en to destroy
blasphemers. It was the figure of the saint I admired, merely as a
portrait. The execution of the other parts was tame enough; perhaps
they were purposely kept down in order to preserve the importance of
the principal figure. I imagine Salvator Rosa would have made a
different disposition on the same subject--that amidst the darkness of
a tempest he would have illuminated the blasphemer with the flash of
lightning by which he was destroyed. This would have thrown a dismal
gleam upon his countenance, distorted by the horror of his situation as
well as by the effects of the fire, and rendered the whole scene
dreadfully picturesque."

Smollett confuses historical and aesthetic grandeur. What appeals to
him most is a monument of a whole past civilization, such as the Pont
du Gard. His views of art, too, as well as his views of life, are
profoundly influenced by his early training as a surgeon. He is not
inclined by temperament to be sanguine. His gaze is often fixed, like
that of a doctor, upon the end of life; and of art, as of nature, he
takes a decidedly pathological view. Yet, upon the whole, far from
deriding his artistic impressions, I think we shall be inclined rather
to applaud them, as well for their sanity as for their undoubted
sincerity.

For the return journey to Florence Smollett selected the alternative
route by Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Perugia, and Arezzo, and, by
his own account, no traveller ever suffered quite so much as he did
from "dirt," "vermin," "poison," and imposture. At Foligno, where
Goethe also, in his travels a score of years or so later, had an
amusing adventure, Smollett was put into a room recently occupied by a
wild beast (bestia), but the bestia turned out on investigation to be
no more or no less than an "English heretic." The food was so filthy
that it might have turned the stomach of a muleteer; their coach was
nearly shattered to pieces; frozen with cold and nearly devoured by
rats. Mrs. Smollett wept in silence with horror and fatigue; and the
bugs gave the Doctor a whooping-cough. If Smollett anticipated a
violent death from exhaustion and chagrin in consequence of these
tortures he was completely disappointed. His health was never
better,--so much so that he felt constrained in fairness to drink to
the health of the Roman banker who had recommended this nefarious
route. [See the Doctor's remarks at the end of Letter XXXV.] By
Florence and Lerici he retraced h