People have never done contradicting Burnet, who says, in his travels,
that a man might jump down it now and not do himself much harm: the
truth is, its present appearance is not formidable; but I believe it is
not less than forty feet high at this moment, though the ground is
greatly raised.
Of all things at Rome the Cloaca is acknowledged most ancient; a very
great and a very useful work it is, of Ancus Martius, fourth king of
Rome. The just and zealous detestation of Christians towards Pontius
Pilate, is here comically expressed by their placing his palace just at
its exit into the Tyber; and one who pretended to doubt of its being his
residence, would be thought the worse of among them.
I recollect nothing else built before the days of the Emperors, who, for
the most part, were such disgracers of human nature and human reason,
that one would almost wish their names expunged, and all their deeds
obliterated from the face of the globe, which could ever tamely submit
to such truly wretched rulers.
The Capitol, built by Tarquin, stood till the days of Marius and Sylla
it seems; that last-named Dictator erected a new one, which was
overthrown in the contests about Vitellius; Vespasian set it up again,
but his performance was burned soon after its author's death; and this
we contemplate now, is one of the works of Domitian, and celebrated by
Martial of course. Adrian however added one room to it, dedicated to
Egyptian deities alone: as a matter of mere taste I fancy, like our
introducing Chinese temples into the garden; but many hold that it was
very serious and superstitious regard, inspired by the victory Canopus
won over the Persian divinity of fire, by the subtlety of the Egyptian
priests, who, to defend their idol from that all-subduing element,
wisely set upon his head a vessel filled with water, and having
previously made the figure of Terra Cotta hollow, and full of water,
with holes bored at the bottom stopped only by wax to keep it in, a
seeming miracle extinguished the flames, as soon as approached by
Canopus; whose triumph was of course proclaimed, and he respected
accordingly. The figure was a monkey, whose sitting attitude favoured
the imposture: our antiquaries tell us the story after _Suidas_.
As cruelty is more detestable than fraud, one feels greater disgust at
the sight of captive monarchs without hands and arms, than even these
idolatrous brutalities inspire; and no greater proof can be obtained of
Roman barbarity, than the statues one is shewn here of kings and
generals over whom they triumphed; being made on purpose for them
without hands and arms, of which they were deprived immediately on their
arrival at Rome.
Enormous heads and feet, to which the other parts are wanting, let one
see, or at least guess; what colossal figures were once belonging to
them; yet somehow these celebrated artists seem to me to have a little
confounded the ideas of _big_ and _great_ like my countryman Fluellyn in
Shakespear's play: while the two famous demi-gods Castor and Pollux,
each his horse in his hand, stand one on each side the stairs which lead
to the Capitol, and are of a prodigious size--fifteen feet, as I
remember. The knowing people tell us they are portraits, and bid us
observe that one has pupils to his eyes, the other _not_; but our
_laquais de place_, who was a very sensible fellow too, as he saw me
stand looking at them, cried out, "Why now to be sure here are a vast
many miracles in this holy city--that there are:" and I heard one of our
own folks telling an Englishman the other day, how these two monstrous
statues, horses and all I believe, _came out of an egg_: a very
extraordinary thing certainly; but it is our business to believe, not to
enquire. He saw my countenance express something he did not like, and
continued, "_Eh basta! sarà stato un uovo strepitoso, è cosi sinisce
l'istoria_[AE]."
[Footnote AE: Well, well! it was a famous egg we'll say, and there's an
end.]
In this repository of wonders, this glorious _campidoglio_, one is first
shewn as the most valuable curiosity, the two pigeons mentioned by Pliny
in old mosaic; and of prodigious nicety is the workmanship, though done
at such a distant period: and here is the very wolf which bears the very
mark of the lightning mentioned by Cicero:--and here is the beautiful
Antinous again; _he_ meets one at every turn, I think, and always hangs
his head as if ashamed: here too is the dying gladiator; wonderfully
fine! savage valour! mean extraction! horrible anguish! all marking, all
strongly characteristical expressions--_all there_; yet all swallowed
up, in that which does inevitably and certainly swallow up all
things--approaching death.
The collection of pictures here would put any thing but these statues
out of one's head: Guido's Fortune flying over the globe, scattering her
gifts; of which she gave him _one_, the most precious, the most
desirable. How elegantly gay and airy is this picture! But St. Sebastian
stands opposite, to shew that he could likewise excel in the pathetic.
Titian's famous Magdalen, of which the King of France boasts one copy, a
noble family at Venice another, is protested by the Roman connoisseurs
to reside here only; but why should not the artist be fond of repeating
so fine an idea? Guercino's Sybil however, intelligently pensive, and
sweetly sensible, is the single figure I should prefer to them all.
Before we quit the Capitol, it is pity not to name Marforio; broken,
old, and now almost forgotten: though once companion, or rather
respondent to Pasquin, and once, a thousand years before those days, a
statue of the river _Nar_, as his recumbent posture testifies; not _Mars
in the forum_, as has been by some supposed. The late Pope moved him
from the street, and shut him up with his betters in the Capitol.
Of Trajan and Antonine's Pillars what can one say? That St. Peter and
St. Paul stand on the tops of each, setting forth that uncertainty of
human affairs which they preached in their life-time, and shewing that
_they_, who were once the objects of contempt and abhorrence, are now
become literally _the head stones of the corner_; being but too
profoundly venerated in that very city, which once cruelly persecuted,
and unjustly put them to death. Let us then who look on them recollect
their advice, and set our affections on a place of greater stability.
The columns are of very unequal excellence, that of Trajan's confessedly
the best; one grieves to think he never saw it himself, as few princes
were less puffed up by well-deserved praise than he; but dying at
Seleucia of a dysenteric fever, his ashes were brought home, and kept on
the top of his own pillar in a gilt vase; which Sextus Quintus with more
zeal than taste took down, I fear destroyed, and placed St. Peter there.
Apollodorus was the architect of the elegant structure, on which, says
Ammianus Marcellinus, the Gods themselves gazed with wonder, seeing
that nothing but heaven itself was finer. "_Singularem sub omni cælo
structuram etiam numinum ascensione mirabilem_."
I know not whether this is the proper place to mention that the good
Pope Gregory, who added to the possession of every cardinal virtue the
exertion of every Christian one, having looked one day with peculiar
stedfastness at this column, and being naturally led to reflect on his
character to whose honour it was erected, felt just admiration of a mind
so noble; and retiring to his devotions in a church not far off, began
praying earnestly for Trajan's soul: till a preternatural voice,
accompanied with rays of light round the altar he knelt at, commanded
his forbearance of further solicitation; assuring him that Trajan's soul
was secure in the care of his Creator. Strange! that those who record,
and give credit to such a story, can yet continue as a duty their
intercessions for the dead!
