I hadn’t no idee before that Paris jedgment wuz so perfectly beautiful; I spozed it wuz kinder triflin’. They seemed, as fur as I could make out, to be a-samplin’ apples—lovely creeters they wuz that wuz standin’ round.
And then there wuz “Phaeton in the Chariot of the Sun.”
It didn’t look a mite like our phaeton—fur more magnificent.
Room after room opened into each other, all different as stars differ from each other, but every one full of glory; all full of the treasures of every land—Persia, Egypt, and every other.
The hired man drawed our attention to the presents of kings and princes, and all the rare objects of art and virtue.
But I sez, “As fur as virtues is concerned, I d’no as kings would be any more apt to git hold of ’em than common men, or so apt, but,” sez I, “call ’em perfectly beautiful, and I agree with you.”
In them magnificent and immense rooms are picters by Landseer, Holbein, Salvator Rosa, Raphael, Rubens, Claude Lorraine, Correggio, Hogarth, Titian, Michael Angelo, etc. A great many with the autographs of the painters—priceless, absolutely beyend price, are these works of art.
And if I should talk a week, I couldn’t describe all the beautiful objects we see there, so valuable that one on ’em would make a man rich.
In one room wuz a clock of gold and malachite—a present from the Emperor Nicholas, worth a thousand guineas, and a broad, shinin’ table of one clear sheet of transclucent spar, and a great table of clear malachite. I’d be glad to git enough of it for an earring for Tirzah Ann.
In one room we see a picter by Holbein of Henry VIII., and a rosary belongin’ to him. I wondered as I looked on’t what that poor, misguided creeter ust to pray about as he handled them beads. He couldn’t want any more wives than he had, it seemed to me. Mebby he wuz a-wishin’ some of the time that he wuz back with Katharine, that noble creeter who said—