We are come here just in time to see the three last days of the carnival, and very droll it is to walk or drive, and see the people run about the streets, all in some gay disguise or other, and masked, and patched, and painted to make sport. The Corso is now quite a scene of distraction; the coachmen on the boxes pretending to be drunk, and throwing sugar-plumbs at the women, which it grows hard to find out in the crowd and confusion, as the evening, which shuts in early, is the festive hour: and there is some little hazard in parading the streets, lest an accident might happen; though a temporary rail and trottoir are erected, to keep the carriages off. Our high joke, however, seems to consist in the men putting on girls clothes: a woman is somewhat a rarity at Rome, and strangely superfluous as it should appear by the extraordinary substitutes found for them on the stage: it is more than wonderful to see great strong fellows dancing the women’s parts in these fashionable dramas, pastoral and heroic ballets as they call them. Soprano singers did not so surprise me with their feminine appearance in the Opera; but these clumsy figurantes! all stout, coarse-looking men, kicking about in hooped petticoats, were to me irresistibly ridiculous: the gentlemen with me however, both Italians and English, were too much disgusted to laugh, while la premiere danseuse acted the coquet beauty, or distracted mother, with a black beard which no art could subdue, and destroyed every illusion of the pantomime at a glance. All this struck nobody but us foreigners after all; tumultuous and often tender applauses from the pit convinced us of their heart-felt approbation! and in the parterre fat gentlemen much celebrated at Rome for their taste and refinement.

As their exhibition did not please our party, notwithstanding its singularity, we went but once to the theatre, except when a Festa di Ballo was advertised to begin at eleven o’clock one night, but detained the company waiting on its stairs for two hours at least beyond the time: for my own part I was better amused outside the doors, than in. Masquerades can of themselves give very little pleasure except when they are new things. What was most my delight and wonder to observe, was the sight of perhaps two hundred people of different ranks, all in my mind strangely ill-treated by a nobleman; who having a private supper in the room, prevented their entrance who paid for admission; all mortified, all crowded together in an inconvenient place; all suffering much from heat, and more from disappointment; yet all in perfect good humour with each other, and with the gentleman who detained in longing and ardent, but not impatiently-expressed expectation, such a number of Romans: who, as I could not avoid remarking, certainly deserve to rule over all the world once more, if, as we often read in history, command is to be best learned from the practice of obedience.

The masquerade was carried on when we had once begun it, with more taste and elegance here, than either at Naples or Milan; so it was at Florence, I remember; more dresses of contrivance and fancy being produced. We had a very pretty device last night, of a man who pretended to carry statues about as if for sale: the gentlemen and ladies who personated the figures were incomparable from the choice of attitudes, and skill in colouring; but il carnovale È morto, as the women of quality told us last night from their coaches, in which they carried little transparent lanthorns of a round form, red, blue, green, &c. to help forward the shine; and these they throw at each other as they did sugar plums in the other towns, while the millions of small thin bougie candles held in every hand, and stuck up at every balcony, make the Strada del Popolo as light as day, and produce a wonderfully pretty effect, gay, natural, and pleasing.

The unstudied hilarity of Italians is very rejoicing to the heart, from one’s consciousness that it is the result of cheerfulness really felt, not a mere incentive to happiness hoped for. The death of Carnovale, who was carried to his grave with so many candles suddenly extinguished at twelve o’clock last night, has restored us to a tranquil possession of ourselves, and to an opportunity of examining the beauties of nature and art that surround one.

St. Peter’s church is incontestably the first object in this city, so crowded with single figures: That this church should be built in the form of a Latin cross instead of a Greek one may be wrong for ought I know; that columns would have done better than piers inside, I do not think; but that whatever has been done by man might have been done better, if that is all the critics want, I readily allow. This church is, after all their objections, nearer to perfect than any other building in the world; and when Michael Angelo, looking at the Pantheon, said, “Is this the best our vaunted ancestors could do? If so, I will shew the advancement of the art, in suspending a dome of equal size to this up in the air.” he made a glorious boast, and was perhaps the only person ever existing who could have performed his promise.

The figures of angels, or rather cherubims, eight feet high, which support the vases holding holy water, as they are made after the form of babies, do perfectly and closely represent infants of eighteen or twenty months old; nor till one comes quite close to them indeed, is it possible to discern that they are colossal. This is brought by some as a proof of the exact proportions kept, and of the prodigious space occupied, by the area of this immense edifice; and urged by others, as a peculiarity of the human body to deceive so at a distance, most unjustly; for one is surprised exactly in the same manner by the doves, which ornament the church in various parts of it. They likewise appear of the natural size, and completely within one’s reach upon entering the door, but soon as approached, recede to a considerable height, and prove their magnitude nicely proportioned to that of the angels and other decorations.

The canopied altar, and its appurtenances, are likewise all colossal I think, when they tell me of four hundred and fifty thousand pounds weight of bronze brought from the Pantheon, and used to form the wreathed pillars which support, and the torses that adorn it. Yet airy lightness and exquisite elegance are the characteristics of the fabric, not gloomy greatness, or heavy solidity. How immense then must be the space it stands on! four hundred and sixty-seven of my steps carried me from the door to the end. Warwick castle would be contained in its middle aisle. Here are one hundred and twenty silver lamps, each larger than I could lift, constantly burning round the altar; and one never sees either them, or the light they dispense, till forced upon the observation of them, so completely are they lost in the general grandeur of the whole. In short, with a profusion of wealth that astonishes, and of splendour that dazzles, as soon as you enter on an examination of its secondary parts, every man’s first impression at entering St. Peter’s church, must be surprise at seeing it so clear of superfluous ornament. This is the true character of innate excellence, the simplex munditiis, or freedom from decoration; the noble simplicity to which no embellishment can add dignity, but seems a mere appendage. Getting on the top of this stupendous edifice, is however the readiest way to fill one’s mind with a deserving notion of its extent, capacity, and beauty; nor is any operation easier, so happily contrived is the ascent. Contrivance here is an ill-chosen word too, so luminous so convenient is the walk, so spacious the galleries beside, that all idea of danger is removed, when you perceive that even round the undefended cornice, our king’s state coach might be most safely driven.

