This stuns me,
rendering conversation difficult.
As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had
spent the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her
impressions. Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a
lecture on St. Peter's. She told me it was built by Michael
Angelo. I suggested that some credit might be given to Bramante,
not to speak of Rosellino, Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San
Gallo's.
"Oh!" said my young lady, with a superb air of omniscience. "It
was all Michael Angelo's design. _The others only tinkered away
at it afterwards_."
After receiving this brickbat I took my leave.
To console myself I looked up, during the evening, Michael
Angelo's noble letter about Bramante.
"One cannot deny," says he, "that Bramante was as excellent in
architecture as any one has been from the ancients to now. He
placed the first stone of St. Peter's, not full of confusion, but
clear, neat, and luminous, and isolated all round in such a way
that it injured no part of the palace, and was held to be a
beautiful thing, as is still apparent, in such a way that any
one who has departed from the said order of Bramante, as San
Gallo has done, has departed from the truth.
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