But I have seen the Coliseo, which would swallow that of pretty Verona;
it is four times as large I am told, and would hold fourscore thousand
spectators. After all the depredations of all the Goths, and afterwards
of the Farnese family, the ruin is gloriously beautiful; possibly more
beautiful than when it was quite whole; there is enough left now for
Truth to repose upon, and a perch for Fancy beside, to fly out from, and
fetch in more.
The orders of its architecture are easily discerned, though the height
of the upper story is truly tremendous; I climbed it once, not to the
top indeed, but till I was afraid to look down from the place I was in,
and penetrated many of its recesses. The modern Italians have not lost
their taste of a prodigious theatre; were they once more a single
nation, they would rebuild _this_ I fancy; for here are all the
conveniencies in _grande_, as they call it, that amaze one even in
_piccolo_ at Milan and Turin: Here were supper-rooms, and taverns, and
shops, and I believe baths; certainly long galleries big enough to drive
a coach round, and places where slaves waited to receive the commands of
masters and ladies, who perhaps if they did not wait to please them,
would scarcely scruple to detain them in the cage of offenders, and
keep them to make sport upon a future day.
The cruelties then exercised on servants at Rome were truly dreadful;
and we all remember reading that in Augustus's time, when he did a
private friend the honour to dine with him, one of the waiters broke a
glass he was about to present full of liquor to the King; at which
offence the master being enraged, suddenly caused him to be seized by
the rest, and thrown instantly out of the window to feed his lampreys,
which lived in a pond on which the apartment looked. Augustus said
nothing at the moment; to punish the nobleman's inhumanity however, he
sent his officers next morning to break every glass in the house: A
curious chastisement enough, and worthy of a nation who, being powerful
to erect, populous to fill, and elegantly-skilful to adorn such a fabric
as this Coliseum which I have just been contemplating, were yet
contented and even happy to view from its well-arranged seats,
exhibitions capable of giving nothing but disgust and horror;--lions
rending unarmed wretches in pieces; or, to the still deeper disgrace of
poor Humanity, those wretches armed unwillingly against each other, and
dying to divert a brutal populace.
These reflections upon Pagan days and classical cruelties do not disturb
however the peace of an old hermit, who has chosen one of these
close-concealed recesses for his habitation, and accordingly dwells,
dismally enough, in a hole seldom visited by travellers, and certainly
never enquired about by the natives. I stumbled on his strange apartment
by mere chance, and asked him why he had chosen it? He had been led in
early youth, he said, to reflect upon the miseries suffered by the
original professors of Christianity; the tortures inflicted on them in
this horrible amphitheatre, and the various vicissitudes of Rome since:
that he had dedicated himself to these meditations: that he had left the
world seventeen years, never stirring from his cell but to buy food,
which he eat alone and sparingly, and to pay his devotions in the _Via
Crucis_, for so the old Arena is now called; a simple plain wooden cross
occupying the middle of it, and round the Circus twelve neat, not
splendid chapels; a picture to each, representing the various stages of
our Saviour's passion. Such are the meek triumphs of our meek religion!
And that such substitutes should have replaced the African savages,
tigers, hyænas, &c. and Roman gladiators, not less ferocious than their
four-legged antagonists, I am quite as willing to rejoice at as the
hermit: They must be better antiquarians too than I am, who regret that
a nunnery now covers the spot where ambitious Tullia drove over the
bleeding body of her murdered parent,
Pressit et inductis membra paterna rotis:
That nunnery, supported by the arch of Nerva, which is all that is now
left standing of that Emperor's Forum.
I must not however quit the Coliseum, without repeating what passed
between the King of Sweden and his Roman _laquais de place_ when he was
here; and the fellow, in the true cant of his Ciceroneship, exclaimed as
they looked up, "_Ah Maesta!_ what cursed Goths those were that tore
away so many fine things here, and pulled down such magnificent pillars,
&c." "Hold, hold friend," replies the King of Sweden; "I am one of those
cursed Goths myself you know: but what were your Roman nobles a-doing,
I would ask, when they laboured to destroy an edifice like this, and
build their palaces with its materials?"
The baths of Livia are still elegantly designed round her small
apartments; and one has copies sold of them upon fans; the curiosity of
the original is to see how well the gilding stands; in many places it
appears just finished. These baths are difficult of access somehow; I
never could quite understand how we got in or out of them, but they did
belong to the Imperial palace, which covered this whole Palatine hill,
and here was Nero's golden house, by what I could gather, but of that I
thank Heaven there is no trace left, except some little portion of the
wall, which was 120 feet high, and some marbles in shades, like women's
worsted work upon canvass, very curious, and very wonderful; as all are
natural marbles, and no dye used: the expence must have surpassed
credibility.
The Temple of Vesta, supposed to be the _very_ temple to which Horace
alludes in his second Ode, is a pretty rotunda, and has twenty pillars
fluted of Parian marble: it is now a church, as are most of the heathen
temples.
Such adaptations do not please one, but then it must be allowed and
recollected that one is very hard to please: finding fault is so easy,
and doing right so difficult!
The good Pope Gregory, who feared (by sacred inspiration one would
think) all which should come to pass, broke many beautiful antique
statues, "lest," said he, "induced by change of dress or name perhaps
our Christians may be tempted to adore them:" and we say he was a
blockhead, and burned Livy's decads, and so he did; but he refused all
titles of earthly dignity; he censured the Oriental Patriarchs for
substituting temporal splendours in the place of primitive simplicity;
which he said ought _alone_ to distinguish the followers of Jesus
Christ. He required a strict attention to morality from all his inferior
clergy; observed that those who strove to be first, would end in being
last; and took himself the title of servant to the servants of God.
Well! Sabinian, his successor, once his favourite Nuncio, flung his
books in the fire as soon as he was dead; so his injunctions were obeyed
but while he lived to enforce them; and every day now shews us how
necessary they were: when, even in these enlightened times, there
stands an old figure that every Abate in the town knows to have been
originally made for the fabulous God of Physic, Esculapius, is prayed to
by many old women and devotees of all ages indeed, just at the Via
Sacra's entrance, and called St. Bartolomeo.
A beautiful Diana too, with her trussed-up robes, the crescent alone
wanting, stands on the high altar to receive homage in the character of
St. Agnes, in a pretty church dedicated to her _fuor delle Porte_, where
it is supposed she suffered martyrdom; and why? Why for not venerating
that _very Goddess Diana_, and for refusing to walk in her procession at
the _New Moon_, like a good Christian girl. "_Such contradictions put
one from one's self_" as Shakespear says.
