But I have been to see the two Auroras of Guido and Guercino.  Villa Ludovisi contains the last, of which I will speak first for forty reasons—­the true one because I like it best.  It is so sensible, so poetical, so beautiful.  The light increases, and the figure advances to the fancy:  one expects Night to be waked before one looks at her again, if ever one can be prevailed upon to take one’s eyes away.  The bat and owl are going soon to rest, and the lamp burns more faintly as when day begins to approach.  The personification of Night is wonderfully hit off.  But Guercino is such a painter!  We were driving last night to look at the Colisseo by moon-light—­there were a few clouds just to break the expanse of azure and shew the gilding.  I thought how like a sky of Guercino’s it was; other painters remind one of nature, but nature when most lovely makes one think of Guercino and his works.  The Ruspigliosi palace boasts the Aurora of Guido—­both are ceilings, but this is not rightly named sure.  We should call it the Phoebus, for Aurora holds only the second place at best:  the fun is driving over her almost; it is a more luminous, a more graceful, a more showy picture than the other, more universal too, exciting louder and oftener repeated praises; yet the other is so discriminated, so tasteful, so classical!  We must go see what Domenichino has done with the same subject.

I forget the name of the palace where it is to be admired:  but had we not seen the others, one should have said this was divine.  It is a Phoebus again, this is; not a bit of an Aurora:  and Truth is springing up from the arms of Time to rejoice in the sun’s broad light.  Her expression of transport at being set free from obscurity, is happy in an eminent degree; but there are faults in her form, and the Apollo has scarcely dignity enough in his.  The horses are best in Guide’s picture:  Aurora at the Villa Ludovisi has but two; they are very spirited, but it is the spirit of three, not six o’clock in a summer morning.  Surely Thomson had been living under these two roofs when he wrote such descriptions as seem to have been made on purpose for them; could any one give a more perfect account of Guercino’s performance than these words afford?

    The meek-ey’d morn appears, mother of dews,
    At first faint-gleaming in the dappled East
    Till far o’er aether spreads the widening glow,
    And from before the lustre of her face
    White break the clouds away:  with quicken’d step
    Brown Night retires, young Day pours in apace
    And opens all the lawny prospect wide.

As for the Ruspigliosi palace I left these lines in the room, written by the same author, and think them more capable than any description I could make, of giving some idea of Guido’s Phoebus.

    While yonder comes the powerful King of Day
    Rejoicing in the East; the lessening cloud,
    The kindling azure, and the mountains brow
    Illum’d with fluid gold, his near approach
    Betoken glad; lo, now apparent all
    He looks in boundless majesty abroad,
    And sheds the shining day.