classic hill and hollow within the eternal walls, and have traced each spot hallowed by great events and deeds of heroism. Too impatient for slower conveyance, I have, upon a rapid courser, invaded the groves and solitudes of the sunny hills which environ the Roman crater. From Tivoli, Palestrina, and Frascati, I hounded across the Campagna to the Alban mount and lake. From thence I plunged into the dark woods which wave over the classic shores and bright blue waters of the Mediterranean; and, after briefly pausing at the ports of Nettuno, Ostia, and Civita Vecchia, I returned to Rome. Thus have I drawn a warrior's line around the glorious and imperishable city; and have endeavoured, as vehemently and as vainly as Hannibal, to make it all my own. Each morning, since my arrival, I have risen with the sun, and ascended the tower of the Capitol. How glorious from thence is the view of Rome and its environs! How fresh and lovely the distant and villa-crowned hills; how calm, how silent, and forsaken, the intervening Campagna, spanned by the bold arcades of interminable aqueducts; and how proudly the imperial city reposes on the sides and summits of its swelling hills, and on the margin of the Tiber, which, like a yellow serpent, winds through its centre, forming a line of attraction to the streets innumerable which radiate from its focus. This imposing metropolis is not exempt from local disadvantages; but where is the city so happily, so proudly placed, for the purposes of universal empire, and for rapid and easy communication with its vassal states in Europe, Africa, and Asia! After a few days devoted to repose, and to a more tranquil investigation of the most striking objects around me, I resume the pen. Fear not, however, that I shall fatigue you with dull details of architectural dimension and execution. These I abandon to Palladio and others, and shall confine my remarks on ancient and modern Rome to those edifices only which fascinate the eye by picturesque effect, or the imagination by associated recollections of the past. There is little, however, in the existing ruins to gratify the feelings of the scholar, whose memory is haunted by visions of free and republican Rome. With few exceptions, the chaos of magnificent vestiges before me, dates from the more splendid, but corrupt and cruel period, of imperial Rome; and the most imposing of these edifices were planned and executed by the savage and slaughter-loving Cæsars. How few of these magnificent barbarians possessed any redeeming virtues! The noblest of them contributed to swell the tide of human blood, which rolled through their splendid amphitheatres, and hunted to torture and death numbers of weak and unresisting Christians. And yet these men, whose cruelty differed in kind rather than in degree from that of Nero and Caligula, were worshipped by the Romans as demi-gods, and are still honoured by the epithets of great and good. I am, nevertheless, too ardent an admirer of all that is sublime and beautiful in art, to view with indifference these noble relics of departed grandeur; and although the largest portion of my time is devoted to the rich and inexhaustible treasures of the Vatican, I confess that some of these splendid ruins have laid so powerful a hold on my imagination, as to make me indifferent, and probably unjust, to those of secondary importance. As the day declines, I repair, with the eager haste of a lover, to gaze upon the proud masses and enormous outline of the Coliseum. The eye cannot measure, nor the memory retain, the huge proportions of this vast and venerable pile; and on each successive view it appears larger to the startled eye. This magical effect is also produced by the gradual disappearance of daylight. As the detail becomes indistinct, the masses gain importance, and stand out in loftier and bolder magnificence. No language can convey an adequate conception of the sublime and tranquil beauty of Rome by moonlight. Every minor object is absorbed in the great masses of light and shade, and the grander features of this august assemblage of noble edifices rise into rich and prominent relief. Amidst them towers the Coliseum, pre-eminent in size and grandeur, and throwing every contiguous object into insignificance and shade. Even the boldest of Rome's successive conquerors gazed with awe upon the frowning elevation and vast dimensions of a structure, in comparison with which the boasted amphitheatre of Verona was trifling and provincial. The builders and pedants of the day delight in the detection of petty inaccuracies in the circling lines of arcade and column, which enliven the exterior of this massive ruin, and without which it would have looked a fortress or a prison. These irregularities can offend only the worshippers of mere art, who will industriously trace the deviations of a moulding, while they overlook the perfect beauty of the elliptic form, the unrivalled and mountain grandeur of the mass, and the sublime effect of the immense outline. It is impossible to gaze upon these without acknowledging, that the builder of a Coliseum, like the architect of a gothic cathedral, may sin against all rule, and yet, if a man of bold and original conceptions, he will inevitably produce a sublime result. Returning yesterday from my daily visit to the Vatican, I wandered out of the gate along the ancient Via Ostia, and sought shelter from the meridian blaze in the church of San Paolo. The external appearance is mean, but the effect of the interior is indescribably rich and imposing. Picture to yourself a grove of one hundred and twenty columns, eighty of which are exquisite in colour, material, and form, dividing this immense oblong into five