We are this moment returned home from Tivoli; have walked round Adrian's
Villa, and viewed his Hippodrome, which would yet make an admirable open
Manège. I have seen the Cascatelle, so sweetly elegant, so rural, so
romantic; and I have looked with due respect on the places once
inhabited, and ever justly celebrated by genius, wit, and learning; have
shuddered at revisiting the spot I hastened down to examine, while
curiosity was yet keen enough to make me venture a very dangerous and
scarcely-trodden path to Neptune's Grotto; where, as you descend, the
Cicerone shews you a wheel of some coarse carriage visibly stuck fast in
the rock till it is become a part of it; distinguished from every other
stone only by its shape, its projecting forward, and its shewing the
hollow places in its fellies, where nails were originally driven. This
truly-curious, though little venerable piece of antiquity, serves to
assist the wise men in puzzling out the world's age, by computing how
many centuries go to the petrifying a cart wheel. A violent roar of
dashing waters at the bottom, and a fall of the river at this place from
the height of 150 feet, were however by no means favourable to my
arithmetical studies; and I returned perfectly disposed to think the
world's age a less profitable, a less diverting contemplation, than its
folly.
We looked at the temple of the old goddess that cured coughs, now a
Christian church, dedicated to _la Madonna della Tosse_; it is exactly
all it ever was, I believe; and we dined in the temple of Sibylla
Tiburtina, a beautiful edifice, of which Mr. Jenkins has sent the model
to London in cork, which gives a more exact representation after all
than the best-chosen words in the world. I would rather make use of
_them_ to praise Mr. Jenkins's general kindness and hospitality to all
his country-folks, who find a certain friend in him; and if they please,
a very competent instructor.
In order however to understand the meaning of some spherical _pots_
observed in the Circus of Caracalla, I chose above all men to consult
Mr. Greatheed, whose correct taste, deep research, and knowledge of
architecture, led me to prefer his account to every other, of their use
and necessity: it shall be given in his own words, which I am proud of
his permission to copy.
"Of those _pots_ you mention, there are not any remaining in the Circus
Maxiouis, as the walls, seats and apodium of that have entirely
disappeared. They are to be seen in the Circus of Caracalla, on the
Appian way; of this, and of this alone, enough still exists to ascertain
the form, structure, and parts of a Roman course. It was surrounded by
two parallel walls which supported the seats of the spectators. The
exterior wall rose to the summit of the gallery; the interior one
was much lower, terminated with the lowest rows, and formed
the apodium. This rough section may serve to elucidate my
description. From wall to wall an arch was turned which formed a
quadrant, and on this the seats immediately rested: but as the upper
rows were considerably distant from the crown of the arch, it was
necessary to fill the intermediate space with materials sufficiently
strong to support the upper stone benches and the multitude. Had these
been of solid substance, they would have pressed prodigious and
disproportionate weight on the summit of the arch, a place least able to
endure it from its horizontal position. To remedy this defect, the
architect caused _spherical pots_ to be baked; of these each formed of
itself an arch sufficiently powerful to sustain its share of the
incumbent weight, and the whole was rendered much less ponderous by the
innumerable vacuities.
[Illustration]
"A similiar expedient was likewise used to diminish the pressure of
their domes, by employing the scoriæ of lava brought for that purpose
from the Lipari Islands. The numberless bubbles of this volcanic
substance give it the appearance of a honeycomb, and answer the same
purpose as the pots in Caracalla's Circus, so much so, that though very
hard, it is of less specific gravity than wood, and consequently floats
in water."
Before I quit the Circus of Caracalla, I must not forbear mentioning his
bust, which so perfectly resembles Hogarth's idle 'Prentice; but why
should they not be alike?
For black-guards are black-guards in every degree,
I suppose, and the people here who shew one things, always take delight
to souce an Englishman's hat upon his head, as if they thought so too.
This morning's ramble let us to see the old grotto, sacred to Numa's
famous nymph, Ægeria, not far from Rome even now. I wonder that it
should escape being built round when Rome was so extensive as to contain
the crowds which we are told were lodged in it. That the city spread
chiefly the other way, is scarce an answer. London spreads chiefly the
Marybone way perhaps, yet is much nearer to Rumford than it was fifty or
sixty years ago.
The same remark may be made of the Temple of Mars without the walls,
near the Porta Capena: a rotunda it was on the road side _then_: it is
on the road side _now_, and a very little way from the gate.
Caius Cestius's sepulchre however, without the walls, on the other side,
is one of the most perfect remains of antiquity we have here. Aurelian
made use of that as a boundary we know: it stands at present half
without and half within the limit that Emperor set to the city; and is a
very beautiful pyramid a hundred and ten feet high, admirably
represented in Piranesi's prints, with an inscription on the white
marble of which it is composed, importing the name and office and
condition of its wealthy proprietor: _C. Cestius, septem vir epulonum_.
He must have lived therefore since Julius Caesar's time it is plain, as
he first increased the number of epulones to seven, from three their
original institution. It was probably a very lucrative office for a man
to be Jupiter's caterer; who, as he never troubled himself with looking
over the bills, they were such commonly, I doubt not, as made ample
profits result to him who went to market; and Caius Cestius was one of
the rich contractors of those days, who neglected no opportunity of
acquiring wealth for himself, while he consulted the honour of Jupiter
in providing for his master's table very plentiful and elegant banquets.
That such officers were in use too among the Persians during the time
their monarchy lasted, is plain from the apocryphal story of Bel and the
Dragon in our Bibles, where, to the joy of every child that reads it,
Daniel detects the fraud of the priests by scattering ashes or saw-dust
in the temple.
But I fear the critics will reprove me for saying that Julius Caesar
only increased the number to seven, while many are of opinion he added
three more, and made them a decemvirate: mean time Livy tells us the
institution began in the year of Rome 553, during the consulate of
Fulvius Purpurio and Marcellus, upon a motion of Romuleius if I
remember. They had the privilege granted afterwards of edging the gown
with purple like the pontiffs, when increased to seven in number; and
they were always known by the name _Septemviratus,_ or _Septemviri
Epulonum_, to the latest hours of Paganism.
The tomb of Caius Cestius is supposed to have cost twelve thousand
pounds sterling of our money in those days; and little did he dream that
it should be made in the course of time a repository for the bones of
_divisos orbe Britannos_: for such it is now appointed to be by
government. All of us who die at Rome, sleep with this purveyor of the
gods; and from his monument shall at the last day rise the re-animated
body of our learned and incomparable Sir James Macdonald: whose numerous
and splendid acquirements, though by the time he had reached twenty-four
years old astonished all who knew him, never overwhelmed one little
domestic virtue. His filial piety however; his hereditary courage, his
extensive knowledge, his complicated excellencies, have now, I fear, no
other register to record their worth, than a low stone near the stately
pyramid of Jupiter's caterer.
