appreciation of the beautiful, whatsoever.
It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for once I have discovered an ancient painting that is beautiful and worthy of all praise, the pleasure it gives me is an infallible proof that it is not a beautiful picture and not in any wise worthy of commendation.

This very thing has occurred more times than I can mention, in Venice.

In every single instance the guide has crushed out my swelling enthusiasm with the remark: "It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance." I did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was, and so always I had to simply say, "Ah! so it is--I had not observed it before." I could not bear to be ignorant before a cultivated negro, the offspring of a South Carolina slave.

But it occurred too often for even my self-complacency, did that exasperating "It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance." I said at last: "Who is this Renaissance?
Where did he come from?
Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs ?" We learned, then, that Renaissance was not a man; that renaissance was a term used to signify what was at best but an imperfect rejuvenation of art.