The History
Is Written In The Painting; Written, In The Dying Girl's Face, By
Nature's Own Hand.
And oh!
How in that one touch she puts to
flight (instead of making kin) the puny world that claim to be
related to her, in right of poor conventional forgeries!
I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey; the statue at
whose base Caesar fell. A stern, tremendous figure! I imagined
one of greater finish: of the last refinement: full of delicate
touches: losing its distinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose
blood was ebbing before it, and settling into some such rigid
majesty as this, as Death came creeping over the upturned face.
The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are charming, and would
be full of interest were it only for the changing views they
afford, of the wild Campagna. But, every inch of ground, in every
direction, is rich in associations, and in natural beauties. There
is Albano, with its lovely lake and wooded shore, and with its
wine, that certainly has not improved since the days of Horace, and
in these times hardly justifies his panegyric. There is squalid
Tivoli, with the river Anio, diverted from its course, and plunging
down, headlong, some eighty feet in search of it. With its
picturesque Temple of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag; its minor
waterfalls glancing and sparkling in the sun; and one good cavern
yawning darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots
on, low down under beetling rocks.
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