The tomb of Cæcilia Metella, wife of the rich and famous Crassus, claims
our next attention; it is a beautiful structure, and still called _Capo
di Bove_ by the Italians, on account of its being ornamented with the
_oxhead and flowers_ which now flourish over every door in the new-built
streets of London; but the original of which, as Livy tells us, and I
believe Plutarch too, was this. That Coratius, a Sabine farmer, who
possessed a particularly fine cow, was advised by a soothsayer to
sacrifice her to Diana upon the Aventine Hill; telling him, that the
city where _she_ now presided--_Diana_--should become mistress of the
world, and he who presented her with that cow should become master over
that city. The poor Sabine went away to wash in the Tyber, and purify
himself for these approaching honours[AF]; but in the mean time, a boy
having heard the discourse, and reported it to _Servius Tullius_, he
hastened to the spot, killed Coratius's cow for him, sacrificed her to
Diana, and hung her head with the horns on, and the garland just as she
died, upon the temple door as an ornament. From that time, it seems, the
ornament called _Caput Bovis_ was in a manner consecrated to Diana, and
her particular votaries used it on their tombs. Nor could one easily
account for the decorations of many Roman sarcophagi, till one
recollects that they were probably adapted to that divinity in whose
temple they were to be placed, rather than to the particular person
occupying the tomb, or than to our general ideas of death, time, and
eternity. It is probably for this reason that the immense sarcophagus
lately dug up from under the temple of Bacchus without the walls, cut
out of one solid piece of red porphyry, has such gay ornaments round it,
relative to the sacrifices of Bacchus, &c.; and I fancy these stone
coffins, if we may call them so, were often made ready and sold to any
person who wished to bury their friend, and who chose some story
representing the triumph of whatever deity they devoted themselves to.
Were the modern inhabitants of Rome who venerate St. Lorenzo, St.
Sebastiano, &c. to place, not uncharacteristically at all--a gridiron,
or an arrow on their tombstone, it might puzzle succeeding antiquarians,
and yet be nothing out of the way in the least.
[Footnote AF: A circumstance alluded to and parodied by Ben Johnson in
his Alchemist. See the conduct of Dapper, &c.]
Of the Egyptian obelisks at Rome I will not strive to give any account,
or even any idea. They are too numerous, too wonderful, too learned for
me to talk about; but I must not forbear to mention the broken thing
which lies down somewhere in a heap of rubbish, and is said to be the
greatest rarity in Rome, column, or _obelisk_ and the greatest antiquity
surely, if 1630 years before the birth of Christ be its date; as that
was but two centuries after the invention of letters by _Memnon_, and
just about the time that Joseph the favourite of Pharaoh died. There is
a sphinx upon it, however, mighty clearly expressed; and some one said,
how strange it was, if the world was no older than we think it, that
they should, in so early a stage of existence, represent, or even
imagine to themselves a compound animal[AG]: though the chimæra came in
play when the world was pretty young too, and the Prophet Isaiah speaks
of centaurs; but that was long after even Hesiod's time.
[Footnote AG: The ornaments of the ark and tabernacle exhibit much
improvement in the arts of engraving, carving, &c. Nor did it seem to
cost Aaron any trouble to make a cast of Apis in the Wilderness for the
Israelites' amusement, 1491 years before Christ; while the dog Anubis
was probably another figure with which Moses was not unacquainted, and
that was certainly composite: a cynopephalus I believe.]
A modern traveller has however, with much ingenuity of conjecture, given
us an excellent reason why the Sphinx was peculiar to Egypt, as the
Nile was observed to overflow when the sun was in those signs of the
Zodiack:
The lion virgin Sphinx, which shows
What time the rich Nile overflows.
And sure I think, as people lived longer then than they do now; as Moses
was contemporary with Cecrops, so that monarchy and a settled form of
government had begun to obtain footing in Greece, and apparently
migrated a little westward even then; that this column might have
employed the artists of those days, without any such exceeding stretch
of probability as our modern Aristotelians study to make out, from their
zeal to establish his doctrine of the world's eternity. While, if
conjecture were once as liberally permitted to believers as it is
generously afforded to scepticks, I know not whether a hint concerning
Sphinx's original might not be deduced from old Israel's last blessing
to his sons; _The lion of Judah_, with the _head of a virgin_, in whose
offspring that lion was one day to sink and be lost, except his hinder
parts; might naturally enough grow into a favourite emblem among the
inhabitants of a nation who owed their existence to one of the family;
and who would be still more inclined to commemorate the mystical
blessing, if they observed the fructifying inundation to happen
regularly, as Mr. Savary says, when the Sun left Leo for Virgo.
The broken pillar has however carried me too far perhaps, though every
day passed in the Pope's Musæum confirms my belief, nay certainty, that
they did mingle the veneration of Joseph with that of their own gods:
The bushel or measure of corn on the Egyptian Jupiter's head is a proof
of it, and the name _Serapis_, a further corroboration: the dream which
he explained for Pharaoh relative to the event that fixed his favour in
that country, was expressed by _cattle_; and _for apis_, the _ox's
head_, was perfectly applicable to him for every reason.
But we will quit mythology for the Corso. This is the first town in
Italy I have arrived at yet, where the ladies fairly drive up and down a
long street by way of shewing their dress, equipages, &c. without even a
pretence of taking fresh air. At Turin the view from the place destined
to this amusement, would tempt one out merely for its own sake; and at
Milan they drive along a planted walk, at least a stone's throw beyond
the gates. Bologna calls its serious inhabitants to a little rising
ground, whence the prospect is luxuriantly verdant and smiling. The
Lucca bastions are beyond all in a peculiar style of miniature beauty;
and even the Florentines, though lazy enough, creep out to Porto St.
Gallo. But here at Roma la Santa, the street is all our Corso; a fine
one doubtless, and called the _Strada del Popolo_, with infinite
propriety, for except in that strada there is little populousness enough
God knows. Twelve men to a woman even there, and as many ecclesiastics
to a lay-man: all this however is fair, when celibacy is once enjoined
as a duty in one profession, encouraged as a virtue in all. Where
females are superfluous, and half prohibited, it were as foolish to
complain of the decay of population, as it was comical in Omai the South
American savage, when he lamented that no cattle bred upon their island;
and one of our people replying, That they left some beasts on purpose to
furnish them; he answered, "Yes, but the idol worshipped at Bola-bola,
another of the islands, insisted on the males and females living
separate: so they had sent _him_ the cows, and kept only the bulls at
home."
_Au reste_, as the French say, we must not be too sure that all who
dress like Abates are such. Many gentlemen wear black as the court garb;
many because it is not costly, and many for reasons of mere convenience
and dislike of change.
