the first sight of the Alps. Much as I
expected I was not disappointed. St. Peter's sets criticism at
defiance; nor can I conceive how anybody can do anything but
admire and wonder there, till time and familiarity with its
glories shall have subjected the imagination to the judgment. I
then came home and went with Morier to take a cursory view of the
city and blunt the edge of curiosity. In about five hours I
galloped over the Forum, Coliseum, Pantheon, St. John Lateran,
Santa Maria Maggiore, the Vatican, and several arches and
obelisks. I cannot tell which produced the greatest impression,
St. Peter's or the Coliseum; but if I might only have seen one it
should be the Coliseum, for there can be nothing of the same kind
besides.[14]

[14] Of the same kind there is, at Pompeii, but not near so
fine; more perfect as a specimen, far less beautiful as
an object. And the amphitheatre at Verona, but that is
very inferior.

[Page Head: SIGHTS OF ROME]

They only who have seen Rome can have an idea of the grandeur of
it and of the wonders it contains, the treasures of art and the
records of antiquity. Of course I had the same general idea of
there being much to see that others have, but was far from being
prepared for the reality, which exceeds my most sanguine
expectations. The Vatican alone would require years to be
examined as it deserves. It is remarkable, however, how the
pleasure of the imagination arising from antiquities depends upon
their accidents. The busts, statues, columns, tombs, and
fragments of all sorts are heaped together in such profusion
at the Vatican that the eyes ache at them, the senses are
bewildered, and we regard them (with some exceptions) almost
exclusively as objects of art, and do not feel the interest
which, separately, they might inspire by their connection with
remote ages, whereas there is scarcely one of those, if it were
now to be discovered, that would not excite the greatest
curiosity, and be, in the midst of the ruins to which it belongs,
an object of far greater interest than a finer production which
had taken its splendid but frigid position in this collection. We
went to the Sistine Chapel, and saw Michael Angelo's frescoes,
which Sir Joshua Reynolds says are the finest paintings in the
world, and which the unlearned call great rude daubs. I do not
pretend to the capacity of appreciating their merits, but was
very much struck with the ease, and