old Roman heads of Senators, Warriors, Philosophers. They have all the freshness of truth and nature. They shew something substantial in mortality. They are the only things that do not crush and overturn our sense of personal identity; and are a fine relief to the mouldering relics of antiquity, and to the momentary littleness of modern things! The Little Farnese contains the Galatea and the Cupid and Psyche. If any thing could have raised my idea of Raphael higher, it would have been some of these frescoes. I would mention the group of the Graces in particular; they are true Goddesses. The fine flowing outline of the limbs, the variety of attitudes, the unconscious grace, the charming unaffected glow of the expression, are inimitable. Raphael never perhaps escaped so completely from the trammels of his first manner, as in this noble series of designs. The Galatea has been injured in colour by the stoves which the Germans, who were quartered there, lighted in the apartment. In the same room is the famous chalk head, said to have been sketched upon the wall by Michael Angelo. The story is probably a fabrication; the head is as coarse and mechanical as any thing can be. Raphael's Loggia in the corridors of the Vatican (the subjects of what is called his Bible) appear to me divine in form, relief, conception-above all, the figure of Eve at the forbidden tree; his Stanzas there appear to me divine, more particularly the Heliodorus, the School of Athens, and the Miracle of Bolseno, with

all the truth and force of character of Titian's portraits (I see nothing, however, of his colouring) and his own purity, sweetness, and lofty invention, added to them. His oil pictures there are divine. The Transfiguration is a wonderful collection of fine heads and figures their fault is, that they are too detached and bare, but it is not true that it embraces two distinct points of time. The event below is going on in the Gospel account, at the same time with the miracle of the Transfiguration above. But I almost prefer to this the Foligno picture: the child with the casket below is of all things the most Raphaelesque, for the sweetness of expression, and the rich pulpy texture of the flesh; and perhaps I prefer even to this the Crowning of the Virgin, with that pure dignified figure of the Madonna sitting in the clouds, and that wonderous emanation of sentiment in the crowd below, near the vase of flowers, all whose faces are bathed in one feeling of ecstatic devotion, as the stream of inspiration flows over them. There is a singular effect of colouring in the lower part of this picture, as if it were painted on slate, and from this cold chilly ground the glow of sentiment comes out perhaps the more strong and effectual. In the same suite of apartments (accessible to students and copyists) are the Death of St. Jerome, by Domenichino; and the Vision of St. Romuald, by Andrea Sacchi, the last of the Italian painters. Five nobler or more impressive pictures are not in the world. A single figure of St.

Michelle (as a pilgrim among the Alps) is a pure rich offering of the pencil to legendary devotion, and remarkable for the simplicity of the colouring, sweetness of the expression, and the gloomy splendour of the background. There are no others equally good. The Vatican contains numberless fine statues and other remains of antiquity, elegant and curious. The Apollo I do not admire, but the Laocoon appears to me admirable, for the workmanship, for the muscular contortions of the father's figure, and the divine expression of the sentiment of pain and terror in the children. They are, however, rather small than young. Canova's figures here seem to me the work of an accomplished sculptor, but not of a great man. Michael Angelo's figures of Day and Night, at the Chapel of St. Lorenzo at Florence, are those of a great man; whether of a perfect sculptor or not, I will not pretend to say. The neck of the Night is curved like the horse's, the limbs have the involution of serpents. These two figures and his transporting the Pantheon to the top of St. Peter's, have settled my wavering idea of this mighty genius, which his David and early works at Florence had staggered. His Adam receiving life from his Creator, in the Sistine Chapel, for boldness and freedom, is more like the Elgin Theseus than any other figure I have seen. The Jeremiah in the same cieling droops and bows the head like a willow-tree surcharged with showers. Whether there are any faces worthy of these noble

figures I have not been near enough to see. Those near the bottom of the Last Judgment are hideous, vulgar caricatures of demons and cardinals, and the whole is a mass of extravagance and confusion. I shall endeavour to get a nearer view of the Prophets and Sybils in the Capella Sistina. And if I can discover an expression and character of thought in them equal to their grandeur of form, I shall not be slow to acknowledge it. Michael Angelo is one of those names that cannot be shaken without pulling down Fame itself. The Vatican is rich in pictures, statuary, tapestry, gardens, and in the views from it; but its immense size is divided into too many long and narrow compartments, and it wants the unity of effect and imposing gravity of the Louvre.

CHAPTER XX.

THERE are two things that an Englishman understands, hard words and hard blows. Nothing short of this (generally speaking) excites his attention or interests him in the least. His neighbours have the benefit of the one in war time, and his own countrymen of the other in time of peace. The French express themselves astonished at the feats which our Jack Tars have so often performed. A fellow in that class of life in England will strike his hand through a deal board-first, to shew his strength, which he is proud of; secondly, to give him a sensation, which he is in want of; lastly to prove his powers of endurance, which he also makes a boast of. So qualified, a controversy with a cannon-ball is not much out of his way a thirty-two pounder is rather an ugly customer, but it presents him with a tangible idea (a thing he is always in search of)-and, should it take off his head or carry away one of his limbs, he does not feel the want of the one or care for that of the other. Naturally obtuse, his feelings become hardened by custom; or if there are any qualms of repugnance or dismay left, a volley of oaths, a few coarse jests, and a double allowance of grog soon turn the