siasm they are studied and admired. I never found or left the rooms destitute of a crowd of visitants. Such is the homage paid to the

divinity of genius.

Another department of the Vatican, comprising a suite of half a dozen chambers, contains a small but choice collection of pictures by the first masters. The most celebrated of these is the Transfiguration, by Raphael, the merits of which have in my opinion been greatly overrated. Truth compels me to confess, that it afforded me very little pleasure-far less than many of the minor pieces of the same artist. My disappointment was perhaps in part owing as usual to exaggerated expectations. Yet it appeared to me there are intrinsic and obvious defects in the design, the composition, and expression. It is a well known principle, that in every picture there should be some leading feature, some prominent point, to which all other parts ought to be rendered subordinate and accessory. There is a gross violation of this rule in the Transfiguration. The action is broken, and unsubdued, and the mind of the spectator is distracted by contending groups. In such a scene, one might naturally expect that the Saviour, with his countenance like lightning and his ráiment white as snow, would be the most conspicuous figure. But this is not the case. In the multitude at the base of the mountain, forming the largest section of the piece, a maniac boy, convulsed and distorted with madness, forces himself upon the eye, and prevents it from rising to what should be the principal object of attention-the transformation of the Saviour. Raphael seldom "o'ersteps the modesty of nature;" but in this instance, his maniac is characterized by all the wildness and extravagance of Domenichino. The figure is so overwrought, as to become, like the Ophelia of West, an object of horror and disgust. Nor does the scene upon the mount, filling the upper part of the canvass, display much grandeur of conception. Its glories are but feebly, not to say awkwardly, represented. The Saviour is poised in air, with Moses and Elias at his side. To the celestial figure and self-balanced position of the former, the mind of the spectator is readily reconciled; but the heavy-moulded persons of the two attendants, treading upon vacuity, appear in most unnatural and constrained attitudes. Such miraculous buoyancy does not seem to be authorised or required by the words of the Evangelist; and I can perceive no reason why the divine trio might not with more propriety have stood upon terra firma.

Of the other rare pictures in this gallery, the most remarkable are the Madonna di Foligno, and the Coronation of the Madonna, by Raphael; the Crucifixion of St. Peter, by Guido; the Incredulity of

St. Thomas, and a Magdalen, by Guercino; a Holy Family, by Caravaggio; a Madonna and Saints, ascribed to Titian; the Communion of St. Jerome, by Domenichino. These are all gems. The two first and the last are inimitable productions. Most of them have crossed the Alps and attracted crowds of admirers to the Louvre, where they remained till the restoration of the Bourbons. The apartments in which they are at present deposited, are open to the public twice a week, and at all times accessible to artists, to whom every facility is afforded for taking copies and prosecuting their professional pursuits.

LETTER LXXIII.

ROME CONTINUED--VATICAN MUSEUM--LIBRARY-GARDEN-SKETCH

OF THE PRESENT POPE.

June, 1826.

THE Chiaramonti and Pio-Clementino Museums at the Vatican are so extensive, and contain such an infinite variety of articles, that I almost recoil from the task of retracing the labyrinth of sumptuous saloons, and of attempting to give even so much as a desultory notice of their splendid treasures. In comparison with this display of papal magnificence, the halls of the Louvre, the galleries of Florence, and the Studii at Naples are but toy-shops. Here are not less than fifty apartments, or more properly superb temples of the arts, of different sizes and the most beautiful forms; sometimes opening immediately into another, and at others, connected by long corridors, presenting the finest vistas imaginable; with pavements of the richest mosaic, walls lined with pillars of porphyry, alabaster, and Parian marble, and roofs bright with azure and gold; all filled with the choicest collections of antiquities, sculptures, busts, and statues. Several visits are required, to catch even a hasty glance at the innumerable objects, which challenge attention and bewilder the mind of the spectator.

The entrance to the Museum is from the quarter of the Vatican denominated the Belvidere, through a gallery something like a thousand feet in length, and fifteen or twenty feet in width, the walls of which are lined from the floor to the ceiling with ancient inscriptions. Those on the right are taken from the tombs, tablets, and sarcophagi of the old Romans; while those upon the left were chiefly found in the catacombs, and relate to the early christians. The original fragments of marble are arranged with care, and firmly fixed, so as to form the permanent facing of the wall. What a volume of private history, containing a thousand minute particulars, illustrative of the early ages, to be obtained from no other sources, is here opened to the scholar and antiquary! What a commentary, too, on the vanities of life do these shattered remnants of sepulchral monuments afford; where a mutilated epitaph or the record of a name furnishes the only trace of the forgotten dead! All else respecting them has perished.