The monuments, although incomparable, scarcely obtain a share of your admiration for the first ten times of your surveying the place; Guglielmo della Porta’s famous figure, supporting that dedicated to the memory of Paul the Third, was found so happy an imitation of female beauty by some madman here however, that it is said he was inflamed with a Pigmalion-like passion for it, of which the Pontiff hearing, commanded the statue to be draped. The steps at almost the end of this church we have all heard were porphyry, and so they are; how many hundred feet long I have now forgotten:—no matter; what I have not forgotten is, that I thought as I looked at them—why so they should be porphyry—and that was all. While the vases and cisterns of the same beautiful substance at Villa Borghese attracted my wonder; and Clement X.’s urn at St. John de Lateran, appeared to me an urn fitter for the ashes of an Egyptian monarch, Busiris or Sesostris, than for a Christian priest or sovereign, since universal dominion has been abolished. Nothing, however, can look very grand in St. Peter’s church; and though I saw the general benediction given (I hope partook it) upon Easter day, my constant impression was, that the people were below the place; no pomp, no glare, no dove and glory on the chair of state, but what looked too little for the area that contained them. Sublimity disdains to catch the vulgar eye, she elevates the soul; nor can long-drawn processions, or splendid ceremonies, suffice to content those travellers who seek for images that never tarnish, and for truths that never can decay. Pius Sextus, in his morning dress, paying his private devotions at the altar, without any pageantry, and with very few attendants, struck me more a thousand and a thousand times, than when arrayed in gold, in colours, and diamonds, he was carried to the front of a balcony big enough to have contained the conclave; and there, shaded by two white fans, which, though really enormous, looked no larger than that a girl carries in her pocket, pronounced words which on account of the height they came from were difficult to hear.

All this is known and felt by the managers of these theatrical exhibitions so certainly, that they judiciously confine great part of them to the Capella Sestini, which being large enough to impress the mind with its solemnity, and not spacious enough for the priests, congregation, and all, to be lost in it, is well adapted for those various functions that really make Rome a scene of perpetual gala during the holy week; which an English friend here protested to me he had never spent with so little devotion in his life before. The miserere has, however, a strong power over one’s mind—the absence of all instrumental music, the steadiness of so many human voices, the gloom of the place, the picture of Michael Angelo’s last judgment covering its walls, united with the mourning dress of the spectators—is altogether calculated with great ingenuity to give a sudden stroke to the imagination, and kindle that temporary blaze of devotion it is wisely enough intended to excite: but even this has much of its effect destroyed, from the admission of too many people: crowd and bustle, and struggle for places, leave no room for any ideas to range themselves, and least of all, serious ones: nor would the opening of our sacred music in Westminster Abbey, when nine hundred performers join to celebrate Messiah’s praises, make that impression which it does upon the mind, were not the king, and court, and all the audience, as still as death, when the first note is taken.

The ceremony of washing the pilgrims feet is a pleasing one: it is seen in high perfection here at Rome; where all that the pope personally performs is done with infinite grace, and with an air of mingled majesty and sweetness, difficult to hit, but singularly becoming in him, who is both priest of God, and sovereign of his people.

But how, said Cyrus, shall I make men think me more excellent than themselves? By being really so, replies Xenophon, putting his words into the mouth of Cambyses. Pius Sextus takes no deeper method I believe, yet all acknowledge his superiour merit: No prince can less affect state, nor no clergyman can less adopt hypocritical behaviour. The Pope powders his hair like any other of the Cardinals, and is, it seems, the first who has ever done so. When he takes the air it is in a fashionable carriage, with a few, a very few guards on horseback, and is by no means desirous of making himself a shew. Now and then an old woman begs his blessing as he passes; but I almost remember the time when our bishops of Bangor and St. Asaph were followed by the country people in North Wales full as much or more, and with just the same feelings. One man in particular we used to talk of, who came from a distant part of our mountainous province, with much expence in proportion to his abilities, poor fellow, and terrible fatigue; he was a tenant of my father’s, who asked him how he ventured to undertake so troublesome a journey? It was to get my good Lord’s blessing, replied the farmer, I hope it will cure my rheumatism. Kissing the slipper at Rome will probably, in a hundred years more, be a thing to be thus faintly recollected by a few very old people; and it is strange to me it should have lasted so long. No man better knows than the present learned and pious successor of St. Peter, that St. Peter himself would permit no act of adoration to his own person; and that he severely reproved Cornelius for kneeling to him, charging him to rise and stand upon his feet, adding these remarkable words, seeing I also am a man[13]. Surely it will at last be found out among them that such a ceremony is inconsistent with the Pope’s character as a Christian priest, however it may suit state matters to continue it in the character of a sovereign. The road he is now making on every side his capital to facilitate foreigners approach, the money he has laid out on the conveniencies of the Vatican, the desire he feels of reforming a police much in want of reformation, joined to an immaculate character for private virtue and an elegant taste for the fine arts, must make every one wish for a long continuance of his health and dignity; though the wits and jokers, when they see his arms up, as they are often placed in galleries, &c. about the palace, and consist of a zephyr blowing on a flower, a pair of eagle’s wings, and a few stars, have invented this Epigram, to say that when the Emperor has got his eagle back, the King of France his fleurs de lys, and the stars are gone to heaven, Braschi will have nothing left him but the wind:

These verses were given me by an agreeable Benedictine Friar, member of a convent belonging to St. Paul’s fuor delle mura; he was a learned man, a native of Ragusa, had been particularly intimate with Wortley Montague, whose variety of acquirements had impressed him exceedingly.

He shewed us the curiosities of his church, the finest in Rome next to St. Peter’s, and had silver gates; but the plating is worn off and only the brass remains. There is an old Egyptian candlestick above five feet high preserved here, and many other singularities adorn the church. The Pillars are 136 in number, all marble, and each consisting of one unjoined and undivided piece; 40 of these are fluted, and two which did belong to a temple of Mars are seven feet and a half each in diameter. Here is likewise the place where Nero ran for refuge to the house of his freed-man, and in the cloister a stone, with this inscription on it,

Here is an altar supported by four pillars of red porphyry, and here are the pictures of all the popes; St. Peter first, and our present Braschi last. It has given much occasion for chat that there should now be no room left to hang a successor’s portrait, and that he who now occupies the chair is painted in powdered hair and a white head-dress, such as he wears every day, to the great affliction of his courtiers, who recommended the usual state diadem; but “No, no,” said he, “there have been red cap Popes enough, mine shall be only white,” and white it is.

