In the same room with the Niobe is a head which struck me more—­the Alexandre mourant.  The title seemed to me misapplied; for there is something indignant and upbraiding, as well as mournful, in the expression of this magnificent head.  It is undoubtedly Alexander—­but Alexander reproaching the gods—­or calling upon Heaven for new worlds to conquer.

I visited also the gallery of Bronzes:  it contains, among other master-pieces, the aerial Mercury of John of Bologna, of which we see such a multiplicity of copies.  There is a conceit in perching him upon the bluff cheeks of a little Eolus:  but what exquisite lightness in the figure!—­how it mounts, how it floats, disdaining the earth!  On leaving the gallery, I sauntered about; visited some churches, and then returned home depressed and wearied:  and in this melancholy humour I had better close my book, lest I be tempted to write what I could not bear to see written.

Sunday.—­At the English ambassador’s chapel.  To attend public worship among our own countrymen, and hear the praises of God in our native accents, in a strange land, among a strange people; where a different language, different manners, and a different religion prevail, affects the mind, or at least ought to affect it;—­and deeply too:  yet I cannot say that I felt devout this morning.  The last day I visited St. Mark’s, when I knelt down beside the poor weeping girl and her dove-basket, my heart was touched, and my prayers, I humbly trust, were not unheard:  to-day, in that hot close crowded room, among those fine people flaunting in all the luxury of dress, I felt suffocated, feverish, and my head ached—­the clergyman too——­

* * * * *

Samuel Rogers paid us a long visit this morning.  He does not look as if the suns of Italy had revivified him—­but he is as amiable and amusing as ever.  He talked long, et avec beaucoup d’onction, of ortolans and figs; till methought it was the very poetry of epicurism; and put me in mind of his own suppers—­

    “Where blushing fruits through scatter’d leaves invite,
    Still clad in bloom and veiled in azure light. 
    The wine as rich in years as Horace sings;”

and the rest of his description, worthy of a poetical Apicius.

Rogers may be seen every day about eleven or twelve in the Tribune, seated opposite to the Venus, which appears to be the exclusive object of his adoration; and gazing, as if he hoped, like another Pygmalion, to animate the statue; or rather perhaps that the statue might animate him.  A young Englishman of fashion, with as much talent as espieglerie, placed an epistle in verse between the fingers of the statue, addressed to Rogers; in which the goddess entreats him not to come there ogling every day;—­for though “partial friends might deem him still alive,” she knew by his looks that he had come from the other side of the Styx; and retained her antique abhorrence of the spectral dead, etc. etc.  She concluded by beseeching him, if he could not desist from haunting her with his ghostly presence, at least to spare her the added misfortune of being be-rhymed by his muse.