For the Museum of the Vatican, I confess I was totally unprepared; and the first and second time I walked through the galleries, I was so amazed—­so intoxicated, that I could not fix my attention upon any individual object, except the Apollo, upon which, as I walked along confused and lost in wonder and enchantment, I stumbled accidentally, and stood spell-bound.  Gallery beyond gallery, hall within hall, temple within temple, new splendours opening at every step! of all the creations of luxurious art, the Museum of the Vatican may alone defy any description to do it justice, or any fancy to conceive the unimaginable variety of its treasures.  When I remember that the French had the audacious and sacrilegious vanity to snatch from these glorious sanctuaries the finest specimens of art, and hide them in their villanous old gloomy Louvre, I am confounded.

I have been told and can well believe, that the whole giro of the galleries exceed two miles.

I have not yet studied the frescos of Raffaelle sufficiently to feel all their perfection; and should be in despair at my own dullness, were I not consoled by the recollection of Sir Joshua Reynolds.  At present one of Raffaelle’s divine Virgins delights me more than all his camere and logie together; but I can look upon them with due veneration, and grieve to see the ravages of time and damp.

* * * * *

19.—­Last night we took advantage of a brilliant full moon to visit the Coliseum by moonlight; and if I came away disappointed of the pleasure I had expected, the fault was not in me nor in the scene around me.  In its sublime and heart-stirring beauty, it more than equalled, it surpassed all I had anticipated—­but—­(there must always be a but! always in the realities of this world something to disgust;) it happened that one or two gentlemen joined our party—­young men too, and classical scholars, who perhaps thought it fine to affect a well-bred nonchalance, a fashionable disdain for all romance and enthusiasm, and amused themselves with quizzing our guide, insulting the gloom, the grandeur, and the silence around them, with loud impertinent laughter at their own poor jokes; and I was obliged to listen, sad and disgusted, to their empty and tasteless and misplaced flippancy.  The young barefooted friar, with his dark lanthorn, and his black eyes flashing from under his cowl, who acted as our cicerone, was in picturesque unison with the scene; but—­more than one murder having lately been committed among the labyrinthine recesses of the ruin, the government has given orders that every person entering after dusk should be attended by a guard of two soldiers.  These fellows therefore necessarily walked close after our heels, smoking, spitting, and spluttering German.  Such were my companions, and such was my cortege.  I returned home vowing that while I remained at Rome, nothing should induce me to visit the Coliseum by moonlight again.