one, or a pretty one. What struck me most in the general collection was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the mass of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day among the existing Italians. The queen of Cyprus and Giorgione's wife, particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same eyes and expression, and, to my mind, there is none finer. You must recollect, however, that I know nothing of painting; and that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think it possible to see, for which reason I spit upon and abhor all the Saints and subjects of one half the impostures I see in the churches and palaces; and when in Flanders, I never was so disgusted in my life, as with Rubens and his eternal wives and infernal glare of colours, as they appeared to me; and in Spain I did not think much of Murillo and Velasquez. Depend upon it, of all the arts, it is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of mankind is most imposed upon. I never yet saw the picture or the statue which came a league within my conception or expectation; but I have seen many mountains, and seas, and rivers, and views, and two or three women, who went as far beyond it,besides some horses; and a lion (at Veli Pacha's) in the Morea; and a tiger at supper in Exeter 'Change.— Venice, April 14, 1817. I went to the two galleries at Florence from which one returns drunk with beauty. The Venus is more for admiration than love; but there are sculpture and painting, which for the first time at all gave me an idea of what people mean by their cant, and what Mr. Braham calls "entusimusy" (i.e. enthusiasm) about those two most artificial of the arts. What struck me AN EXECUTION AT ROME. 87 most were, the mistress of Raphael, a portrait; the mistress of Titian, a portrait; a Venus of Titian in the Medici gallery-the Venus; Canova's Venus also in the other gallery: Titian's mistress is also in the other gallery (that is, in the Pitti Palace gallery); the Parce of Michael Angelo, a picture; and the Antinous, the Alexander, the Genius of Death, a sleeping figure, &c. &c.-Foligno, April 8, 1817. AN EXECUTION AT ROME. The day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined. The ceremony - including the masqued priests; the half-naked executioners; the bandaged criminals; the black Christ and his banner; the scaffold; the soldiery; the slow procession, and the quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe; the splash of the blood, and the ghastliness of the exposed heads-is altogether more impressive than the vulgar and ungentlemanly dirty "new drop," and dog-like agony of infliction upon the sufferers of the English sentence. Two of these men behaved calmly enough, but the first of the three died with great terror and reluctance. What was very horrible, he would not lie down; then his neck was too large for the aperture, and the priest was obliged to drown his exclamations by still louder exhortations. The head was off before the eye could trace the blow; but from an attempt to draw back the head, notwithstanding it was held forward by the hair, the first head was cut off close to the ears: the other two were taken off more cleanly. It is better than the oriental way, and (I should think) than the axe of our ancestors. The pain seems little; and yet the effect to the spectator, and the preparation to the criminal, are very striking and chilling. The first turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but was determined to see, as one should see everything once, with attention); the second and third (which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have saved them if I could. Venice, May 30, 1817. LOVE AND SUICIDE. An Austrian officer, the other day, being in love with a Venetian, was ordered, with his regiment, into Hungary. Distracted between love and duty, he purchased a deadly drug, which dividing with his mistress, both swallowed. The ensuing pains were terrific, but the pills were purgative, and not poisonous, by the contrivance of the unsentimental apothecary; so that so much suicide was all thrown away. You may conceive the previous confusion and the final laughter ; but the intention was good on all sides. June 4, 1817. Venice, MONUMENTS, CEMETERIES, AND EPITAPHS. I went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded me of the gravedigger in Hamlet. He has a collection of capuchins' skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of them, said, "This was Brother Desiderio Berro, who died at forty-one of my best friends. I begged his head of his brethren after his decease, and they gave it MONUMENTS, CEMETERIES, AND EPITAPHS. 89 Here it is, He was the me. I put it in lime, and then boiled it. teeth and all, in excellent preservation. merriest, cleverest fellow I ever knew. Wherever he went, he brought joy; and whenever any one was melancholy, the sight of him was enough to make him cheerful again. He walked so actively, you might have taken him for a dancer-he joked-he laughedoh! he was such a Frate as I never saw before, nor ever shall again!" He told me that he had himself planted all the cypresses in the cemetery; that he had the greatest attachment to them and to his dead people; that since 1801 they had buried fifty-three thousand persons. In showing some older monuments, there was that of a Roman girl of twenty, with a bust by Bernini. She was a princess Bartorini, dead two centuries ago; he said that, on opening her grave, they had found her hair complete, and "as yellow as gold." Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments at Bologna, for instance :— "Martini Luigi Implora pace." "Lucrezia Picini Implora eterna quiete." Can anything be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought: the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, and this they implore! There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and death-like prayer, that can arise from the grave "implora pace." I hope, whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' buryingground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of "pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall."* I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my death-bed could I suppose be base enough to convey my carcass back to your soil. I would not even feed your worms if I could help it.-Bologna, June 17, 1819. that any of my friends would LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF "MY GRANDMOTHER'S [In the first canto of Don Juan Lord Byron made 'The British Review,'-a religious publication which had then a languishing existence, the subject of the following piece of humorous extravagance. The public approbation I expect, And beg they'll take my word about the moral, For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish, I sent it in a letter to the Editor, Who thank'd me duly by return of post- Yet, if my gentle Muse he please to roast, I think that with this holy new alliance All other magazines of art or science, "If you should get a quietus, you may command me entirely. I'll get you a snug lying in the Abbey here; or pickle you, and send you over to Blunderbuss Hall."-Rivals, act v., sc. 2. |
