At Rodolf Schadow’s, I was most pleased by the Cupid and the Filatrice.  His Cupid is certainly the most beautiful Cupid I ever saw, superior, I think, both to Canova’s and to Thorwaldson’s.  The Filatrice, though so exquisitely natural and graceful, a little disappointed me; I had heard much of it, and had formed in my own imagination an idea different and superior to what I saw.  This beautiful figure has repose, simplicity, nature, and grace, but I felt a want—­the want of some internal sentiment:  for instance, if, instead of watching the rotation of her spindle with such industrious attention, the Filatrice had looked careless, or absent, or pensive, or disconsolate, (like Faust’s Margaret at her spinning-wheel,) she would have been more interesting—­but not perhaps what the sculptor intended to represent.

Schadow is ill, but we were admitted by his order into his private study; we saw there the Bacchante, which he has just finished in clay, and which is to emulate or rival Canova’s Dansatrice.  He has been at work upon a small but beautiful figure of a piping Shepherd-boy, which is just made out:  beside it lay Virgil’s Eclogues, and his spectacles were between the leaves.[J]

Almost every thing I saw at Max Laboureur’s struck me as vapid and finikin.  There were some pretty groups, but nothing to tempt me to visit it again.

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30.—­We spent the whole morning at the Villa Albani, where there is a superb collection of antique marbles, most of them brought from the Villa of Adrian at Tivoli.  To note down even a few of the objects which pleased me would be an endless task.  I think the busts interested me most.  There is a basso-relievo of Antinous—­the beautiful head declined in his usual pensive attitude:  it is the most finished and faultless piece of sculpture in relievo I ever saw; and as perfect and as polished as if it came from the chisel yesterday.  There is another basso-relievo of Marcus Aurelius, and Faustina, equal to the last in execution, but not in interest.

We found Rogers in the gardens:  the old poet was sunning himself—­walking up and down a beautiful marble portico, lined with works of art, with his note-book in his hand.  I am told he is now writing a poem of which Italy is the subject; and here, with all the Campagna di Roma spread out before him—­above him, the sunshine and the cloudless skies—­and all around him, the remains of antiquity in a thousand elegant, or venerable, or fanciful forms:  he could not have chosen a more genial spot for inspiration.  Though we disturbed his poetical reveries rather abruptly, he met us with his usual amiable courtesy, and conversed most delightfully.  I never knew him more pleasant, and never saw him so animated.