This beautiful edifice was built by the Emperor Theodosius, and there is an old picture at the top, of our Saviour giving the benediction in the form that all the Greek priests give it now. Apropos, there have been many sects of Oriental Christians dropt into the Church of Rome within these late years; a very venerable old Armenian says Greek mass regularly in St. Peter’s church every day before one particular altar; his long black dress and white beard attracted much of my notice; he saw it did, and now whenever we meet in the street by chance he kindly stands still to bless me. But the Syriac or Maronites have a church to themselves just by the Bocca della Verita; and extremely curious we thought it to see their ceremonies upon Palm Sunday, when their aged patriarch, not less than ninety-three years old, and richly attired with an inconvenient weight of drapery, and a mitre shaped like that of Aaron in our Bibles exactly, was supported by two olive coloured orientals, while he pronounced a benediction on the tree that stood near the altar, and was at least ten feet high. The attendant clergy, habited after their own eastern taste, and very superbly, had broad phylacteries bound on their foreheads after the fashion of the Jews, and carried long strips of parchment up and down the church, with the law written on them in Syriac characters, while they formed themselves into a procession and led their truly reverend principal back to his place. An exhibition so striking, with the view of many monuments round the walls, sacred to the memory of such, and such a bishop of Damascus, gave so strong an impression of Asiatic manners to the mind, that one felt glad to find Europe round one at going out again. One of the treasures much renowned in it we have seen to-day, the transfiguration painted by Rafaelle; it was the first thing the Emperor did visit when he came to Rome, and so a Franciscan Friar who shews it, told us. He saw a gentleman walk into church it seems, and leaving his friends at dinner, went out to converse with him. “Pull aside the curtain, Sir,” said the stranger, “for I am in haste to see this master-piece of your immortal Raphael.” I was as willing to be in a hurry as he, says the Friar, and observed how fortunate it was for us that it could not be moved, otherwise we had lost it long ago; for, Sir, said I, they would have carried it away from poor Monte Citoria to some finer temple long ago; though, let me tell you, this is an elegant Doric building too, and one of Bramante’s best works, much admired by the English in particular. I hope, if it please God now that I should live but a very little longer, I may have the honour of shewing it the Emperor. “Is he expected?” enquired the gentleman. “Every day, Sir,” replies the Friar. “And well now,” cries the foreigner, “what sort of a man do you expect to see?” “Why, Sir, you seem a traveller, did you ever see him?” quoth the Franciscan. “Yes, sure, my good friend, very often indeed, he is as plain a man as myself, has good intentions, and an honest heart; and I think you would like him if you knew him, because he puts nobody out of their way.”

This dialogue, natural and simple, had taken such hold of our good religieux’s fancy, that not a word would he say about the picture, while his imagination was so full of the prince, and of his own amazement at the salutation of his companions, when returning to the refectory;—“Why, Gaetano,” cried they, “thou hast been conversing with CÆsar:”—I too liked the tale, because it was artless, and because it was true. But the picture surpasses all praise; the woman kneeling on the fore-ground, her back to the spectators, seems a repetition of the figure in Raphael’s famous picture of the Vatican on fire, that is shewn in the chambers called particularly by his name; where the personifications of Justice and Meekness, engraved by Strange, seize one’s attention very forcibly; it is observable, that the first is every body’s favourite in the painting, the last in the engraving.

Raphael’s Bible, as one of the long galleries is comically called by the connoisseurs, breaks one’s neck to look at it. The stories, beginning with Adam and Eve, are painted in small compartments; the colouring as vivid now as if it were done last week; and the arabesques so gay and pretty, they are very often represented on fans; and we have fine engravings in England of all, yet, though exquisitely done, they give one somehow a false notion of the whole: so did Piranesi’s prints too, though invaluable, when considered by themselves as proofs of the artist’s merit. His judicious manner, however, of keeping all coarse objects from interfering with the grand ones, though it mightily increases the dignity, and adds to the spirit of his performance, is apt to lead him who wishes for information, into a style of thinking that will at last produce disappointment as to general appearances, which here at Rome is really disproportionate to the astonishing productions of art contained within its walls.

But I must leave this glorious Vatican, with the perpetual regret of having seen scarcely any thing of its invaluable library, except the prodigious size and judicious ornaments of it: neither book nor MS. could I prevail on the librarian to shew me, except some love-letters from Henry the Eighth of England to Anne Boleyn, which he said were most likely to interest me: they were very gross and indecent ones to be sure; so I felt offended, and went away, in a very ill humour, to see Castle St. Angelo; where the emperor Adrian intended perpetually to repose; but the urn containing his ashes is now kept in a garden belonging to one of the courts in the palace, near the Apollo and other Greek statues of peculiar excellence. From his tomb too, some of the pillars of St. Paul’s were taken, and this splendid mausolÆum converted into a sort of citadel, where Sixtus Quintus deposited three millions of gold, it is said; and Alexander the Sixth retired to shield himself from Charles the Eighth of France, who entered Rome by torch-light in 1494, and forced the Pope to give him what the French historians call l’investiture du royaume de Naples; after which he took Capua, and made his conquering entry into Naples the February following, 1495; Ferdinand, son of Alphonso, flying before him. This Pope was the father of the famous CÆsar Borgia; and it was on this occasion, I believe, that the French wits made the well-known distich on his notorious avarice and rapacity:

This Castle St. Angelo went once, I believe, under the name of the Ælian Bridge, when the emperor Adrian first fixed his mind on making a monument for himself there. The soldiers of Belisarius are said to have destroyed numberless statues which then adorned it, by their odd manner of defending the place from the Gothic assaulters. It is now a sort of tower for the confinement of state prisoners; and decorated with many well-painted, but ill-kept pictures of Polydore and Julio Romano.

The fireworks exhibited here on Easter-day are the completest things of their kind in the world; three thousand rockets, all sent up into the air at once, make a wonderful burst indeed, and serve as a pretty imitation of Vesuvius: the lighting up of the building too on a sudden with fire-pots, had a new and beautiful effect; we all liked the entertainment vastly.

