for the Giustiniani Palace, where he found an asylum from the gallows, and painted in a room which was blackened to harmonize with his genius and his heart. The ruffian loved the Scriptures, and rarely excelled out of them. His frugal pencil gives but few figures, nor much of those few; for his lights fall in red and partial masses without Whatever they fall on, diffusion. any indeed, starts into life; but the rest is lost in abrupt darkness;-a transition hardly in nature, or true only in candlelights. This gloomy man could paint deep thoughtfulness, strong passion, intense devotion or broad laughter; but he had no pencil for smiles, or beauty, or placid dignity, or love."

The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus, by Nicholas Poussin, and that of St. Proces and St. Martinien, by Valentin, mosaic copies of both which are to be seen in St. Peter's, struck me as an apt illustration of Madame de Staël's remark: That, in such subjects, painful sensations must ever be produced by the appearance of blood and wounds and tortures, even though the victims may seem animated by the noblest enthusiasm. In such pictures it is impossible not to look for accuracy of imitation, and yet one shudders at the thought of finding it."

Of the remaining pictures in this collection, those most worthy of notice are-the Crucifixion of St. Peter, one of the most esteemed works of Guido-the St. Thomas putting his finger into the wound in the Saviour's side, an admired performance of Guercino's—and an Annunciation, formerly at Loreto, the work of Frederick Bar

rocci.

Such are a few of the more interesting objects in the Vatican;-for it would be useless, and, indeed, hopeless, to attempt to give a detailed description of its contents. "Painting and sculpture, strictly speaking, do not perhaps admit of description. The ideas received by one sense can hardly be transmitted by another. A man may give the exact proportions of the Venus of Medicis; but this can never impart a single idea of the grace and dignity diffused over that divine statue; and if he mention that grace, he describes his own sensations rather than the figure. He who could, by his description, place before the eyes of his reader the effect produced by the Venus;—who could convey, by words, the manly, resigned, patient suffering of the Dying Gladiator, conscious that he is breathing his last;-or that melancholy and terrible gloom, which attended the destruction of all things, as exhibited in the Deluge of Poussin-with the heart-rending despair of the husband and father, who sees his wife perishing, and his child exposed to inevitable death-who could shew him the glowing tints of sunset, or the moonbeams glistening on the scarcelyrippling ocean, as created by the pencil of Claude Loraine and Vernet;—the man who could excite sensations similar to those which have been produced by these masters of the sublime and beautiful, would cease to describe;-he would be their equal in a different line;he would be himself-a poet*."

• Mathews.

CAPITOLINE MUSEUM.

Excudent alii spirantia molliùs æra

...

Vivos ducent de marmore vultus.-VIRG.

Of all the Seven Hills of old Rome the Capitoline was the most famous. There many of the most important public assemblies were held: thither each victorious commander proceeded in triumph to offer up sacrifice to Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the rest of the gods; and there they hung up as trophies the spoils stripped from their vanquished foes. On the Capitol, too, was placed the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, that of Juno and Minerva, those of Fortune, of the Beardless Jupiter, of Jupiter Feretrius, and of so many other deities, that this spot was called the abode of the Gods. In addition to all these, there were porticos, triumphal arches, and various other edifices, decorated with statues within and without; insomuch that were we to imagine all these structures as existing at the same time, it would be impossible to find room for them in a space so limited. The difficulty, however, is in some measure got over, not only by the probably diminutive size of some of these structures*, but by the reflection that the Romans not unfrequently substituted one edifice for another.

* Dionysius of Halicarnassus says, "Romulus, after his first triumph, erected a temple on the summit of the Capitoline Hill, in

The ancient Capitol, having been the centre of the Roman power, and the place where the masters of the world determined the fate of subjugated nations, may naturally be supposed to have offered an imposing spectacle during the most palmy state of the Roman empire; but all its ancient edifices have long since been swept away, and instead of the imposing and the majestic, we now meet only with the graceful and the elegant. The modern building, though the work of Michael Angelo, is not worthy to crown the summit of the "Capitoli immobile saxum," as the Romans in the pride of their national vanity delighted to call it. But what is now become of their Eternal Empire, with the fables of Juventus and Terminus, which were to them sacred articles of faith! "The wind hath passed over it, and it is gone." Not only is the Capitol itself fallen, but its very name, once fondly cherished as an omen of empire, is now almost lost in the modern appellation of Campidoglio.

"This devoted attachment to their country," says Mathews, "is perhaps the only amiable feature in the national character of the Romans. With what spirit does it break out in the invocation of Horace;

Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui
Promis et celas, aliusque et idem

Nasceris; possis nihil urbe Româ

Visere majus!

honour of Jupiter Feretrius; and, judging by the present remains, this building was diminutive; the greatest extent of its walls being less than fifteen feet."

Fair Sun, who, with unchanging beam,
Rising another and the same,

Dost from thy beamy car unfold

The glorious day,

Or hide it in thy setting ray;

Of light and life immortal source,

May'st thou, in all thy radiant course,

Nothing more great than seven-hill'd Rome behold! - FRANCIS.

though in these very lines there is a sufficient indication of that jealous hostility towards all other nations, with which this love of country was combined.

Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,

The

To spare the suppliant, and to quell the proud.-SPENCE.

of their favourite poet, contains a complete exposition of the spirit of their foreign policy-a truly domineering and tyrannical spirit—which could not be at rest while there was any other people on the face of the earth that claimed the rights of national independence."

In the square of the Capitol is the famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only bronze equestrian statue now remaining in Rome. It passed successively for that of Constantine, L. Verus, or Sept. Severus. Of this statue there is, according to Addison, a representation on a medal of Lucius Verus. At least, he says, "The horse and man on the medal are in the same posture as they are in the statue, and there is a resemblance to Marcus Aurelius's face." Some have thought they could trace the image of an owl in the mane, and have therefore concluded that the artist must have been an