The bronze doors in the Baptistry are a sight to see. Michael Angelo said they wuz worthy to be the gates of paradise, but I could tell Mr. Angelo, and would if he had said it to me, that he little knew how beautiful them gates are and we ortn't to compare anything earthly to 'em. Jest think, Mr. Angelo, I'd say, of an immense gate being made of one pearl, the idee! we can't hardly git into our heads any idees here below, and never will till the winds of heaven blow aginst our tired senses and brighten 'em up. But I wuzn't neighbor to Mr. Angelo; he died several years before I wuz born, four or five hundred years before, so of course I couldn't advise him for his good. He lost a sight and never knowed it, poor creeter! The Ufizzi and Pitti galleries contain enough pictures and statutes to make 'em more'n comfortable, I should think; beautiful pictures and beautiful statutes I must say. One of the most interestin' things to me in the hull collection wuz the original drawings of the old masters with their names signed to 'em in their own handwritin'. It wuz like liftin' up the mysterious curtain a little ways and peerin' into the past. Michael Angelo's sketches in chalk and charcoal; Titian's drawings, little buds, as you may say from which they bloomed into immortal beauty; Rubens, Albert Durer and a throng of others. And then there wuz the autograph portraits of the great painters, Guido, Rembrandt, De Vinci, Vandyke, Raphael, and also the greatest works of all these painters. It wuz a grand and inspirin' sight never to be forgot. Robert Strong and Dorothy wanted to see the statute of Dante; they set store by his writings. It is a splendid statute of white marble riz up in the Piazza Sante Croce; I hearn 'em talkin' about its bein' on a piazza and spozed it wuz built on some stoop and mistrusted he deserved a better pillow. But it wuzn't on the piazza of a house, it wuz out-doors, and the pedestal wuz over twenty feet high, all covered with carvin's of seens took from his "Divinia Commedia," and some lions, and the arms of Italy, and things. It wuz a good-lookin' statute, better lookin' as fur as beauty goes than Dante himself; he wuz kinder humbly I always thought, but then, I spoze, he didn't always wear that wreath on his head; mebby he looked better in a beaver hat or a fur cap. 'Tennyrate, Thomas J. always sot store by him. It wuz a noble statute, more'n fifty feet high, I presoom, with two figures standin' on each side and one on top. The one on the left seemed to have her hand outstretched telling to all the world just how Dante wuz used whilst he wuz alive, and the one on the right had just throwed herself down and wuz cryin' about it, and Dante, settin' on top, wuz leanin' his hand on his head and meditatin'. What his meditations wuz, I don't know, nor Josiah don't. Mebby he wuz thinkin' of Beatrice.