Think you if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
    He would have written sonnets all his life?

In truth she appears to have been the most finished coquette of her own or any other age.[R]

3.—­What a delight it would be, if, at the end of a day like this, I had somebody with whom I could talk over things—­with whose feelings and impressions I could compare my own—­who would direct my judgment, and assist me in arranging my ideas, and double every pleasure by sharing it with me!  What would have become of me if I had not thought of keeping a Diary?  I should have died of a sort of mental repletion!  What a consolation and employment has it been to me to let my overflowing heart and soul exhale themselves on paper!  When I have neither power nor spirits to join in common-place conversation, I open my dear little Diary, and feel, while my pen thus swiftly glides along, much less as if I were writing than as if I were speaking—­yes! speaking to one who perhaps will read this when I am no more—­but not till then.

I was well enough to walk up to the Rospigliosi Palace this morning to see Guido’s Aurora:  it is on the ceiling of a pavilion:  would it were not! for I looked at it till my neck ached, and my brain turned round “like a parish top.”  I can only say that it far surpassed my expectations:  the colouring is the most brilliant, yet the most harmonious, in the world:  and there is a depth, a strength, a richness in the tints, not common to Guido’s style.  The whole is as fresh as if painted yesterday; though Guido must have died sometime about 1640.

On each side of the hall or pavilion adorned by the Aurora, there is a small room, containing a few excellent pictures.  The Triumph of David, by Domenichino, a fine rich picture; an exquisite Andromeda, by Guido, painted with his usual delicacy and sentiment; the twelve Apostles, by Rubens, some of them very fine; “the Five Senses,” said to be by Carlo Cignani, but if so he has surpassed himself:  it is like Domenichino.  The Death of Samson, by L. Carracci, wearies the eye by the number and confusion of the figures:  it has no principal group upon which the attention can rest.  There is also a fine portrait of Nicolo Poussin, by himself, and an interesting head of Guido.

At three o’clock we went down to the Capella Sistina to hear the Miserere.  In describing the effect produced by this divine music, the time, the place, the scenic contrivance should be taken into account:  the time—­solemn twilight, just as the shades begin to fall around:  the place—­a noble and lofty hall where the terrors of Michel Angelo’s Last Judgment are rendered more terrible by the gathering gloom, and his sublime Prophets frown dimly upon us from the walls above.  The extinguishing of the tapers, the concealed choir, the angelic voices chosen from among the finest in the world, and blended by long practice into the most perfect unison, were combined to produce that overpowering effect which has so often been described.  Many ladies wept, and one fainted.  Unassisted vocal music is certainly the finest of all:  no power of instruments could have thrilled me like the blended stream of melancholy harmony, breathed forth with such an expression of despairing anguish, that it was almost too much to bear.