* * * * *

22.—­This morning was devoted to the Capitol, where the objects of art are ill arranged and too crowded:  the lights are not well managed, and on the whole I could not help wishing, in spite of my veneration for the Capitol, that some at least among the divine master-pieces it contains could be transferred to the glorious halls of the Vatican, and shrined in temples worthy of them.

The objects which most struck me were the dying Gladiator, the Antinous, the Flora, and the statue called (I know not on what authority) the Faun of Praxiteles.

The dying Gladiator is the chief boast of the Capitol.  The antiquarian Nibby insists that this statue represents a Gaul, that the sculpture is Grecian, that it formed part of a group on a pediment, representing the vengeance which Apollo took on the Gauls, when, under their king Brennus, they attacked the temple of Delphi:  that the cord round the neck is a twisted chain, an ornament peculiar to the Gauls; and that the form of the shield, the bugles, the style of the hair, and the mustachios, all prove it to be a Gaul.  I asked, “why should such faultless, such exquisite sculpture be thrown away upon a high pediment? the affecting expression of the countenance, the head ’bowed low and full of death,’ the gradual failure of the strength and sinking of the form, the blood slowly trickling from his side—­how could any spectator, contemplating it at a vast height, be sensible of these minute traits—­the distinguishing perfections of this matchless statue?” It was replied, that many of the ancient buildings were so constructed, that it was possible to ascend and examine the sculpture above the cornice, and though some statues so placed were unfinished at the back, (for instance, some of the figures which belonged to the group of Niobe,) others (and he mentioned the AEgina marbles as an example) were as highly finished behind as before.  I owned myself unwilling to consider the Gladiator a Gaul, but the reasoning struck me, and I am too unlearned to weigh the arguments he used, much less confute them.  That the statue being of Grecian marble and Grecian sculpture must therefore have come from Greece, does not appear a conclusive argument, since the Romans commonly employed Greek artists:  and as to the rest of the argument,—­suppose that in a dozen centuries hence, the charming statue of Lady Louisa Russell should be discovered under the ruins of Woburn Abbey, and that by a parity of reasoning, the production of Chantrey’s chisel should be attributed to Italy and Canova, merely because it is cut from a block of Carrara marble? we might smile at such a conclusion.

Among the pictures in the gallery of the Capitol, the one most highly valued pleases me least of all—­the Europa of Paul Veronese.  The splendid colouring and copious fancy of this master can never reconcile me to his strange anomalies in composition, and his sins against good taste and propriety.  One wishes that he had allayed the heat of his fancy with some cooling drops of discretion.  Even his colouring so admired in general, has something florid and meretricious to my eye and taste.