naves, the central nave distinguished by great breadth and appalling elevation, all of them eminently beautiful, and forming collectively a basilica unrivalled in the world. This edifice was designed before the practice of building, in the model of a cross, was carried to absurdity, and it exhibits that figure in its most simple form: the cross nave is hardly perceptible, and the noble effect of this great and angust oblong is unimpaired. The temporary and inconsistent roof over the great nave, and the various sizes and orders of the columns, are blemishes; but, as a whole, the grandeur of this Christian temple is unequalled, and will never be effaced from my memory. I gazed upon the rich symmetry of its beauteous columns, until I almost fancied each of them an imprisoned fair one, an Iphigenia in Tauris. It is believed that Honorius, the Goth, who built this church, removed the finest of these pillars from the mausoleum of Adrian, which is not improbable; but, when I look at their perfect condition, I suspect that the Romans experienced from the Goth the same menace which they had previously bestowed upon the Greek, when Mummius told the bearers of the plundered spoils of Corinth, that they should replace every damaged work of art with another of equal merit. When I emerged from this cool and classical retreat, which conveys to the heated frame the refreshment of a bath, I pursued my walk with renewed vigour, to the gate near which two frowning towers of the middle ages, the old city wall and the noble pyramid of Cestius, invited me to their pleasant shade. From thence I proceeded, under the dark foliage of cypress, chesnut, and evergreen oak, to the cool winecellars of Monte Testacco, and entered the tavern of a gay old Sicilian, a genuine son of Etna. I partook with keen relish of a simple repast, cheered my spirits with delicious wine, retired to an apartment fronting the shady north, and fell into profound and refreshing sleep. The afternoon had considerably advanced, when I was roused by the sounds of festivity, and by the sprightly tones of the violin and tambourine ascending from the garden. Ihastened to the window, and beheld the fine, full forms, the brilliant eyes, and the bounding feet, of a group of Roman girls, dancing to a lively measure, under the arching trees. The effect was so picturesque, that I quitted my apartment, intending to sketch some of the figures and attitudes of the lovely dancers. Passing the open door of a public saloon, I observed a party of young men in animated dialogue, and the magic sounds of "Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the antique," struck upon my sympathetic ear. I distinguished at a glance the ardent eyes, and intellectual features of a group of artists; and, recognizing amongst them a young Florentine of my acquaintance, I forgot the festive scene below, and entered the saloon during an altercation so vehement, that I joined the party unobserved. The speaker was a slender youth of eighteen, exhibiting in his person the classic elegance, the graceful symmetry of an Apollino; and, in his countenance, the flashing eye, the regular and well-chiselled features of a Greek. "Tell me not," said he, addressing the young Tuscan with wild and graceful animation; "tell me not that Buonarotti was a painter, unless you are prepared to prove that every man who thoroughly understands counterpoint is an able instrumentalist. Lie was no painter, but a powerful and eccentric teacher, who delighted in every thing that was singular and daring in design, difficult and perplexing in execution. He preferred the vain display of skill and science to the genuine object of art, which is beauty of character and expression, and thus invariably sacrificed the end to the means. He was indebted for no small share of his celebrity to the eloquent and exaggerated praises of that contemptible Florentine, Vasari, who lauded the peevish despot in golden periods that he might gain employment through his recommendation. "I admit his elevated rank as a professor of art; but, I ask you, what has he performed? What has he painted? His wearisome Sistine chapel. That huge congregation of such monsters as the world ne'er saw. His God the Father, his Prophets, and his Sybils; and, though last, not least in atrocity, the outrageously indecent and revolting groups in his Last Judgment. These figures are not painting, nor do they resemble any thing in nature. They are the phantasma of a painter's dreams, and originated in a diseased and irritable temperament. They display a colossal imagination, a boundless power of design, a minute and ostentatious knowledge of muscular action, and have benefited students by contributing immensely to the common stock of elementary studies; but they are destitute of all that can interest the eye and the heart, and they fail entirely in the noblest aim and ultimate object of art, which is to refine the taste, to elevate the feelings, and to expand the intellect of all mankind. "I have hitherto sought only to maintain by argument, that Michael Angelo was deficient in sound taste and judgment, and that he was unworthy of the name of painter. I will now unanswerably demonstrate, that he was mean and illiberal as a man, and I dare his Tuscan idolaters to disprove that conclusive evidence of a little mind, which appeared in his persecution of the mild and heavenly Raphael. Conscious of his hopeless inferiority as a colourist, and fearful that the rising reputation of his unassuming rival would eclipse his own, secretly exerted all his skill and science in sketching designs for Bastian del Piombo. The rich colouring of the Venetian was to poison the shaft, and these mongrel productions