I looked here for what some French recueil, Menagiana if I remember rightly, had taught me to expect; this was some brass cannon belonging to Christina queen of Sweden, who had caused them to be cast, and added an engraving on them with these remarkable words;

No such thing, however, could be found or heard of. Indeed a search after truth requires such patience, such penetration, and such learning, that it is no wonder she is so seldom got a glimpse of; whoever is diligently desirous to find her, is so perplexed by ignorance, so retarded by caution, so confounded by different explications of the same thing recurring at every turn, so sickened with silly credulity on the one hand, and so offended with pertness and pyrrhonism on the other, that it is fairly rendered impossible for one to keep clear of prejudices, while the steady resolution to do so becomes itself a prejudice.—But with regard to little follies, it is better to laugh at than lament them.

We were shewn one morning lately the spot where it is supposed St. Paul suffered decapitation; and our Cicerone pointed out to us three fountains, about the warmth of Buxton, Matlock, or Bristol water, which were said to have burst from the ground at the moment of his martyrization. A Dutch gentleman in company, and a steady Calvinist, loudly ridiculed the tradition, called it an idle tale, and triumphantly expressed his certain conviction, that such an event could not possibly have ever taken place. To this assertion no reply was made; and as we drove home all together, the conversation having taken a wide range and a different turn, he related in the course of it a long Rousseau-like tale of a lady he once knew, who having the strongest possible attachment to one lover, married another upon principles of filial obedience, still retaining inviolate her passion for the object of her choice, who, adorned with every excellence and every grace, continued a correspondence with her across the Atlantic ocean; having instantly changed his hemisphere, not to give the husband disturbance; who on his part admired their letters, many of which were written in his praise, who had so cruelly interrupted their felicity. Seeing some marks of disbelief in my countenance, he begun observing, in an altered tone of voice, that common and vulgar minds might hold such events to be out of possibility, and such sentiments to be out of nature, but it was only because they were above the comprehension and beyond the reach of people educated in large and corrupt capitals, Paris, Rome, or London, to think true. Now was not some share of good breeding (best learned in great capitals perhaps) necessary to prevent one from retorting upon such an orator—that it was more likely nature should have been permitted to deviate in favour of Paul the apostle of Jesus Christ, than of a fat inhabitant of North Zealand, no way distinguished from the mass of mankind?

But we have been called to pass some moments on the CÆlian hill; and see the Chiesa di San Gregorio, interesting above all others to travellers who delight in the vestiges of Pagan Rome: as, having been built upon a Patrician’s house, it still to a great degree retains the form of one; while to the scholar who is pleased with anecdotes of ecclesiastical history, the days recur when the stone chair they shew us, contented the meek and venerable bishop of Rome who sate in it, while his gentle spirit sought the welfare of every Christian, and refused to persecute even the benighted and unbelieving Jews; opposing only the arms of piety and prayer, to the few enemies his transcendent excellence had raised him. His picture here is considered as a master-piece of Annibale Caracci; and it is strange to think that the trial-pieces, as they are called, should be erroneously treated of in the Carpenteriana: when speaking of the contention between the two scholars, to decide which the master sent for an old woman, Monsieur de Carpentier tells us the dispute lay between Domenichino and Albano—a gross mistake; as it was Guido, not Albano, who ventured to paint something in rivalry with Domenichino, relative to St. Andrew and his martyrdom; and these trial-pieces produced from her the same preference given by every spectator who has seen them since; for when Caracci (unwilling to offend either of his scholars, as both were men of the highest rank and talents) enquired of her what she thought of Guido’s performance?—“Indeed,” replied the old woman, “I have never yet looked at it, so fully has my mind been occupied by the powers shewn in that of Domenichino.”

The vecchia is here at Rome the common phrase when speaking of your only female servant, a person not unlike an Oxford or Cambridge bed-maker in appearance; and much amazed was I two days ago at the answer of our vecchia, when curiosity prompted me to ask her age:—“O, Madam, I am a very aged woman,” was the reply, “and have two grandchildren married; I am forty-two years old, poveretta me!” I told an Italian gentleman who dined with us what Caterina had said, and begged him to ask the laquais de place, who waited on us at table, a similar question. He appeared a large, well-looking, sturdy fellow, about thirty-eight years old; but said he was scarce twenty-two; that he had been married six years, and had five children. How old was your wife when you met?—“Thirteen, Sir,” answered Carlo: so all is kept even at least; for if they end life sooner than in colder climates, they begin it earlier it is plain.

Yet such things seem strange to us; so do a thousand which occur in these warm countries in the commonest life. Brick floors, for example, with hangings of a dirty printed cotton, affording no bad shelter for spiders, bugs, &c.; a table in the same room, encrusted with verd antique, very fine and worthy of Wilton house; with some exceeding good copies of the finest pictures here at Rome; form the furniture of our present lodging: and now we have got the little casement windows clean to look at it, I pass whole hours admiring, even in the copy, our glorious descent from the cross, by Daniel de Volterra; which to say truth loses less than many a great performance of the same kind, because its merits consist in composition and design; and as sentiment, not style, is translatable, so grouping and putting figures finely together can be easier transmitted by a copy, than the meaner excellencies of colouring and finishing. Homer and Cervantes may be enjoyed by those who never learned their language, at least to a great degree; while a true taste of Gray’s Odes or Martial’s Epigrams has been hitherto found exceedingly difficult to communicate. It would, however, be cruel to deny the merit of colouring to Daniel de Volterra’s descent from the cross, only because being painted in fresco it has suffered so terribly by time and want of care, but it is now kept covered, and they remove the curtain when any body desires to contemplate its various beauties.

The church of Santa Maria Maggiore has been too long unspoken of, rich as it is with the first gold torn from the unfortunate aborigines of America; a present from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to the Pope, in return for that permission he had given them to exert and establish their sanguinary sway over those luckless nations. One pillar from the temple of Peace is an ill-adapted ornament to this edifice, built nearly in the form of an ancient basilica; and with so expensive a quantity of gilding, that it is said two hundred and fifty thousand pounds were expended on one chapel only, which is at last inferior in fame and beauty to cappella Corsini; in riches and magnificence to cappella Borghese, where an amethyst frame of immense value surrounds the names, in gold cypher, of our blessed Saviour and his Mother, the ground of which is of transparent jasper, and cannot be matched for elegance or perfection, being at least four feet high (the tablets I mean), and three feet wide. But to this Borghese family, I am well persuaded, it would be a real fatigue to count the wealth which they enjoy.