I see not here the attractive beauty which caught my eye at Venice; but
the women at Rome have a most Juno-like carriage, and fill up one's idea
of Livia and Agrippina well enough. The men have rounder faces than one
sees in other towns I think; bright, black, and somewhat prominent eyes,
with the finest teeth in Europe. A story told me this morning struck my
fancy much; of an herb-woman, who kept a stall here in the market, and
who, when the people ran out flocking to see the Queen of Naples as she
passed, began exclaiming to her neighbours--"_Ah, povera Roma! tempo fù
quando passò qui prigioniera la regina Zenobia; altra cosa amica, robba
tutta diversa di questa_ reginuccia[AH]!"
[Footnote AH: "Ah, poor degraded Rome! time was, my dear, when the great
Zenobia passed through these streets in chains; anotherguess figure from
this little Queeney, in good time!"]
A characteristic speech enough; but in this town, unlike to every other,
the _things_ take my attention all away from the _people_; while, in
every other, the people have had much more of my mind employed upon
them, than the things.
The arch of Constantine, however, must be spoken of; the sooner, because
there is a contrivance at the top of it to conceal musicians, which
added, as it passed, to the noise and gaiety of the triumph. Lord
Scarsdale's back front at Keddlestone exhibits an imitation of this
structure; a motto, expressive of hospitality, filling up the part
which, in the original, is adorned with the siege of Verona, that to me
seems well done; but Michael Angelo carried off Trajan's head they tell
us, which had before been carried thither from the arch of Trajan
himself. The arch of Titus Vespasian struck me more than all the others
we have named though; less for its being the first building in which the
Composite order of architecture is made use of, among the numberless
fabrics that surround one, than for the evident completion of the
prophecies which it exhibits. Nothing can appear less injured by time
than the bas-reliefs, on one side representing the ark, and golden
candlesticks; on the other, Titus himself, delight of human kind, drawn
by four horses, his look at once serene and sublime. The Jews cannot
endure, I am told, to pass under this arch, so lively is the
_annihilation_ of their government, and utter _extinction_ of their
religion, carved upon it. When reflecting on the continued captivity
they have suffered ever since this arch was erected here at Rome, and
which they still suffer, being strictly confined to their own miserable
Ghetto, which they dare not leave without a mark upon their hat to
distinguish them, and are never permitted to stir without the walls,
except in custody of some one whose business it is to bring them back;
when reflecting, I say, on their sorrows and punishments, one's heart
half inclines to pity their wretchedness; the dreadful recollection
immediately crosses one, that these are the direct and lineal progeny of
those very Jews who cried out aloud--"_Let his blood be upon us, and
upon our children!_"--Unhappy race! how sweetly does St. Austin say of
them--"_Librarii nostri facti sunt, quemadmodum solent libros post
dominos ferre_."
The _arca degli orefici_ is a curious thing too, and worth observing:
the goldsmiths set it up in honour of Caracalla and Geta; but one
plainly discerns where poor Geta's head has been carried off in one
place, his figure broken in another, apparently by Caracalla's order.
The building is of itself of little consequence, but as a confirmation
of historical truth.
The fountains of Rome should have been spoken of long ago; the number of
them is known to all though, and of their magnificence words can give no
idea. One print of the Trevi is worth all the words of all the
describers together. Moses striking the rock, at another fountain, where
water in torrents tumble forth at the touch of the rod, has a glorious
effect, from the happiness of the thought, and an expression so suitable
to the subject. When I was told the story of Queen Christina admiring
the two prodigious fountains before St. Peter's church, and begging that
they might leave off playing, because she thought them occasional, and
in honour of her arrival, not constant and perpetual; who could help
recollecting a similar tale told about the Prince of Monaco, who was
said to have expressed his concern, when he saw the roads lighted up
round London, that our king should put himself to so great an expence on
his account--in good time!--thinking it a temporary illumination made to
receive him with distinguished splendour. These anecdotes are very
pretty now, if they are strictly true; because they shew the mind's
petty but natural disposition, of reducing and attributing all _to
self_: but if they are only inventions, to raise the reputation of
London lamps, or Roman cascades, one scorns them;--I really do hope, and
half believe, that they are true.
But I have been to see the two Auroras of Guido and Guercino. Villa
Ludovisi contains the last, of which I will speak first for forty
reasons--the true one because I like it best. It is so sensible, so
poetical, so beautiful. The light increases, and the figure advances to
the fancy: one expects Night to be waked before one looks at her again,
if ever one can be prevailed upon to take one's eyes away. The bat and
owl are going soon to rest, and the lamp burns more faintly as when day
begins to approach. The personification of Night is wonderfully hit off.
But Guercino is _such_ a painter! We were driving last night to look at
the Colisseo by moon-light--there were a few clouds just to break the
expanse of azure and shew the gilding. I thought how like a sky of
Guercino's it was; other painters remind one of nature, but nature when
most lovely makes one think of Guercino and his works. The Ruspigliosi
palace boasts the Aurora of Guido--both are ceilings, but this is not
rightly named sure. We should call it the Phoebus, for Aurora holds only
the second place at best: the fun is driving over her almost; it is a
more luminous, a more graceful, a more showy picture than the other,
more universal too, exciting louder and oftener repeated praises; yet
the other is so discriminated, so tasteful, so classical! We must go see
what Domenichino has done with the same subject.
I forget the name of the palace where it is to be admired: but had we
not seen the others, one should have said this was divine. It is a
Phoebus again, _this_ is; not a bit of an Aurora: and Truth is springing
up from the arms of Time to rejoice in the sun's broad light. Her
expression of transport at being set free from obscurity, is happy in
an eminent degree; but there are faults in her form, and the Apollo has
scarcely dignity enough in _his_. The horses are best in Guide's
picture: Aurora at the Villa Ludovisi has but two; they are very
spirited, but it is the spirit of three, not six o'clock in a summer
morning. Surely Thomson had been living under these two roofs when he
wrote such descriptions as seem to have been made on purpose for them;
could any one give a more perfect account of Guercino's performance than
these words afford?
The meek-ey'd morn appears, mother of dews,
At first faint-gleaming in the dappled East
Till far o'er æther spreads the widening glow,
And from before the lustre of her face
White break the clouds away: with quicken'd step
Brown Night retires, young Day pours in apace
And opens all the lawny prospect wide.
As for the Ruspigliosi palace I left these lines in the room, written by
the same author, and think them more capable than any description I
could make, of giving some idea of Guido's Phoebus.
While yonder comes the powerful King of Day
Rejoicing in the East; the lessening cloud,
The kindling azure, and the mountains brow
Illum'd with fluid gold, his near approach
Betoken glad; lo, now apparent all
He looks in boundless majesty abroad,
And sheds the shining day.
So charming Thomson wrote from his lodgings at a milliner's in
Bond-street, whence he seldom rose early enough to see the sun do more
than glisten on the opposing windows of the street: but genius, like
truth, cannot be kept down. So he wrote, and so they painted! _Ut
pictura poesis_.