were intended to dim the splendid achievements of the unconscious painter of the Vatican. he "How beautifully contrasted with this degrading malice, was the pure and lofty integrity, the angelic forbearance, of the singlehearted and enthusiastic Raphael! Incapable of envy, aiming only at the perfection of art, and prompted by an engaging deference to the feelings of his irritable rival, he studied and made his own all that was really valuable in Michael Angelo. And herein consists the essential difference between these extraordinary men. Raphael could avail himself of the knowledge and skill of Buonarotti; but that which made Raphael the unrivalled king of painters, could neither be imparted nor acquired. It was the celestial spark-the radiance within the wondrous instinct, so deep, so certain, and so true, which is the noblest gift of Heaven. "Finally, while I concede to Michael Angelo an exalted station amongst the master spirits, who compose the base and the gradations of the great pyramid of art; I maintain, and I glory in the conviction, that Raphael alone has reached the crowning point. There he sits enthroned, and soars above all other artists at an elevation which it is impossible to surpass or to attain!" Although a Tuscan, aud a friend of Vasari, I was so rapturously excited by the impassioned eloquence of this young Demosthenes, and by the poetical beauty of his climax, that I could not refrain from a burst of applause. I regretted, however, the indulgence of this impulse, when I beheld the mute consternation, the Delphic horror of my young countryman. Although habitually fluent, he was so astonished and overwhelmed by the fiery philippic of his beardless antagonist, that I expected every moment to see him retreat, like Cicero, before the rebellious and handsome Clodius; and when I observed that he vainly attempted to recal his scattered senses, I roused my own in defence of him and Michael Angelo, and thus replied to the youthful worshipper of Raphael: "I am no exclusive idolater of Michael Angelo, and I admit the force and truth of many of your assertions, but I cannot assent to your sweeping conclusion that he was a mere professor of drawing ; nor can I believe that you, who possess so much poetry of mien and language, such fervour and such eloquence, are incapable of appreciating that awful power in his conception which strikes the intellectual beholder like the sound of the last trumpet. Certainly his God the Father resembles nothing in nature, and a sounder judgment would have prompted him to substitute a radiant shekinah, but modern art has produced no form of greater sublimity. His Prophets and Sybils are mighty personifications of more than human zeal, enthusiasm, and fire, and ought therefore to exhibit somewhat of an unearthly character. In his Last Judgment there is an appropriate grandeur of expression in the God-like severity of Jesus, who, with extended hand, menaces the souls of the Wicked, while his tender mother meekly folds her arms across her breast; and bids the souls of the righteous ascend into the regions of the Blessed. I admit that the lower portion of this immense design abounds with revolting absurdities, that the figures of the damned are merely multiplied versions of the Torso of Apollonius, and that the single figures are utterly destitute of that expression which ought to characterize their awful situation; and yet you cannot but acknowledge that the groupings of the numerous figures are original and masterly, and that no one but Michael Angelo could, with such amazing truth and certainty, have delineated the human form in every conceivable variety of position. "It has always been asserted by the admirers of this great man, that he would not condescend to paint in oil, and by his enemies and critics that he wanted the ability. Believe it not! His ruling foible was a painful consciousness of his incompetence in colouring; he affected to regard oil-painting with contempt, and the Michael Angelo of the public painted only in fresco. But that in his hours of seclusion and privacy he attempted to accomplish oil-paintings, is a fact verified by the existence of pictures which could have been executed by no other hand. The colouring of these is common-place or inefficient; but in drawing, in design, and in anatomical precision, they bear a stamp of power, of passion, and of science, which cannot for a moment be mistaken, and which precludes the possibility of their being copies. I have recently seen in Rome one of these paintings, of small dimensions, but full of poetry and feeling, and representing the Crucifixion. "The Saviour has just said to his mother, Woman, behold thy Son! and to the disciple whom he loved, Son, behold thy Mother! The virgin stands on the right of the cross, St. John on the left, and above them two angels appear amidst fiery clouds in a lurid and stormy sky, and minister unto Jesus. The Christ and the Madonna surpass in tragic sublimity every pictured representation of them I ever beheld. His countenance is that of a dying Tiberius Gracchus, ennobled by a super-human and blended expression of suffering, of resignation, and of grandeur. The Virgin Mary is another Cornelia, whose fine features are characterized by greatness of soul and intensity of grief. How poor, how common-place, in comparison, are all other Madonnas, even those of Raphael, whom I venerate and love as another Apelles. She is represented of lofty stature, of matured and matronly, but undiminished beauty; and her mien is that of self-possession and majesty. Her countenance is finely and eloquently expressive of deep anguish, blended with lofty indignation at the cruel death inflicted upon her |