all foreigners who arrive here are or pretend to be
smitten with an ardent love for the fine arts, and
every one wishes to take with him models of the fine
things he has seen in Italy, on his return to his native
country. Here are English travellers who at home
would scarcely be able to distinguish the finest piece
of ancient sculpture—the Mercury, for instance,
in the Florentine Gallery, from a Mercury in a citizen’s
garden at Highgate—who here affect to be
in extacies at the sight of the Venus, Apollino, &c.,
and they are fond of retailing on all occasions the
terms of art and connoisseurship they have learned
by rote, in the use of which they make sometimes ridiculous
mistakes. For instance I heard an Englishman one
day holding forth on the merits of the Vierge
quisouse,
as he called it. I could not for some time divine
what he meant by the word
quisouse, but after
some explanation I found that he meant the celebrated
painting of the
Vierge qui coud, or
Vierge
couseuse, as it is sometimes called, which latter
word he had transformed into
quisouse.
This affectation, however, of passion for the
belle
arti, tho’ sometimes open to ridicule, is
very useful. It generates taste, encourages artists,
and is surely a more innocent as well as more rational
mode of spending money and passing time than in encouraging
pugilism or in racing, coach driving and cock fighting.
[83] Pope, Essay on Man, ep. III, 303-4.—ED.
CHAPTER X
Journey from Florence to Rome—Sienna—Radicofani—Bolsena—Montefiascone
wine—Viterbo—Baccano—The Roman Campagna—The papal douane—Monuments
and Museums in Rome—Intolerance of the Catholic Christians—The Tiber and
the bridges—Character of the Romans—The Palassi and Ville—Canova’s
atelier—Theatricals—An execution in Rome.
September——, 1816.
I made an agreement with a vetturino to take
me to Rome for three louis d’or and to
be spesato. In the carriage were two other
passengers, viz., a Neapolitan lady, the wife
of a Colonel in the Neapolitan service, and a young
Roman, the son of the Barigello or Capo degli
Sbirri at Rome. We issued from the Porta
Romana at 6 o’clock a.m. the 3d September.
The road winds thro’ a valley, and has a gentle
ascent nearly the whole way to Poggibonsi, where we
brought to the first night. The soil hereabouts
is far from fertile, but every inch of it is put to
profit. The olive tree is very frequent and several
farms and villages are to be met with. The next
day we arrived at 12 o’clock at Sienna.
The approach to Sienna is announced by a quantity
of olive trees. The situation of this city being
on an elevation, makes it cold and bleak. We
remained here three hours, so that I had time to visit
some of the places worthy of remark in this venerable