There are a few little slips—­so few that it is strange there should be any—­among which is his mention of the “St. Christopher” of the doges’ palace as “the only known fresco of Titian,” forgetting the celebrated one in the Scuola del Santo at Padua, of which he has spoken in a previous volume.  He occasionally makes an assertion to which many will demur; as, for instance, that “The real glory of the Italian towns consists not in their churches, but in their palaces.”  The best refutation of this paradox is in his own pages.  Most people will be startled, too, by hearing of “the want of architectural power in Michael Angelo,” although this remark is followed by a criticism which strikes us as extremely just on the stupendous slumberers on the monuments of the Medici:  “The disproportionate figures are slipping off the pitiable pedestals which support them.”  Among the throng of indefinable emotions and sensations which beset one in the Medicean chapel of San Lorenzo, we have always been conscious of distinct discomfort from the attitude of these sleepers, who could only maintain their posture by an immense muscular effort incompatible with their sublime repose.  As regards practical matters, few travelers or foreign residents in Italy will endorse Mr. Hare’s statement that making a bargain in advance for lodgings or conveyances is not a necessary precaution, or his denial of the almost universal attempt to overcharge which is recognized and resisted by all natives.  But Mr. Hare has illusions, and Italian probity is one of them.  All his remarks about the present government of Italy (of which he speaks as “the Sardinian government” with an emphasis akin to the B_u_onapart_e_ of old French monarchists) are to be taken with the utmost reservation, as most readers will see for themselves after meeting his allusion to the massacre at Perugia in 1859 as in some sort a defensive action on the part of the papal troops.  Mr. Hare’s reasoning on all that relates to this subject is weak and illogical, sometimes puerile.  Any one who loves what is venerable and picturesque must share the impatience and regret with which he sees so much beauty and antiquity disappearing before the besom of progress or the rage for improvement, especially in Rome.  But we must remember that Italy is not the first, but the last, European country in which this has come about:  in England, France and Germany what delights the eyes of the few has long been giving place to what betters the condition or serves the interest of the masses.  Moreover, the Italians themselves, of whatever political complexion, black or red, are totally indifferent to these losses and changes which we lament so deeply.  If there be a sad want of good taste and good sense in Cavaliere Rosa’s management of the excavations, there is at least no lack of zeal.  Formerly, next to nothing was done to preserve or protect the monuments, and many of the finest were irrecognizable and all but inaccessible from dirt and dilapidation.