The music is not in a state so capital as we left it in the north of
Italy; we regret Nardini of Florence, Alessandri of Venice, and Ronzi of
Milan; and who that has heard Signior Marchesi sing, could ever hear a
successor (for rival he has none), without feeling total indifference to
all their best endeavours?
The conversations of Cardinal de Bernis and Madame de Boccapaduli are
what my countrywomen talk most of; but the Roman ladies cannot endure
perfumes, and faint away even at an artificial rose. I went but once
among them, when Memmo the Venetian ambassador did me the honour to
introduce me _somewhere_, but the conversation was soon over, not so my
shame; when I perceived all the company shrink from me very oddly, and
stop their noses with rue, which a servant brought to their assistance
on open salvers. I was by this time more like to faint away than
they--from confusion and distress; my kind protector informed me of the
cause; said I had some grains of marechale powder in my hair perhaps,
and led me out of the assembly; to which no intreaties could prevail on
me ever to return, or make further attempts to associate with a delicacy
so very susceptible of offence.
Mean time the weather is exceedingly bad, heavy, thick, and foggy as our
own, for aught I see; but so it was at Milan too I well remember: one's
eye would not reach many mornings across the Naviglio that ran directly
under our windows. For fine bright Novembers we must go to
Constantinople I fancy; certain it is that Rome will not supply them.
What however can make these Roman ladies fly from _odori_ so, that a
drop of lavenderwater in one's handkerchief, or a carnation in one's
stomacher, is to throw them all into, convulsions thus? Sure this is the
only instance in which they forbear to _fabbricare fu
l'antico_[Footnote: Build upon the old foundations.], in their own
phrase: the dames, of whom Juvenal delights to tell, liked perfumes well
enough if I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "_Carpe rosas_"
perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still more refined than _they_
in their researches after pleasure? and are the present race of ladies
capable of increasing, beyond that of their ancestors, the keenness of
any corporeal sense? I should think not. Here are however amusements
enough at Rome without trying for their conversations.
The Barberini palace, whither I carried a distracting tooth-ach, amused
even that torture by the variety of its wonders. The sleeping faun,
praised on from century to century, and never yet praised enough; so
drunk, so fast asleep, so like a human body! Modesty reproving Vanity,
by Leonardo da Vinci, so totally beyond my expectation or comprehension,
great! wise! and fine! Raphael's Mistress, painted by himself, and
copied by Julio Romano; this picture gives little satisfaction though
except from curiosity gratified, the woman is too coarse. Guido's
Magdalen up stairs, the famous Magdalen, effacing every beauty, of
softness mingled with distress. A St. John too, by dear Guercino,
transcendent! but such was my anguish the very rooms turned round: I
must come again when less ill I believe.
Nothing can equal the nastiness at one's entrance to this magazine of
perfection: but the Roman nobles are not disgusted with _all sorts_ of
scents it is plain; these are not what we should call perfumes indeed,
but certainly _odori_: of the same nature as those one is obliged to
wade through before Trajan's Pillar can be climbed.
That the general appearance of a city which contains such treasures
should be mean and disgusting, while one literally often walks upon
granite, and tramples red porphyry under one's feet, is one of the
greatest wonders to me, in a town of which the wonders seem innumerable:
that it should be nasty beyond all telling, all endurance, with such
perennial streams of the purest water liberally dispersed, and
triumphantly scattered all over it, is another unfathomable wonder: that
so many poor should be suffered to beg in the streets, when not a hand
can be got to work in the fields, and that those poor should be
permitted to exhibit sights of deformity and degradations of our species
to me unseen till now, at the most solemn moments, and in churches where
silver and gold, and richly-arrayed priests, scarcely suffice to call
off attention from their squallid miseries, I do not try to comprehend.
That the palaces which taste and expence combine to decorate should look
quietly on, while common passengers use their noble vestibules, nay
flairs, for every nauseous purpose; that princes whose incomes equal
those of our Dukes of Bedford and Marlborough, should suffer their
servants to dress other men's dinners for hire, or lend out their
equipages for a day's pleasuring, and hang wet rags out of their palace
windows to dry, as at the mean habitation of a pauper; while looking in
at those very windows, nothing is to be seen but proofs of opulence, and
scenes of splendour, I will not undertake to explain; sure I am, that
whoever knows Rome, will not condemn this _ebauche_ of it.
When I spoke of their beggars, many not unlike Salvator Rosa's Job at
the Santa Croce palace, I ought not to have omitted their eloquence, and
various talents. We talked to a lame man one day at our own door, whose
account of his illness would not have disgraced a medical professor; so
judicious were his sentiments, so scientific was his discourse. The
accent here too is perfectly pleasing, intelligible, and expressive; and
I like their _cantilena_ vastly.
The excessive lenity of all Italian states makes it dangerous to live
among them; a seeming paradox, yet certainly most true; and whatever is
evil in this way at any other town, is worst at Rome; where those who
deserve hanging, enjoy almost a moral certainty of never being hanged;
so unwilling is everybody to detect the offender, and so numerous the
churches to afford him protection if found out.
A man asked importunately in our antichamber this morning for the
_padrone,_ naming no names, and our servants turned him out. He went
however only five doors, further, found a sick old gentleman sitting in
his lodging attended by a feeble servant, whom he bound, stuck a knife
in the master, rifled the apartments, and walked coolly out again at
noon-day: nor should we have ever heard of _such a trifle_, but that it
happened just by so; for here are no newspapers to tell who is murdered,
and nobody's pity is excited, unless for the malefactor when they hear
he is caught.
But the Palazzo Farnese is a more pleasing speculation; the Hercules
faces us entering; Guglielmo della Porta made his legs I hear, and when
the real ones were found, _his were better:_ and Michael Angelo said, it
was not worth risquing the statue to try at restoring the old ones.
There is another Hercules stands near, as a foil to Glycon's, I suppose;
and the Italians tell you of our Mr. Sharp's acuteness in finding some
fault till then undiscovered, a very slight one though, with some of the
neck muscles: they tell it approvingly however, and make one admire
their candour, even beyond their Flora, who carries that in her
countenance which they possess in their hearts. Under a shed on the
right hand you find the famous groupe called Toro Farnese. It has been
touched and repaired, they tell you, till much of the spirit is lost;
but I did not miss it. The Bull and the Brothers are greatness itself;
but Dirce draws no compassion by her looks somehow, and the lady who
comes to her relief, seems too cold a spectatress of the scene.