Villa Pamphili is a lovely place, or might be made so; but laying out pleasure grounds is not the forte of Italian taste. I never saw one of them, except Lomellino of Genoa, who had higher notions of a garden than what an opera scene affords; and that is merely a range of trees in great pots with gilded handles, and rows of tall cypresses planted one between every two pots, all straight over against each other in long lines; with an octangular marble bason to hold water in the middle, covered for the most part with a thick green scum.

At Villa Pamphili is a picture of Sanctorius, who made the weighing balance spoken of by Addison in the Spectator; it was originally contrived for the Pamphili Pope. And here is an old statue of Clodius profaning the mysteries of the Bona Dea, as we read in the Roman history. And here are camels working in the park like horses: we found them playing about at their leisure when we were at Pisa, and at Milan they were shewed for a show; so little does one state of Italy connect with another. These three cities cannot possibly be much further from each other than London, York, and Exeter; yet the manners differ entirely, and what is done in one place is not known at all in the other. It must be remembered that they are all separate states.

At the Farnesini palace our amusements were of a nature very contrary to this; but every place produces amusement when one is willing to be pleased. After looking over the various and inestimable productions of art contained there, we came at last to the celebrated marriage of Alexander’s Roxana; where, say some of the books of description, the world’s greatest hero is represented by Europe’s greatest painter. Some French gentlemen were in our company, and looking steadily at the picture for a while, one of them exclaimed, “A la fin voila ce qui est vrayment noble; cet Alexandre lÀ; il paroit effectivement le roy de France mÊme[17].”

The Spada palace boasts Guercino’s Dido, so disliked by the critics, who say she looks spitted; but extremely esteemed by those that understand its merit in other respects. There is also the very statue kept at this palace, at the feet of which CÆsar fell when he was assassinated at the capitol: those who shew it never fail to relate his care to die gracefully; which was likewise the last desire that occupied Lucretia’s mind: Augustus too, justly considering his life as scenical, desired the plaudits of his friends at its conclusion: and even Flavius Vespasian, a plain man as one should think during a pretty large portion of his existence, wished at last to die like an emperor. That this statue of Pompey should have been accidentally found with the head lying in one man’s ground and the body in another, is curious enough: a rage for appropriation gets the better of all the love of arts; so the contending parties (like the sisters in David Simple, with their fine-worked carpet) fairly severed the statue, and took home each his half; the proprietor of this palace meanwhile purchased the two pieces, stuck them once more together, and here they are.—Pity but the sovereign had carried both off for himself.—Pius Sextus however is not so disposed: he has had a legacy left him within these last years, to the prejudice of some nobleman’s heirs; who loudly lamented their fate, and his tyranny who could take advantage, as they expressed it, of their relation’s caprice. The Pope did not give it them back, because they behaved so ill, he said; but neither did he seize what was left him, by dint of despotic authority; he went to law with the family for it, which I thought a very strange thing; and lost his cause, which I thought a still stranger.

We have just been to see his gardens; they are poor things enough; and the device of representing Vulcan’s cave with the Cyclops, in water-works, was more worthy of Ireland than Rome! Monte Cavallo is however a palace of prodigious dignity; the pictures beyond measure excellent; his collection of china-ware valuable and tasteful, and there are two Mexican jars that can never be equalled.

Villa Albani is the most dazzling of any place yet however; and the caryatid pillars the finest things in it, though replete with wonders, and distracting with objects each worthy a whole day’s attention. Here is an antique list of Euripides’s plays in marble, as those tell me who can read the Greek inscriptions; I lose infinite pleasure every day, for want of deeper learning. Pillars not only of giall’ antique, but of paglia[18], which no house but this possesses, amaze and delight indocti doctique though; the Vatican itself cannot shew such: a red marble mask here, three feet and a half in diameter, is unrivalled; they tell you it is worth its own weight in louis d’ors: a canopus in basalt too; and cameos by the thousand.

Mengs should have painted a more elegant Apollo for the centre of such a gallery; but his muses make amends; the Viaggiana says they are all portraits, but I could get nobody to tell me whose. The AbbÉ Winckelman, who if I recollect aright lost his life by his passion for virtÙ, arranged this stupendous collection, in conjunction with the cardinal, whose taste was by all his contemporaries acknowledged the best in Rome.

We were carried this morning to a cabinet of natural history belonging to another cardinal, but it did not answer the account given of it by our conductors.

What has most struck me here as a real improvement upon social and civil life, was the school of Abate Sylvester, who, upon the plan of Monsieur L’EpÉe at Paris, teaches the deaf and dumb people to speak, read, write, and cast accounts; he likewise teaches them the principles of logic, and instructs them in the sacred mysteries of our holy religion. I am not naturally credulous, nor apt to take payment in words for meanings; much of my life has been spent, and all my youth, in the tuition of babies; I was of course less likely to be deceived; and I can safely say, that they did appear to have learned all he taught them: that appearance too, if it were no more, is so difficult to obtain, the patience required from the master is so very great, and the good he is doing to mankind so extensive, that I did not like offensively to detect the difference between knowing a syllogism and appearing to know it. With regard to morality, the pupils have certainly gained many prÆcognita. While the capital scholars were shewing off to another party, I addressed a girl who sat working in the window, and perceived that she could explain the meaning of the commandments competently well. To prove the truth, I pretended to pick a gentleman’s pocket who stood near me; peccato! said the wench distinctly; she was about ten years old perhaps: but a little boy of seven was deservedly the master’s favourite; he really possessed the most intelligent and interesting countenance I ever saw, and when to explain the major, minor, and consequence, he put the two first together into his hat with an air of triumph, we were enchanted with him. Some one to teize him said he had red hair; he instantly led them to a picture of our Saviour which hung in the room, said it was the same colour of his, and ought to be respected.

