STA. MARIA IN TRASTEVERE. 85 of Pillars themselves, they look at once ashamed at the insult thus offered to their ancient majesty, and indignantly appeal to some friendly hand to vindicate their outraged dignity, and once more exhibit them in their naked beauty of proportion and form. The marvel to me is, that, with so much of the sublime ancientry of Heathendom about them, and so much of intellect and taste to appreciate and preserve its Monuments, these Italians have not the sense to see the incongruity, nay, the absurdity, of blending modern Decoration with antique Austerity. How, oh! how could those Master Minds that delivered from their tombs the Buried of the Baths, whose munificence exercised the pencils of Painters and the chisels of Sculptors for their palaces and temples, whose Pride appropriated the choicest Relics of Athens and Rome to their halls, or whose Piety devoted their gigantic Remains to their churches,-how could they be so foolish or so unfeeling as to make the Captive Masterpieces stoop to be disguised in yards of red cloth, or tarnished with bandages of trumpery tinsel! Alas! it is the meretricious Spirit that like a leprosy pervades the Papal system, which spreads even over its Architecture. "It seemeth to me there is, as it were, a Plague in the House." "It is a fretting Leprosy in the House it is unclean."—Leviticus xiv. 35, &c. 86 THE LAOCOON. Rome, 30th May, 1844. ONCE more, then, I have seen the Laocöon! Such a Struggle, and so beautiful! Those noble features in such transports of Pain, yet rapt rather than distorted by it. The bodily Anguish is so evidently subordinate to the Parental throes. Why my Lord Byron calls him "the Old Man," I am at a loss to conceive. That frame, in its naked agony, discloses all the vigour of life's meridian. The left shoulder with its swelling veins, the broad palpitating breast,-oh! it is enough to make one in love with Torture. This sublime conception affects one equally, but in quite a different way from the Dying Gladiator. They are each in different stages of suffering. With the noble Creature of Ctesilas the worst is over. Light has left his eyes, Death is rapidly and mercifully supplanting Pain; this world is no more for him; its miseries have done their worst. But the Trojan Priest is writhing in his first agonies; the deadly fangs of the Serpent gripe his manly Chest; and, if one may judge from the tightened cordage of those deadly coils, each limb of that magnificent Frame is in the very act of being crushed. But this is little-evidently a secondary source of suffering to the Father, in whose ears his Children's shrieks are ringing, his Children involved in the same excruciating death, and STATUE OF LUCIUS VERUS. 87 vainly appealing for help to that Parent whose keenest pang at that moment was his Helplessness! It is not from his own body that Laocöon cares to disengage the snaky fetters; he only wishes to be free his shrieking, dying Boys. I think it somewhat unfortunate for that dilettante Archer, the Belvidere Apollo, that such plain matter-of-fact pieces of Nature as the Dying Gladiator, the Laocoon, and the Antinous, should be extant at the same time with his very superlative Divinity. The Galleria del Nilo is certainly one of the richest Corridors of the Vatican Museum. The arrangement of the Statues is most felicitous, each in his own stately niche, extending in a double range, each after each occupying a portion of the view till its sublime perspective dwindles into the distances, the pillared distances of more than two hundred feet! There are Statues here each deserving a Portico and a Cabinet to itself as much as the Belvidere or the Antinous. The Mercury, the Faun and Bacchus, the Euripides, the Minerva, are all capi d'opere. But if one might select out of all the effigies, not only of this Gallery, but of the entire Vatican, the most absolute personation of mere earthly beauty, I should say it was the Statue of Lucius Verus, the adopted son of Nerva, who, happily for Rome, failed of the Purple by dying before his Imperial Patron. Surely there never entered into the heart or mind of sculptor so majestic, so amiable a Nude. I could have 88 ROMAN PEASANTS IN THE VATICAN. wept when at home I compared his real character with his outward form and shew. The beckoning Gesture of the right hand is inimitable. You could fancy that as Macbeth saw the visionary dagger, so Verus sees the imperial Sceptre which he was doomed never to wield. I should like to see, engraven in letters of Gold, upon the Pedestal of this Statue, that noble passage in Beaumont and Fletcher: "The greatest hearted Man, supplied with means, Aye, though the Right-band of his sovereign, Glitters but like a Palace set on fire, Whose Glory, while it shines, but ruins him; May 31st, 1844. It is a charming thing to see the Peasantry of Rome and its neighbourhood admitted as freely to these incomparable Saloons of Art, as the most distinguished among the aristocracy of Genius, Birth, or Wealth. There was a fine swarthy Countryman, six feet high, with black curly hair, and that noble countenance so mournful in repose, but so brilliant when lighted up by emotion; and so peculiar to Italy ROMAN PEASANTS IN THE VATICAN. 89 standing by me in front of the Laocöon; and I was amused, I may say instructed, by his minute inspection of every part of the Groupe. It was the wondering attention of an intellect admiring, but not conscious of comprehending what it deeply felt. If not a Genius himself, who knows how mysteriously he may kindle genius in his sons, as he recounts from time to time the wonders of Art which he has seen in these Saloons, in his own white Cottage home, among the Sabine Hills, as they repose beneath the deep shade of his Walnut and Figtrees amidst the airy glow of such a Summer as this: "Or in the Nights of Winter, When the cold north winds blow, Roars loud the tempests din, And the good logs of Algidus "When the oldest cask is opened, When the chesnuts glow in the embers, "When the Goodman mends his armour, When the Goodwife's shuttle merrily LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. |