the biceps and gastrocnemian muscles?  The countenances are all exquisite:  all full of nature and taste... with as little introduction, as may be, of Grecian art.  To my feelings, the figure of the young man—­to the right of the lion—­is the most exquisitely perfect.  His countenance is indeed heavenly; and there is a play and harmony in the position and demarcation of his limbs, infinitely beyond any thing which I can presume to put in competition with it.  In every point of view, in which I regarded this figure, it gained upon my admiration; and on leaving the church, for the last time, I said within myself—­“if I have not seen the Belvedere Apollo, I have again and again viewed the monument to the memory of the Duchess Albert of Saxe-Teschen, by CANOVA... and I am satisfied to return to England in consequence.”

From churches we will walk together to CONVENTS.  Here are only two about which I deem it necessary to give you any description; and these are, the Convent of the Capuchins, near the new Market Place, and that of the Franciscans, near the street in which I lodge.  The former is tenanted by long-bearded monks.  On knocking at the outer gate, the door was opened by an apparently middle-aged man, upon whose long silvery, and broad-spreading beard, the light seemed to dart down with a surprisingly, picturesque effect.  Behind him was a dark cloister; or at least, a cloister very partially illumined—­along which two younger monks were pacing in full costume.  The person who opened the outward door proved to be the porter.  He might, from personal respectability, and amplitude of beard, have been the President.  On my servant’s telling him our object was to view the IMPERIAL TOMBS, which are placed in a vault in this monastery, he disappeared; and we were addressed by a younger person, with a beard upon a comparatively diminutive scale, and with the top of his hair very curiously cut in a circular form.  He professed his readiness to accompany us immediately into the receptacle of departed imperial grandeur.  He spoke Latin with myself, and his vernacular tongue with the valet.  I was soon satisfied with the sepulchral spectacle.  As a whole, it has a poor and even disagreeable effect:  if you except one or two tombs, such as those of Francis I.  Emperor of the Romans, and Maria Theresa—­which latter is the most elaborately ornamented of the whole:  but it wants both space and light to be seen effectually, and is moreover I submit, in too florid a style of decoration.  Like the generality of them, it is composed of bronze.  The tombs of the earlier Emperors of Germany lie in a long and gloomy narrow recess—­where little light penetrates, and where there is little space for an accurate examination.  I should call them rather coffin-shells than monuments.  When I noticed the tomb of the Emperor Joseph II. to my guide, he seemed hardly to vouchsafe a glance at it ... adding, “yes, he is well known every where!” They rather consider him (from the wholesale manner in which the monasteries and convents were converted by him to civil purposes) as a sort of softened-down Henry VIII.  Upon the whole, the living interested me more than the dead ... in this gloomy retirement ... notwithstanding these vaults are said to contain very little short of fourscore tombs of departed Emperors and Monarchs.