To-day I was standing before the Laocoon with Rogers, who remarked that the absence of all parental feeling in the aspect of Laocoon, his self-engrossed indifference to the sufferings of his children (which is noticed and censured, I think, by Dr. Moore) adds to the pathos, if properly considered, by giving the strongest possible idea of that physical agony which the sculptor intended to represent.  It may be so, and I thought there was both truth and tacte in the poet’s observation.

The Perseus of Canova does not please me so well as his Paris; there is more simplicity and repose in the latter statue, less of that theatrical air which I think is the common fault of Canova’s figures.

It is absolutely necessary to look at the Perseus before you look at the Apollo, in order to do the former justice.  I have gazed with admiration at the Perseus for minutes together, then walked from it to the Apollo and felt instantaneously, but could not have expressed, the difference.  The first is indeed a beautiful statue, the latter “breathes the flame with which ’twas wrought,” as if the sculptor had left a portion of his own soul within the marble to half animate his glorious creation.  The want of this informing life is strongly felt in the Perseus, when contemplated after the Apollo.  It is delightful when the imagination rises in the scale of admiration, when we ascend from excellence to perfection:  but excellence after perfection is absolute inferiority; it sinks below itself, and the descent is so disagreeable and disappointing, that we can seldom estimate justly the object before us.  We make comparisons involuntarily in a case where comparisons are odious.

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The weather is cold here during the prevalence of the tramontana:  but I enjoy the brilliant skies and the delicious purity of the air, which leaves the eye free to wander over a vast extent of space.  Looking from the gallery of the Belvedere at sunset this evening, I clearly saw Tivoli, Albano, and Frascati, although all Rome and part of the Campagna lay between me and those towns.  The outlines of every building, ruin, hill, and wood were so distinctly marked, and stood out so brightly to the eye! and the full round moon, magnified through the purple vapour which floated over the Apennines, rose just over Tivoli, adding to the beauty of the scene.  O Italy! how I wish I could transport hither all I love! how I wish I were well enough, happy enough, to enjoy all the lovely things I see! but pain is mingled with all I behold, all I feel:  a cloud seems for ever before my eyes, a weight for ever presses down my heart.  I know it is wrong to repine:  and that I ought rather to be thankful for the pleasurable sensations yet spared to me, than lament that they are so few.  When I take up my pen to record the impressions of the day, I sometimes turn within myself, and wonder how it is possible that amid the strife of feelings not all subdued, and the desponding of the heart, the mind should still retain its faculties unobscured, and the imagination all its vivacity and its susceptibility to pleasure,—­like the beautiful sunbow I saw at the Falls of Terni, bending so bright and so calm over the verge of the abyss which toiled and raged below.