of grand conceptions, annihilate sublimity, and, with his energetic touch, force us to dwell upon lowness and vulgarity!

A great many pieces of Guercino's, of varying excellence. Benvenuto Garofalo's two paintings, which will catch your eye by their brilliant colouring-the Casta Susanna, and six very little, but beautiful landscapes and figures, quite miniatures, by Annibal Caracci-Pan teaching Apollo to play upon the pipes, by Ludovico Caracci-a Satyr and Nymph, by Agostino Caracci, coarse, but forcible, and designed by a master's hand and mind. Albert Durer's Four Misers, (a capital painting)—Andréa Mantegna's Head of Christ-Rubens's Portrait of his Confessor-Velasquez's Portrait of Innocent XVIII., and Raphael's Portraits of Bartolo and Baldi-all these you must see; but they form a very small part of the collection, although you will probably think the list already too long.

LETTER XLI.

PALAZZO COLONNA.

THE Colonna has, by far, the finest gallery, and about the worst collection of pictures of any in Rome. The immense length and beautiful proportions of this building, the noble Corinthian columns and pilasters of giallo antico marble that support itthe splendour of its painted roof, and the lustre of its marble pavement, delight the eye with the rare union of magnificence and taste, and well accord with the ancient greatness of the "Gloriosa Colonna." So indissolubly associated is that name in

my mind with the remembrance of Petrarch, and of those days of brightness in which poetry shed her revived light over the classic regions of Italy, that although the ancient palace in which he sojourned has long since been razed to the ground, his very name gave to this modern building a charm, which no palace, however splendid, could ever have possessed of itself.

Among the statues that adorn this gallery there are none worth notice except an ancient Diana, and a

small female figure reclining on her arm,-an exquisite piece of Grecian sculpture, apparently very ancient. None of the people here could give it a name, but I remember a similar figure in the Townley collection, of very inferior sculpture, which is there called a Nymph of Diana, reposing.

The Apotheosis of Homer, which Addison describes, the servants assured me, was no longer in the palace. It probably was sold at the same time the finest paintings were disposed of, which was done, we were informed, to satisfy the rapacity of the French, who levied repeated contributions upon the noble families of Rome, to an immense amount. One of the present Colonna family assigned this to me as the cause why two sides of this noble gallery, which are standing unfinished, have not been completed.

There are several fine paintings scattered through this immense palace, but so many bad ones, that the good are almost lost in the evil company among which they have fallen.

In the gallery there is a Claude, which must once have been very fine. It is called the Temple of Venus-and the beauty of the composition still charms the eye, through all the injuries it has sustained.

There are a great many of Orizonti's landscapes; some of them much superior to any of his I ever saw before. But there is all the difference between the worst of Claude Lorraine's paintings, and the best of Orizonti's, that can exist between the strains of a true poet, and the epic of a dull rhym

ster. For Claude Lorraine's paintings are the poetry of nature; and he who ever gazed upon them without feeling in his inmost heart their beauty and their sentiment, must have a soul that would be unmoved by those emotions, not born of earth, that stir within us at the call of divine music or diviner poesy.

Descriptions of paintings are so insufferable, that I should never mention one picture, if I did not know that by noticing the good ones, I may save you in part the slavery of examining a whole gallery of bad paintings, to find the few worth admiring. But, in pity to you and to myself, I must pass over several worth notice, or we shall never have done.

There is one, a Peasant eating his smoking hot dinner, gaping impatiently to take in a huge spoonful of scalding beans, but deterred by the fear of burning his mouth,-admirably told, with infinite truth and comic effect, by Annibale Caracci.

There is another in the same style, also said to be by him, but far more like Caravaggio. It represents a Knavish Clown, with his dinner before him, grasping a flask of wine in one hand and a glass in the other, and grinning so, that he absolutely makes the beholder grin too.

I observed a fine painting, by Annibale Caracci, in a very different style-a Madonna. Albano's Rape of Europa, and Christ between two Angelstwo fine Tintorettos-Christ delivering the Souls of the Blessed in Limbo, designed by Buonarotti, and painted by Marcello Venusti-and the Por

traits of Luther and Calvin, by Titian, perhaps more interesting from their subject than their execution, though I mean no offence to that. But the picture that rivetted my attention was Guido's St Sebastian; in which, joined to his usual chaste composition, and wonderful powers of expression, he has displayed a grandeur of conception, a force and freedom of pencil, a breadth, and a rare perfection of colouring, that I have seldom seen equalled in any of his works.

From this magnificent gallery we went to the garden, in which are to be seen the ugly and uninteresting remains of the baths of Constantine, which I once before mentioned to you, and which certainly did not invite us either to explore or describe them again.

The garden hangs on the steep side of the Quirinal Hill, on the summit of which, the broken but massive fragments of an immense pediment of Parian marble, covered with the finest sculpture, repose on the soft green turf, overshadowed by an ancient pine-tree.

It was just a combination that a painter would have wished. It was more than picturesque. It was what his fancy could never have formed, but his taste must at once have selected. These two fragments are called the remains of the Magnificent Temple of the Sun, built by Aurelian, after his triumphant return to Rome, with Zenobia, the captive Queen of Syria, in his train. It is very well a thing should have a name, but the sculpture is far too fine for Aurelian's age; and, in fact, it