Surely it is little to the credit of us English, that this worthy AbbÉ Sylvester should have a stipend from government; that Monsieur L’EpÉe de Paris should be encouraged in the same good work; that Mr. Braidwood’s Scotch pupils should justly engage every one’s notice—while we sleep! A friend in company seeing me fret at this, asked me if I, or any one else, had ever seen or heard of a person really qualified for the common duties of society by any of these professors;—“That a deaf and dumb man should understand how to discourse about the hypostatic union,” added he, “I will not desire; but was there ever known in Paris, Edinburgh, or Rome, a deaf and dumb shoemaker, carpenter, or taylor? Or did ever any watchmaker, fishmonger, or wheelwright, ever keep and willingly employ a deaf and dumb journeyman?”—Nobody replied; and we went on our way to see what was easier decided upon and understood—the tomb of Raphael at the Pantheon.

Among the many tours that have been written, a musical tour, an astronomical tour, &c. I wonder we have never had a sepulchral tour, making the tombs of famous men its object of attention. That Raphael, Caracci, with many more people of eminence, sleep at the Pantheon, is however but a secondary consideration; few can think of the monuments in this church, till they have often contemplated its architecture, which is so finely proportioned that on first entering you think it smaller than it really is: the pillars are enormous, the shafts all of one piece, the composition Egyptian granite; these are the sixteen which support the portico built by Agrippa; whose car, adorned with trophies and drawn by brazen horses, once decorated the pediment, where the holes formed by the cramps which fastened it are still visible. Genseric changed the gate, and connoisseurs know not where he placed that which Agrippa made: the present gate is magnificent, but does not fit the place; much of the brass plating was removed by Urban the Eighth, and carried to St. Peter’s: he was the Barberini pope; and of him the people said—

He was a poet however, and could make epigrams himself; there is a very fine edition of his poems printed at Paris under the title of Maffei Barberini Poemata; and such was his knowledge of Greek literature, that he was called the Attic bee. The drunken faun asleep at Palazzo Barberini, by some accounted the first statue in Rome, we owe wholly to his care in its preservation.

But the Pantheon must not be quitted till we have mentioned its pavement, where the precious stones are not disposed, as in many churches, without taste or care, apparently by chance; here all is inlaid, so as to enchant the eye with its elegance, while it dazzles one with its riches: the black porphyry, in small squares, disposed in compartments, and inscribed as one may call it in pavonazzino perhaps; the red, bounded by serpentine; the granites, in giall antique, have an undescribable effect; no Florence table was ever so beautiful: nor can we here regret the caryatid pillars said by Pliny to have graced this temple in his time; while the four prodigious columns, two of Egyptian granite, two of porphyry, still remain, and replace them so very well. Montiosius, who sought for the pillars said by Pliny to have been placed by Diogenes, an Athenian architect, as supporters of this temple, relates however, that in the year 1580 he saw four of them buried in the ground as high as their shoulders: but it does not seem a tale much attended to; though I confess my own desire of digging, as he points out the place so exactly, on the right hand side of the portico. The best modern caryatids are in the old Louvre at Paris, done by Goujon; but those of Villa Albani are true antiques, perfect in beauty, inestimable in value.

The church that now stands where a temple to Bacchus was built, fuori delle mura, engaged our attention this morning. Nothing can be fresher than the old decorations in honour of this jocund deity; the figures of men and women carrying grapes, oxen drawing barrels, &c. all the progress of a gay and plenteous vintage; a sacrifice at the end. I forget to whom the church is now dedicated, but it is a church; and from under it has been dug up a sarcophagus, all of one piece of red porphyry, which represents on its sides a Bacchanalian triumph; the coffin is nine feet long, and the Pope intends removing it to the Vatican, as a companion to that of Scipio Æmilianus, found a few months ago; his name engraven on it, and his bones inside. Before the proper precautions could be taken however, they were flung away by mistaken zeal and prejudice; but an Englishman, say they, who loves an unbeliever, got possession of a tooth: meantime the ashes of the emperor Adrian, who, as Eusebius tells us, set up the figure of a swine on the gates of Bethlehem, built a temple in honour of Venus, on Mount Calvary; another to Jupiter, upon the hill whence our Saviour ascended into heaven in sight of his disciples;—his ashes are kept in a gilt pine-apple, brought from Castle St. Angelo, and preserved among other rarities in the Pope’s musÆum. So poor Scipio’s remains needed not to have been treated worse than his, as we know not how good a Christian he might have made, had he lived but 150 years later: we are sure that he was a wise and a warlike man; that he fulfilled the scriptures unwittingly by burning Carthage; and that he protected Polybius, whom he would scarcely suffer out of his sight.

After looking often at the pictures of St. Sebastian, I have now seen his church founded by Constantine: he lies here in white marble, done by Bernini; and here are more marvellous columns.—I am tired of looking out words to express their various merits.

The catacombs attract me more strongly; here, and here alone, can one obtain a just idea of the melancholy lives, and dismal deaths, endured by those who first dared at Rome to profess a religion inoffensive and beneficial to all mankind. San Filippo Neri has his body somewhat distinguished from the rest of these old pious Christians, among whom he lived to a surprising age, making a cave his residence. Relics are now dug up every day from these retreats, and venerated as having once belonged to martyrs murdered for their early attachment to a belief now happily displayed over one quarter of the world, and making daily progress in another not discovered when those heroic mortals died to attest its truth. There is however great danger of deception in digging out the relics, these catacombs having been in Trajan’s time made a burial-place for slaves; and such it continued to be during the reign of those Roman emperors who despised rather than persecuted the new religion in its infancy. The consciousness of this fact should cure the passion many here shew for relics, the authenticity of which can never be ascertained. Those shewn to the people in St. Peter’s church one evening in the holy week, all came from here it seems; and loudly do our Protestant travellers exclaim at their idolatry who kneel during the exposure; though for my life I cannot see how the custom is idolatrous. He who at the moment a dead martyr’s robe is shewn him, begs grace of God to follow that great example, is certainly doing no harm, or in any wise contradicting the rules of our Anglican church, whose collects for every saint’s day express a like supplication for power to imitate that saint’s good example; if once they worship the relics indeed, it were better they were burned; and to say true, they should not be exposed without a sermon explaining their use, lest vulgar minds might be unhappily misled to mistake the real end of their exposure, and profanely substitute the creature for the Creator. Meanwhile no one has a right to ridicule the love of what once belonged to a favourite character, who has ever felt attachment to a dead friend’s snuff-box, or desire of possessing Scipio Æmilianus’s tooth.