There were several broken statues in the place, and while my companions
were examining the groupe after I had done, the wench's conversation who
shewed it made my amusement: as we looked together at an Egyptian
_Isis_, or, as many call her, _the Ephesian Diana_, with a hundred
breasts, very hideous, and swathed about the legs like a mummy at Cairo,
or a baby at Rome, I said to the girl, "_They worshipped these filthy
things formerly before Jesus Christ came; but he taught us better_,"
added I, "_and we are wiser now: how foolish was not it to pray to this
ugly stone_?"--"The people were _wickeder_ then, very likely;" replied
my friend the wench, "but I do not see that it _was foolish at all."_
Who says the modern Romans are degenerated? I swear I think them so like
their ancestors, that it is my delight to contemplate the resemblance.
A statue of a peasant carrying game at this very palace, is habited
precisely in the modern dress, and shews how very little change has yet
been made. The shoes of the low fellows too particularly attract my
notice: they exactly resemble the ancient ones, and when Persius
mentions his ploughman _peronatus arator_, one sees he would say so
to-day.
The Dorian palace calls however, and people must give way to things
where the miraculous powers of Benvenuto Garofani are concerned; where
Lodovico Caracci exhibits a _testa del redentore_ beyond all praise,
uniting every excellence, and expressing every perfection; where, in the
deluge represented by Bonati, one sees the eagle drooping from a weight
of rain, majestic in his distress, and looking up to the luminous part
of the picture as if hoping to discover some ray of that sun he never
shall see again. How characteristic! how tasteful is the expression! The
famous Virgin and Child too, so often engraved and copied.
I will run away from this Doria; it is too full of beauty--it dazzles:
and I will let them shew the pale green Gaspar Pouffins, so valuable,
so curious, to whom they please, while Nature and Claude content my
fancy and fill up every idea.
At the Colonna palace what have I remarked? That it possesses the gayest
gallery belonging to any subject upon earth: one hundred and thirty-nine
feet long, thirty-four broad, and seventy high: profusely ornamented
with pillars, pictures, statues, to a degree of magnificence difficult
to express. The Herodias here by Guido, is the perfection of dancing
grace. No Frenchman enters the room that does not bear testimony to its
peculiar excellence. But here's Guercino's sweet returning Prodigal, and
here is a _Madonna disperata_ bursting as from a cavern to embrace the
body of her dead son and saviour.--Such a sky too! But it is treating
too theatrically a subject which impresses one more at last in the
simple _Pietà_[AI] d'Annibale Caracci at Palazzo Doria.
[Footnote AI: The Christ in his mother's lap, after crucifixion, is
always called in Italy a _Pietà_.]
One wonderfully-imagined picture by Andrea Sacchi, of Cain flying from
the sight of his murdered brother, shall alone detain me from mentioning
here at Rome what certainly would never have been thought on by
Englishmen had it remained at Windsor; no other than our old King
Charles's cabinet, sold to the Colonna family by Cromwell, and set about
in the old-fashioned way with gems, cameos, &c. one of which has been
stolen.
And now to the Borghese, which I am told is for a time to finish my
fatigues, as after three days more we go to Naples. News perfectly
agreeable to me, who never have been well here for two hours together.
All the great churches remain yet unvisited: they are to be taken at our
return in spring; mean while I will go see Mons Sacer in spite of
connoisseurship, though the place it seems is nothing, and the prospect
from it dull; but it produces thoughts, or what is next to
thought,--recollection of books read, and events related in one's early
youth, when names and stories make impression on a mind not yet hardened
by age, or contracted by necessary duty, so as no longer to receive with
equal relish the _tales of other times._ The lake too, with the floating
islands, should be mentioned; the colour of which is even blue with
venom, and left a brassy taste in my mouth for a whole day, after only
observing how it boiled with rage on dropping in a stone, and incrusted
a stick with its tartar in two minutes. One of our companions indeed
leaped upon the little spots of ground which float in it, and deserved
to feel some effect of his rashness; but it is sufficient to stand near,
I think; one scarcely can escape contagion. The sudden and violent
powers observable in this lake should at least check the computists from
thinking they can gather the world's age from its petrefactions.
But we are called to the Vatican, where the Apollo, Laocoon, Antinous,
and Meleager, with others of less distinguished merit, suffer one to
think on nothing but themselves, and of the artists who framed such
models of perfection. Laocoon's agonies torment one. I was forced to
recollect the observation Dr. Moore says was first made by Mr. Locke, in
order to harden my heart against him who appears to feel only for
himself, when two such youths are expiring close beside him. But though
painting can do much, and sculpture perhaps more, at least one learns to
think so here at Rome, the comfort is, that poetry beats them both.
Virgil knew, and Shakespeare would have known, how to heighten even
this distress, by adding paternal anguish:--here is distress enough
however.
Let us once more acknowledge the modesty and candour of Italians, when
we repeat what has been so often recorded, that Michael Angelo refused
adding the arm that was wanting to this chef d'oeuvre; and when
Bernini undertook the task, he begged it might remain always a different
colour, that he might not be suspected of hoping that his work could
ever lie confounded with that of the Greek artist.
Such is not the spirit of the French: they have been always adding to
Don Quixote! a personage whose adventures were little likely to cross
one's fancy in the Vatican; but perfection is perfection.
Here stands the Apollo though, in whom alone no fault has yet been
found. They tell you, he has just killed the serpent Python. "Let us beg
of him," says one of the company, "just to turn round and demolish those
cursed snakes which are devouring the poor old man and his boys yonder."
This was like the speech of _Marchez donc_ to the fine bronze horse
under the heavenly statue of Marcus Aurelius at the Capitol, and made me
hope that story might be true. It is the fashion for every body to go
see Apollo by torch light: he looks like _Phoebus_ then, the Sun's
bright deity, and seems to say to his admirers, as that Divinity does to
the presumptuous hero in Homer,
Oh son of Tydeus, cease! be wise, and see
How vast the difference 'twixt the gods and thee.
Indeed every body finds the remark obvious, that this statue is of
beauty and dignity beyond what human nature now can boast; and the
Meleager just at hand, with the Antinous, confirm it; for all elegance
and all expression, unpossessed by the Apollo, _they have_, while none
can miss the inferiority of their general appearance to his.
The Musæum Clementinum is altogether such though, that these singularly
excellent productions of art are only proper and well-adapted ornaments
of a gallery, so stately as, on the other hand, that noble edifice seems
but the due repository of such inhabitants. Never were place and
decorations so adapted: never perhaps was so refined a taste engaged on
subjects so worthy its exertion. The statues are disposed with a
propriety that charms one; the situation of the pillars so contrived,
the colours of them so chosen to carry the eye forward--not fatigue it;
the rooms so illuminated: Hagley park is not laid out with more
judicious attention to diversify, and relieve with various objects a
mind delighting in the contemplation of ornamented nature; than is the
Pope's Musæum calculated to enchain admiration, and fix it in those
apartments where sublimity and beauty have established their residence;
and those would be worse than Goths, who could think of moving even an
old torso from the place where Pius Sextus has commanded it to remain.
