Mr. Bowles contends again that the pyramids of Egypt are poetical, because of “the association with boundless deserts,” and that a “pyramid of the same dimensions” would not be sublime in “Lincoln’s Inn Fields:”  not so poetical certainly; but take away the “pyramids,” and what is the “desert?" Take away Stone-henge from Salisbury plain, and it is nothing more than Hounslow heath, or any other unenclosed down.  It appears to me that St. Peter’s, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venus di Medicis, the Hercules, the dying Gladiator, the Moses of Michael Angelo, and all the higher works of Canova, (I have already spoken of those of ancient Greece, still extant in that country, or transported to England,) are as poetical as Mont Blanc or Mount AEtna, perhaps still more so, as they are direct manifestations of mind, and presuppose poetry in their very conception; and have, moreover, as being such, a something of actual life, which cannot belong to any part of inanimate nature, unless we adopt the system of Spinosa, that the world is the Deity.  There can be nothing more poetical in its aspect than the city of Venice:  does this depend upon the sea, or the canals?—­

  “The dirt and sea-weed whence proud Venice rose?”

Is it the canal which runs between the palace and the prison, or the “Bridge of Sighs,” which connects them, that render it poetical?  Is it the “Canal Grande,” or the Rialto which arches it, the churches which tower over it, the palaces which line, and the gondolas which glide over the waters, that render this city more poetical than Rome itself?  Mr. Bowles will say, perhaps, that the Rialto is but marble, the palaces and churches only stone, and the gondolas a “coarse” black cloth, thrown over some planks of carved wood, with a shining bit of fantastically formed iron at the prow, “without” the water.  And I tell him that without these, the water would be nothing but a clay-coloured ditch; and whoever says the contrary, deserves to be at the bottom of that, where Pope’s heroes are embraced by the mud nymphs.  There would be nothing to make the canal of Venice more poetical than that of Paddington, were it not for the artificial adjuncts above mentioned; although it is a perfectly natural canal, formed by the sea, and the innumerable islands which constitute the site of this extraordinary city.

The very Cloaca of Tarquin at Rome are as poetical as Richmond Hill; many will think more so:  take away Rome, and leave the Tibur and the seven hills, in the nature of Evander’s time.  Let Mr. Bowles, or Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Southey, or any of the other “naturals,” make a poem upon them, and then see which is most poetical, their production, or the commonest guide-book, which tells you the road from St. Peter’s to the Coliseum, and informs you what you will see by the way.  The ground interests in Virgil, because it will be Rome, and not because it is Evander’s rural domain.