One of the finest pictures here is Domenichino’s Cumean Sibyl, which, like all other masterpieces, defies the copyist and engraver.  The Sibilla Persica of Guercino hangs a little to the left; and with her contemplative air, and the pen in her hand, she looks as if she were recording the effusions of her more inspired sister.  The former is a chaste and beautiful picture, full of feeling and sweetly coloured; but the vicinity of Domenichino’s magnificent creation throws it rather into shade.  Two unfinished pictures upon which Guido was employed at the time of his death are preserved in the Capitol:  one is the Bacchus and Ariadne, so often engraved and copied; the other, a single figure, the size of life, represents the Soul of the righteous man ascending to heaven.  Had Guido lived to finish this divine picture, it would have been one of his most splendid productions; but he was snatched away to realize, I trust, in his own person, his sublime conception.  The head alone is finished, or nearly so; and has a most extatic expression.  The globe of the earth seems to sink from beneath the floating figure, which is just sketched upon the canvass, and has a shadowy indistinctness which to my fancy added to its effect.  Guercino’s chef-d’oeuvre, the Resurrection of Saint Petronilla, (a saint, I believe, of very hypothetical fame,) is also here; and has been copied in mosaic for St. Peters.  A magnificent Rubens, the She Wolf nursing Romulus and Remus; a fine copy of Raffaelle’s Triumph of Galatea by Giulo Romano; Domenichino’s Saint Barbara, with the same lovely inspired eyes he always gives his female saints, and a long et cetera.

From the Capitol we immediately drove to the Borghese palace, where I spent half an hour looking at the picture called the Cumean Sibyl of Domenichino, and am more and more convinced that it is a Saint Cecilia and not a Sibyl.

We have now visited the Borghese palace four times; and a-propos to pictures, I may as well make a few memoranda of its contents.  It is not the most numerous, but it is by far the most valuable and select private gallery in Rome.

Domenichino’s Chase of Diana, with the two beautiful nymphs in the foreground, is a splendid picture.  Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love puzzles me completely:  I neither understand the name nor the intention of the picture.  It is evidently allegorical:  but an allegory very clumsily expressed.  The aspect of Sacred Love would answer just as well for Profane Love.  What is that little cupid about, who is groping in the cistern behind? why does Profane Love wear gloves?  The picture, though so provokingly obscure in its subject, is most divinely painted.  The three Graces by the same master is also here; two heads by Giorgione, distinguished by all his peculiar depth of character and sentiment, some exquisite Albanos; one of Raffaelle’s finest portraits—­and in short, an endless variety of excellence.  I feel my taste become more and more fastidious every day.