f miles farther on, at Boon Convento, hard by
Montepulciano, now justly celebrated for its wine, he had the amusing
adventure with the hostler which gave occasion for his vivid portrait
of an Italian uffiziale, and also to that irresistible impulse to cane
the insolent hostler, from the ill consequences of which he was only
saved by the underling's precipitate flight. The night was spent at
Radicofani, five and twenty miles farther on. A clever postilion
diversified the route to Viterbo, another forty-three miles. The party
was now within sixteen leagues, or ten hours, of Rome. The road from
Radicofani was notoriously bad all the way, but Smollett was too
excited or too impatient to pay much attention to it. "You may guess
what I felt at first sight of the city of Rome."

"When you arrive at Rome," he says later, in somewhat more accustomed
vein, "you receive cards from all your country folk in that city. They
expect to have the visit returned next day, when they give orders not
to be at home, and you never speak to one another in the sequel. This
is a refinement in hospitality and politeness which the English have
invented by the strength of their own genius without any assistance
either from France, Italy, or Lapland." It is needless to recapitulate
Smollett's views of Rome. Every one has his own, and a passing
traveller's annotations are just about as nourishing to the imagination
as a bibliographer's note on the Bible. Smollett speaks in the main
judiciously of the Castle of St. Angelo, the Piazza and the interior of
St. Peter's, the Pincian, the Forum, the Coliseum, the Baths of
Caracalla, and the other famous sights of successive ages. On Roman
habits and pastimes and the gullibility of the English cognoscente he
speaks with more spice of authority. Upon the whole he is decidedly
modest about his virtuoso vein, and when we reflect upon the way in
which standards change and idols are shifted from one pedestal to
another, it seems a pity that such modesty has not more votaries. In
Smollett's time we must remember that Hellenic and primitive art,
whether antique or medieval, were unknown or unappreciated. The
reigning models of taste in ancient sculpture were copies of
fourth-century originals, Hellenistic or later productions. Hence
Smollett's ecstasies over the Laocoon, the Niobe, and the Dying
Gladiator. Greek art of the best period was hardly known in authentic
examples; antiques so fine as the Torso of Hercules