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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
served him like one of the garden roses . He had large , darkgrey eyes , with a clear white expansive forehead , a flexible expressive mouth , and a child-like voice , and yet so tender as to make itself almost pathetic in its commonest tones . At first he
was somewhat shy and timid , but the first sign of sympathy made his eyes * glisten , and when he clearly understood that , . zeal in his vocation was appreciated , there was . no limit to enthusiasrifc He gave us an account of his birth , parentage , a * education , the different monuments of art he had beheld , t ^
different impressions they had made upon himself . He was & confirmed devotee to the Catholic religion ; he seemed to love art the better that it was the medium through which sacred subjects might be illustrated . He entered into an animated defence of his faith—went over its different doctrines , one after
the other— -transubstantiation , confession , purgatory , absolution , —and with so much ingenuity , and at times so much feeling , as the circumstances might require , that he made you a convert to himself and a belief in his sincerity , though not to his creed . He described the different kinds of feeling excited by the different persons in the Trinity—fear at the Father , honour for the Son , and a wide wave of his hands for the Holy Ghost , meanin g
that he was all about , but that he himself was not particularly interested in him . The Virgin Mary was his favourite ; he clasped his hands tightly together , pressed them against his chest , and , with his eyes filled , said , ' I love her , oh ! I love her like my mother V He entered into an elaborate description of the bas-reKefs which decorate a part of the interior of St . Peter ' s at Rome . These seemed to have attracted him as much from
the continuity of interest in their subject ( the history of Christ ) as from the beauty of their execution . He went through each circumstance , and detailed with so much intelligence and quickness the different attitudes and expressions of the figures , that he not onl y realized the work of the artist , but carried you to the scene itself . There was a singular simplicity with all this , at
times approaching to the ludicrous . In his description of the temptation in the wilderness , he gave Satan with a look of coaxing cajolery , saying , * Come , now , you must be hungry ! ' and (the taunt of the Jews at the crucifixion with a grinning laugh and a * deriding finger—Ah , hah ! you up there , you no save yourself T which , although somewhat too familiar for our preconceived notions , had too much of graphic truth in them to be
resisted . The tears were frequently in his . eyes , and when describing a group—the disciples weeping round the body of their master—he said , Oh , how it make me cry ! I no cry if I lose all them' ( pointing to his tray of treasures ) , ' but I cry at that , I cry at that . Hia genuine earnestness suppressed every inclination to r isibility- Once , when his manner in description had raised a smile in one who could not thoroughly appreciate him .
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Buy Images . 757
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 757, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/9/
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