The other parts of this prodigious structure would take up one's life
almost to see completely, to remember distinctly, and to describe
accurately. When the reader recollects that St. Peter's, with all its
appurtenances, palace, library, musæum, every thing that we include in
the word _Vatican_, is said by the Romans to occupy an equal quantity of
space, to that covered by the city of Turin: the assertion need not any
longer be thought hyperbolical.
I will say no more about it till at our return from Naples we visit all
the churches.
Vopiscus said, that the statues in his time at Rome out-numbered the
people; and I trust the remark is now almost doubly true, as every day
and hour digs up dead worthies, and the unwholesome weather must surely
send many of the living ones to their ancestors: upon the whole, the men
and women of Porphyry, &c. please me best, as they do not handle long
knives to so good an effect as the others do, "_qui aime bien a
s'ègorger encore[Footnote: Who have still a taste to be cut-throats.],"_
says a French gentleman of them the other day. There is however an air
of cheerfulness in the streets at a night among the poor, who fry fish,
and eat roots, sausages, &c. as they walk about gaily enough, and though
they quarrel too often, never get drunk at least.
The two houses belonging to the Borghese family shall conclude my first
journey to Rome, and with that the first volume of my observations and
reflexions.
Their town palace is a suite of rooms constructed like those at Wanstead
exactly; and where you turn at the end to come back by another suite,
you find two alabaster fountains of superior beauty, and two glass
lustres made in London, but never wiped since they left Fleet-street
certainly. They do not however _want_ cleaning as the fountains do;
which, by the extraordinary use made of them, give the whole palace an
offensive smell.
Among the pictures here, the entombing our blessed Saviour by Rafaelle
is most praised: It is supposed indeed wholly inestimable, and I believe
is so, while Venus, binding Cupid's eyes, by Titian, engraved by
Strange, is possibly one of the pleasantest pictures in Rome. The Christ
disputing with the Doctors is inimitable, one of the wonderful works of
Leonardo da Vinci: but here is Domenichino's Diana among her nymphs,
very laboured, and very learned. Why did it put me in mind of Hogarth's
strolling actresses dressing in a barn?
Villa Borghese presents more to one's mind at once than it will bear,
from the bas relief of Curtius over the door that faces you going in, to
the last gate of the garden you drive out at;--large as the saloon is
however, the figure of Curtius seems too near you; and the horse's hind
quarters are heavy, and ill-suited to the forehand; but here are men
and women enough, and odd things that are neither, at this house; so we
may let the horse of Curtius alone.
Nothing can be gayer or more happily expressed in its way than the
Centaur, which Dr. Moore, like Dr. Young, finds _not_ fabulous; while
the brute runs away with the man, and Cupid keeps urging him forward.
The fawn nursing Bacchus when a baby, is another semi-human figure of
just and high estimation; and that very famous composition for which
Cavalier Bernini has executed a mattress infinitely softer to the eye
than any real one I ever found in _his_ country, has here an apartment
appropriated to itself.
From monsters the eye turns of its own accord towards Nero, and here is
an incomparable one of about ten years old, in whose face I vainly
looked for the seeds of parricide, and murderous tyranny; but saw only a
sturdy boy, who might have been made an honest man perhaps, had not the
rod been spared by his old tutor, whose lenity is repaid by death here
in the next room. It is a relief to look upon the smiling Zingara; her
lively character is exquisitely touched, her face the only one perhaps
where Bernini could not go beyond the proper idea of arch waggery and
roguish cunning, adorned with beauty that must have rendered its
possessor, while living, irresistible. His David is scarcely young
enough for a ruddy shepherd swain; he seems too muscular, and confident
of his own strength; _this_ fellow could have worn Saul's armour well
enough. Æneas carrying his father, I understand, is by the other
Bernini; but the famous groupe of Apollo and Daphne is the work of our
Chevalier himself.
There is a Miss Hillisberg, a dancer on the stage, who reminds every
body of this graceful statue, when theatrical distress drives her to
force expression: I mean the stage in Germany, not Rome, whence females
are excluded. But the vases in this Borghese villa! the tables! the
walls! the cameos stuck in the walls! the frames of the doors, all
agate, porphyry, onyx, or verd antique! the enormous riches contained in
every chamber, actually takes away my breath and leaves me stunned. Nor
are the gardens unbecoming or inadequate to the house, where on the
outside appear such bas-reliefs as would be treasured up by the
sovereigns of France or England, and shewn as valuable rarities. The
rape of Europa first; it is a beautiful antique. Up stairs you see the
rooms constantly inhabited; in the princess's apartment, her
chimney-piece is one elegant but solid amethyst: over the prince's bed,
which changes with the seasons, hangs a Ganymede painted by Titian, to
which the connoisseurs tell you no rival has yet been found. The
furniture is suitably magnificent in every part of the house, and our
English friends assured me, that they met the lady of it last night,
when one gentleman observing how pretty she was, another replied he
could not see her face for the dazzling lustre of her innumerable
diamonds, that actually by their sparkling confounded his sight, and
surrounded her countenance so that he could not find it.
Among all the curiosities however belonging to this wealthy and
illustrious family, the single one most prized is a well-known statue,
called in Catalogues by the name of the Fighting Gladiator, but
considered here at Rome as deserving of a higher appellation. They now
dispute only what hero it can be, as every limb and feature is
expressive of a loftier character than the ancients ever bestowed in
sculpture upon those degraded mortals whom Pliny contemptuously calls
_Hordiarij_, and says they were kept on barley bread, with ashes given
in their drink to strengthen them. Indeed the statue of the expiring
Gladiator at the Capitol, his rope about his neck, and his unpitied
fate, marked strongly in his vulgar features, exhibits quite a separate
class in the variety of human beings; and though Faustina's favourite
found in the same collection was probably the showiest fellow then among
them, we see no marks of intelligent beauty or heroic courage in his
form or face, where an undaunted steadiness and rustic strength make up
the little merit of the figure.
This charming statue of the prince Borghese is on the other hand the
first in Rome perhaps, for the distinguished excellencies of animated
grace and active manliness: his head raised, the body's attitude, not
studied surely, but the apparent and seemingly sudden effect of
patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who,
hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of
his own defenceless state, snatches a spear and shield from one he
meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by
both armies as a descended God, and returns home at last unhurt, to be
fined by the Ephori for breach of discipline, at the same time that a
statue was ordered to commemorate his exploits, and erected at the
state's expence. Monsignor Ennio Visconti, who saw that the figure
reminded me of this story, half persuaded himself for a moment that this
was the very Isadas; and that Jason, for whom he had long thought it
intended, was not young enough, and less likely to fight undefended by
armour against bulls, of whose fury he had been well apprised. Mr.
Jenkins recollected an antique ring which confirmed our new hypothesis,
and I remained flattered, whether they were convinced or no.