islands, should be mentioned; the colour of which is even blue with venom, and left a brassy taste in my mouth for a whole day, after only observing how it boiled with rage on dropping in a stone, and incrusted a stick with its tartar in two minutes.  One of our companions indeed leaped upon the little spots of ground which float in it, and deserved to feel some effect of his rashness; but it is sufficient to stand near, I think; one scarcely can escape contagion.  The sudden and violent powers observable in this lake should at least check the computists from thinking they can gather the world’s age from its petrefactions.

But we are called to the Vatican, where the Apollo, Laocoon, Antinous, and Meleager, with others of less distinguished merit, suffer one to think on nothing but themselves, and of the artists who framed such models of perfection.  Laocoon’s agonies torment one.  I was forced to recollect the observation Dr. Moore says was first made by Mr. Locke, in order to harden my heart against him who appears to feel only for himself, when two such youths are expiring close beside him.  But though painting can do much, and sculpture perhaps more, at least one learns to think so here at Rome, the comfort is, that poetry beats them both.  Virgil knew, and Shakespeare would have known, how to heighten even this distress, by adding paternal anguish:—­here is distress enough however.

Let us once more acknowledge the modesty and candour of Italians, when we repeat what has been so often recorded, that Michael Angelo refused adding the arm that was wanting to this chef d’oeuvre; and when Bernini undertook the task, he begged it might remain always a different colour, that he might not be suspected of hoping that his work could ever lie confounded with that of the Greek artist.

Such is not the spirit of the French:  they have been always adding to Don Quixote! a personage whose adventures were little likely to cross one’s fancy in the Vatican; but perfection is perfection.

Here stands the Apollo though, in whom alone no fault has yet been found.  They tell you, he has just killed the serpent Python.  “Let us beg of him,” says one of the company, “just to turn round and demolish those cursed snakes which are devouring the poor old man and his boys yonder.”  This was like the speech of Marchez donc to the fine bronze horse under the heavenly statue of Marcus Aurelius at the Capitol, and made me hope that story might be true.  It is the fashion for every body to go see Apollo by torch light:  he looks like Phoebus then, the Sun’s bright deity, and seems to say to his admirers, as that Divinity does to the presumptuous hero in Homer,

    Oh son of Tydeus, cease! be wise, and see
    How vast the difference ’twixt the gods and thee.

Indeed every body finds the remark obvious, that this statue is of beauty and dignity beyond what human nature now can boast; and the Meleager just at hand, with the Antinous, confirm it; for all elegance and all expression, unpossessed by the Apollo, they have, while none can miss the inferiority of their general appearance to his.