After dinner I walked a little in the gardens on the Pincian hill, and then visited some friends belonging to the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture, who were so good as to shew me their productions, and also a copy of the superb folio edition of Denon’s work on Egypt which to me, who had been in that country, was highly gratifying.  Oh! what a pity that the French could not keep that country!  What a paradise they would have made of it!  As it is (and to their credit be it said) they did more good for the country during three years only, than we have done for our possessions in India for fifty years.

ROME, 15th Septr.

The next morning, after an early breakfast, I repaired to the Pantheon, now called Santa Maria della Rotonda, and appropriated to the Catholic worship.  It is easily recognizable by its rotundity and by the simple grandeur of its facade and portico.  The bronze has been taken out of the letters of the inscription.  This beautiful specimen of ancient architecture is situated in a small piazza or square called Piazza della Rotonda, where a market of poultry, game, and vegetables is held.  There are only now three or four steps on the escalier to ascend, in order to enter into the portico; but as it is known that according to the descriptions of the Pantheon in ancient times there was an immense flight of steps to ascend, it is an additional proof how much the ground on which modern Rome stands has been filled up, and consequently it is evident that the greater part of this flight of steps remains still buried in the earth.

If I was so struck with the appearance of this interesting edifice outside, how much more so should I have been on seeing the inside, were not the niches, where formerly stood the statues of the Gods, filled with tawdry dolls representing the Virgin Mary and he and she saints.  The columns and pilasters in the interior of this temple are beautiful, all of jaune antique and one entire stone each.  How much better would it have been to replace the statues of the Dii Majorum Gentium which occupied the niches, by statues in marble of the Apostles, instead of the dolls dressed in tawdry colors, and the frippery gilding of the altars on which they stand, which disfigure this noble building.  The Pantheon was built by Agrippa as the inscription shews.  In the interior are sixteen columns of jaune antique.  The bronze that formerly ornamented this temple was made use of to fabricate the baldachin of St Peter’s.  Of late years it has been the fashion to erect monuments affixed to the walls of the interior of the Pantheon to the memory of the great men and heroes of poetry, painting, sculpture and music who were natives of Italy, or for foreigners, celebrated for their excellence in those arts, who have died in Rome.  Here are for instance, tablets to the memory of Metastasio, Rafael Mengs, Sacchini, Poussin, Winckelmann; the