But the best effort to excite temporary devotion, and commemorate sacred seasons, was the illuminated cross upon Good Friday night, depending from the high dome of St. Peter’s church; where its effect upon the architecture is strangely powerful, so large are the masses both of light and shade; whilst the sublime images raised in one’s mind by its noble simplicity and solitary light, hover before the fancy, and lead recollection round through a thousand gloomy and mysterious passages, with no unsteady pace however, while she follows the rays which beam from the Redeemer’s cross. Being obliged indeed to go with company to these solemnities, takes off from their effect, and turns imagination into another channel, disagreeably enough, but it must be so; where there is a thing to be seen every one will go to see it, and that which was intended to produce sensations of gladness, gratitude, or wonder, ends in being a show. The consciousness of this fact only kept me from wishing to see the Duomo di Milano, or the cathedral of Canterbury illuminated just so, with lamps placed in rows upon a plain wooden cross; which surely would have, upon those old Gothic structures, an unequalled effect as to the forming of light and shadow.

But let us wish for any thing now rather than a fine sight. I am tired with the very word a sight; while the Jesuits church here at Rome, with the figure of St. Ignatius all covered with precious stones, with bronze angels by Bernini, and every decoration that money can purchase and industry collect, rather dazzles than delights one, I think.

The Italians seem to find out, I know not why, that it is a good thing the Jesuits are gone; though they steadily endeavour to retain those principles of despotism which it was their peculiar province to inspire and confirm, and whilst all men must see that the work of education goes on worse in other hands. Indeed nothing can be wilder than committing youth to the tuition of monks and nuns, unless, like them, they were intended for the cloister. Young people are but too ready to find fault with their teachers, and these are given into the hands of those teachers who have a fault ready found. Every christian, every moral instruction driven into their tender minds, weakens with the experience that he or she who inculcated it was a recluse; and that they who are to live in the world forsooth, must have more enlarged notions: whereas, to a Jesuit tutor, no such objection could be made; they were themselves men of the world, their institution not only permitted but obliged them to mingle with mankind, to study characters, to attend to the various transactions passing round them, and take an active part. It was indeed this spirit pushed too far, which undid and destroyed their order, so useful to the church of Rome. Connections with various nations they found best obtained by commerce, and the sweets of commerce once tasted, what body of men has been yet able to relinquish? But the principles of trade are formed in direct opposition to that spirit of subordination by which alone their existence could continue; and it is unjust to charge any single event or person with the dissolution of a body, incompatible with that state of openness and freedom to which Europe is hastening. Incorporated societies too carry, like individuals, the seeds of their own destruction in their bosoms;

Every warehouse opened in every part of Europe, every settlement obtained abroad, facilitated their undoing, by loosening the band which tied them close together. Extremes can never keep their distance from each other, while human affairs trot but in a circle; and surely no stronger proof of that position can be found, than the sight of Quakers in Pensylvania, and Jesuits in Paraguay, who lived with their converted Indian neighbours, alike in harmony, and peace, and love.

We have been led to reflections of this sort by a view of girls portioned here at Rome once a year, some for marriage and others for a nunnery; the last set were handsomest and fewest, and the people I converse with say that every day makes almost visible diminution in the number of monks and nuns. I know not, however, whether Italy will go on much the better for having so few convents; some should surely be left, nay some must be left in a country where it is not possible for every man to obtain a decent livelihood by labour as in England: no army, no navy, very little commerce possible to the inland states, and very little need of it in any; little study of the law too, where the prince or baron’s lips pronounce on the decision of property; what must people do where so few professions are open? Can they all be physicians, priests, or shopkeepers, where little physic is taken, and few goods bought? There are already more clergy than can live, and I saw an abate with the petit collet at Lucca, playing in the orchestra at the opera for eighteen pence pay. Let us be all contented with the benefits received from heaven, and let us learn better than to set up self, whether nation or individual, as a standard to which all others must be reduced; while imitation is at last but meanness, and each may in his own sphere serve God and love his neighbours, while variety renders life more pleasing. Quod sis esse velis[19], is an admirable maxim, and surely no self-denial is necessary to its practice; while God has kindly given to Italians a bright sky, a penetrating intellect, a genius for the polite and liberal arts, and a soil which produces literally, as well as figuratively, almost spontaneous fruits. He has bestowed on Englishmen a mild and wholesome climate, a spirit of application and improvement, a judicious manner of thinking to increase, and commerce to procure, those few comforts their own island fails to produce. The mind of an Italian is commonly like his country, extensive, warm, and beautiful from the irregular diversification of its ideas; an ardent character, a glowing landscape. That of an Englishman is cultivated, rich, and regularly disposed; a steady character, a delicious landscape.

I must not quit Rome however without a word of Angelica Kauffman, who, though neither English nor Italian, has contrived to charm both nations, and shew her superior talents both here and there. Beside her paintings, of which the world has been the judge, her conversation attracts all people of taste to her house, which none can bear to leave without difficulty and regret. But a sight of the Santa Croce palace, with its disgusting Job, and the man in armour so visibly horror-striken, puts all painters but Salvator Rosa for a while out of one’s head. This master’s works are not frequent, though he painted with facility. I suppose he is difficult to imitate or copy, so what we have of him is original. There are too many living objects here in Job’s condition, not to render walking in the streets extremely disagreeable; and though we are told there are seventeen markets in Rome, I can find none, the forum boarium being kept alike in all parts of the city for ought I see; butchers standing at their shop doors, which are not shut nor the shop cleaned even on Sundays, while blood is suffered to run along the kennels in a manner very shocking to humanity. Mr. Greatheed made me remark that the knife they use now, is the same employed by the old Romans in cutting up the sacrificed victim; and there are in fact ancient figures in many bas-reliefs of this town, which represent the inferior officers, or popÆ, with a priest’s albe reaching from their arms and tucked up tight, with the sacrificing knife fastened to it, exactly as the modern butcher wears his dress. The apron was called limus, and there was a purple welt sewed on it in such a manner as to represent a serpent:

which Servius explains at length, but gives no reason for the serpentine form, by some people exalted, particularly Mr. Hogarth, as nearly allied to the perfection of all possible grace. This looks hypothetical, but when the map of both hemispheres displayed before one, shews that the Sun’s path forms the same line, called by pre-eminence Ecliptic, we will pardon their predilection in its favour.