Having traversed this Campo Santo of the Vatican, consecrated ex

clusively to the Dis Manibus,* the traveller who has set out on the interesting journey of the rounds of the Museum, arrives at an ironrailing, extending across the hall, with a gate under lock and key, which is opened only twice a week to the public. We have just passed a section of the gallery, where names are found without works, and we now stumble at every step upon works without names-wrecks of other ages, which have floated unlabelled down the stream of time, while the records and honours of authorship have all been lost. On both sides of the hall extend long ranges of antique statues, busts, hermes, bas-reliefs, urns, and sarcophagi, of the richest materials and the most finished workmanship. Apartment opens after apartment, where under the auspices of munificent Pontiffs, the divinities of antiquity repose in more sumptuous alcoves, than they enjoyed in the day of their glory, and imperial heads are mounted upon prouder pedestals, than they ever found in the palaces of the Cæsars.

The celebrated Group of the Nile, consisting of a recumbent rivergod surrounded by Cupids and the emblems of fertility, occupies a splendid hall to which it gives name, and which is among the richest in ancient statues. In its centre stands a magnificent bronze vase, wrought with exquisite skill. Silenus nursing the infant Bacchus is an inimitable work. So also is the Minerva Medica, bearing the emblem of the healing art. The bust of Sallust, and statues of Euripides and Pindar claim attention. But I must not linger at the threshold, to examine the heads of historians and poets, while so many objects of higher interest beckon me onward.

The Belvidere Torso, so much admired and studied by Michael Angelo, can afford little pleasure to any one, except a connoisseur or an artist, as nothing but the trunk and thighs remain. It is supposed to be the fragment of a Hercules, executed by Apollonius of Athens, whose name it bears, and to have once adorned the theatre of Pompey. In the vestibule which contains the Torso, are to be seen the sarcophagus and bust of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, taken from the tomb of that illustrious family, alluded to in one of my previous letters. There is a character of rude unostentatious grandeur and republican simplicity about these memorials of the dead, which exalts them above the tawdry decorations of later times. The material is of peperino, a common kind of stone used for building, and the sole object of these

All the sepulchral monuments of the Romans were inscribed with the initials D. M.-to the infernal deities-for the purpose of deterring the living from disturbing the ashes of the dead.

stern monuments seems to have been, to designate the ashes and perpetuate the name of a great man. There could indeed have been no other motive; for it will be remembered, that the Tomb of the Scipios was a plain subterranean vault, like that of our own immortal Washington at Mount Vernon, with no imperial mausoleum towering to the skies, to court the admiration of the passenger.

From the corridor which looks into one of the twenty spacious courts of the Vatican, I saw a beautiful model of a ship in bronze, floating on the undulations of the fountain below. Here also is deposited a sun-dial of the old Romans, on which time is measured according to the ancient mode of computation. From this point, objects of interest thicken upon the observer at every step. A magnificent vase of Grecian marble, found in one of the Roman Baths, possesses all the elegance of form and finish, which skill and taste can impart to the finest material. In an adjoining apartment is a statue of Meleager, attended by his dog and the fabled boar of Calydon. This, however, is not the far-famed statue of the same name, which was so much admired under the title of the Belvidere Antinous, till the sagacious Winkelman, that prince of antiquaries, detected the misnomer and proved it to be a Meleager. The latter is farther on in the gallery, and deserves all the enthusiastic admiration, which its symmetrical form and its calm, unaffected expression have called forth.

The elegant little temple denominated the first cabinet, contains the Perseus and the Boxers of Canova, which are almost the only modern statues to be found in this immense collection; a signal honour, though conferred perhaps less from an acknowledgment of his pre-eminent claims as an artist, than on account of his invaluable services in the arrangement of the Museum. There are those, even among his disciples and friends, who believe that the merits of the man, styled by some the Phidias of his age, have been overrated, and will not be accredited to their full amount by an impartial posterity. A distinguished pupil of his-one who reveres his memory and cherishes his fame-expressed to me an opinion, that there is an artist now at Rome, whose talent is of a higher cast than Canova ever possessed. But it does not become one so little versed in the arts as myself, to sit in judgment on the living and the dead. There is perhaps some ground for the remark, that Canova laboured too much to produce effect; that his statues, if the expression may be allowed, are too theatrical in their attitudes, and wanting in that unaffected ease and simplicity, which characterize the productions of the Grecian chisel. The works of any modern artist, whatever may be his merits, must suffer by a comparison with the master-pieces of antiquity; and the Perseus and Boxers of Canova