Enormous heads and feet, to which the other parts are wanting, let one see, or at least guess; what colossal figures were once belonging to them; yet somehow these celebrated artists seem to me to have a little confounded the ideas of big and great like my countryman Fluellyn in Shakespear’s play:  while the two famous demi-gods Castor and Pollux, each his horse in his hand, stand one on each side the stairs which lead to the Capitol, and are of a prodigious size—­fifteen feet, as I remember.  The knowing people tell us they are portraits, and bid us observe that one has pupils to his eyes, the other not; but our laquais de place, who was a very sensible fellow too, as he saw me stand looking at them, cried out, “Why now to be sure here are a vast many miracles in this holy city—­that there are:”  and I heard one of our own folks telling an Englishman the other day, how these two monstrous statues, horses and all I believe, came out of an egg:  a very extraordinary thing certainly; but it is our business to believe, not to enquire.  He saw my countenance express something he did not like, and continued, “Eh basta! sara stato un uovo strepitoso, e cosi sinisce l’istoria[AE].”

[Footnote AE:  Well, well! it was a famous egg we’ll say, and there’s an end.]

In this repository of wonders, this glorious campidoglio, one is first shewn as the most valuable curiosity, the two pigeons mentioned by Pliny in old mosaic; and of prodigious nicety is the workmanship, though done at such a distant period:  and here is the very wolf which bears the very mark of the lightning mentioned by Cicero:—­and here is the beautiful Antinous again; he meets one at every turn, I think, and always hangs his head as if ashamed:  here too is the dying gladiator; wonderfully fine! savage valour! mean extraction! horrible anguish! all marking, all strongly characteristical expressions—­all there; yet all swallowed up, in that which does inevitably and certainly swallow up all things—­approaching death.

The collection of pictures here would put any thing but these statues out of one’s head:  Guido’s Fortune flying over the globe, scattering her gifts; of which she gave him one, the most precious, the most desirable.  How elegantly gay and airy is this picture!  But St. Sebastian stands opposite, to shew that he could likewise excel in the pathetic.  Titian’s famous Magdalen, of which the King of France boasts one copy, a noble family at Venice another, is protested by the Roman connoisseurs to reside here only; but why should not the artist be fond of repeating so fine an idea?  Guercino’s Sybil however, intelligently pensive, and sweetly sensible, is the single figure I should prefer to them all.

Before we quit the Capitol, it is pity not to name Marforio; broken, old, and now almost forgotten:  though once companion, or rather respondent to Pasquin, and once, a thousand years before those days, a statue of the river Nar, as his recumbent posture testifies; not Mars in the forum, as has been by some supposed.  The late Pope moved him from the street, and shut him up with his betters in the Capitol.