y good specimens of design I have ever seen from
Aegypt: for the two idols of that country, which stand in the ground
floor of the Musaeum of the Capitol, and indeed all the Aegyptian
statues in the Camera Aegyptiaca of this very building, are such
monstrous misrepresentations of nature, that they never could have
obtained a place among the statues of Rome, except as curiosities of
foreign superstition, or on account of the materials, as they are
generally of basaltes, porphyry, or oriental granite.

At the farther end of the court of this Musaeum, fronting the entrance,
is a handsome fountain, with the statue of a river-god reclining on his
urn; this is no other than the famous Marforio, so called from its
having been found in Martis Fore. It is remarkable only as being the
conveyance of the answers to the satires which are found pasted upon
Pasquin, another mutilated statue, standing at the corner of a street.

The marble coffin, supposed to have contained the ashes of Alexander
Severus, which we find in one of these apartments, is a curious
antique, valuable for its sculpture in basso relievo, especially for
the figures on the cover, representilig that emperor and his mother
Julia Mammea.

I was sorry I had not time to consider the antient plan of Rome,
disposed in six classes, on the stair-case of this Musaeum, which was
brought hither from a temple that stood in the Forum Boarium, now
called Campo vaccine.

It would be ridiculous in me to enter into a detail of the vast
collection of marbles, basso relievos, inscriptions, urns, busts, and
statues, which are placed in the upper apartments of this edifice. I
saw them but once, and then I was struck with the following
particulars. A bacchanalian drunk; a Jupiter and Leda, at least equal
to that in the gallery at Florence; an old praesica, or hired mourner,
very much resembling those wrinkled hags still employed in Ireland, and
in the Highlands of Scotland, to sing the coronach at funerals, in
praise of the deceased; the famous Antinous, an elegant figure, which
Pousin studied as canon or rule of symmetry; the two fauns; and above
all the mirmillone, or dying gladiator; the attitude of the body, the
expression of the countenance, the elegance of the limbs, and the
swelling of the muscles, in this statue, are universally admired; but
the execution of the back is incredibly delicate. The course of the
muscles called longissimi dorsi, are so naturally marked and tende