But it is time to take leave of this Roma triumphans, as she is represented in one statue with a weeping province at her foot, so beautiful! it reminded me of Queen Eleanor and fair Rosamond. The Viaggiana sent me to look for many things I should not have found without that instructive guide, particularly the singular inscription on Gaudentius the actor’s tomb, importing that Vespasian rewarded him with death, but that Kristus, for so Christ is spelt, will reward him with a finer theatre in heaven. He was one of our early martyrs it appears, and an altar to him would surely be now more judiciously placed at a play-house door than one to good St. Anthony, under whose protection the theatre at Naples is built; with no great propriety it must be confessed, when that Saint, disgusted by the levities of life, retired to finish his existence, far from the haunts of man, among the horrors of an unfrequented desert. So has it chanced however, that by many sects of Christians, the player and his profession have been severely reprobated; Calvinists forbid them their walls as destructive to morality, while Romanists, considering them as justly excommunicated, refuse them the common rites of sepulture. Scripture affords no ground for such severity. Dr. Johnson once told me that St. Paul quoted in his epistles a comedy of Menander; and I got the librarian at Venice to shew me the passage marked as a quotation in one of the old editions: it is then a fair inference enough that the apostle could never have prohibited to his followers the sight of plays, when he cited them himself; they were indeed more innocent than any other show of the days he lived in, and if well managed may be always made subservient to the great causes of religion and virtue. The passage cited was this:

And now with regard to the present state of morals at Rome, one must not judge from staring stories told one; it is like Heliogabalus’s method of computing the number of his citizens from the weight of their cobwebs. It is wonderful to me the people are no worse, where no methods are taken to keep them from being bad.

As to the society, I speak not from myself, for I saw nothing of it; some English liked it, but more complained. Wanting amusement, however, can be no complaint, even without society, in a city so pregnant with wonders, so productive of reflections; and if the Roman nobles are haughty, who can wonder; when one sees doors of agate, and chimney-pieces of amethyst, one can scarcely be surprised at the possessors pride, should they in contempt turn their backs upon a foreigner, whom they are early taught to consider as the Turks consider women, creatures formed for their use only, or at best amusement, and devoted to certain destruction at the hour of death. With such principles, the hatred and scorn they naturally feel for a protestant will easily swell into superciliousness, or burst out into arrogance, the moment it is unrestrained by the necessity of forms among the rich, and the desire of pillage in the poor.

But I shall be glad now to exchange lapis lazuli for violets, and verd antique for green fields. Here are more amethysts about Rome than lilacs; and the laburnum which at this gay season adorns the environs of London, I look for in vain about the Porta del Popolo. The proud purple tulip which decorates the ground hereabouts, opposed to the British harebell, is Italy and England again; but the harebell by cultivation becomes a hyacinth, the tulip remains where it began. We are now at the 16th of April, yet I know not how or why it is, although the oaks, young, small, and straggling as they are, have the leaves come out all broad and full already, though the fig is bursting out every day and hour, and the mulberry tree, so tardy in our climate, that I have often been unable to see scarcely a bud upon them even in May, is here completely furnished. Apple trees are yet in blossom round this city, and the few elms that can be found, are but just unfolding. Common shrubs continue their wintry appearance, and in the general look of spring little is gained. The hedges now of Kent and Surrey are filled with fragrance I am sure, and primroses in the remoter provinces torment the sportsmen with spoiling the drag on a soft scenting morning; while limes, horse-chesnuts, &c. contribute to produce an effect not so inferior to that fostered by Italian sunshine, as I expected to find it.

Why the first breath of far-distant summer should thus affect the oak and fig, yet leave the elm and apple as with us, the botanists must tell; few advances have been made in vegetation since we left Naples, that is certain; the hedges were as forward near Pozzuoli two full months ago. And here are no China oranges to be bought; no, nor a cherry or strawberry to be seen, while every man of fashion’s table in London is covered with them; and all the shops of Covent-garden and St. James’s-street hang out their luxurious temptations of fruit, to prove the proximity of summer, and the advantages of industrious cultivation. Our eating pleased me more at every town than this; where however a man might live very well I believe for sixpence a-day, and lodge for twenty pounds a-year; and whoever has no attachment to religion, friends, or country, no prejudices to plague his neighbours with, and no dislike to take the world as it goes, for six or seven years of his life, may spend them profitably at Rome, if either his business or his pleasure be made out of the works of art; as an income of two, or indeed one hundred pounds per annum, will purchase a man more refined delights of that kind here, than as many thousands in England: nor need he want society at the first houses, palaces one ought to call them, as Italians measure no man’s merit by the weight of his purse; they know how to reverence even poverty, and soften all its sorrows with an appearance of respect, when they find it unfortunately connected with noble birth. His own country folk’s neglect, as they pass through, would indeed be likely enough to disturb his felicity, and lessen the kindness of his Roman friends, who having no idea of a person’s being shunned for any other possible reason except the want of a pedigree, would conclude that his must be essentially deficient, and lament their having laid out so many caresses on an impostor.

The air of this city is unwholesome to foreigners, but if they pass the first year, the remainder goes well enough; many English seem very healthy, who are established here without even the smallest intention of returning home to Great Britain, for which place we are setting out to-morrow, 19th April 1786, and quit a town that still retains so many just pretences to be styled the first among the cities of the earth; to which almost as many strangers are now attracted by curiosity, as were dragged thither by violence in the first stage of its dominion, impelled by superstitious zeal in the second. The rage for antiquities now seems to have spread its contagion of connoisseurship over all those people whose predecessors tore down, levelled, and destroyed, or buried under ground their statues, pictures, every work of art; Poles, Russians, Swedes, and Germans innumerable, flock daily hither in this age, to admire with rapture the remains of those very fabrics which their own barbarous ancestors pulled down ten centuries ago; and give for the head of a Livia, a Probus, or Gallienus, what emperors and queens could not then use with any efficacy, for the preservation of their own persons, now grown sacred by rust, and valuable from their difficulty to be decyphered. The English were wont to be the only travellers of Europe, the only dupes too in this way; but desire of distinction is diffused among all the northern nations, and our Romans here have it more in their power, with that prudence to assist them which it is said they do not want, if not to conquer their neighbours once again, at least to ruin them, by dint of digging up their dead heroes, and calling in the assistance of their old Pagan deities, now useful to them in a new manner, and ever propitious to this city, although