But What Is Certain Is That Those Ladies Are No
Lovelier In Their Looks Than They Were In Their Lives; To Be Sure, In
Their Rank They Had Not So Great Need Of Personal Charm As Women Of The
Lower Class.
The most touching face as well as the most dignified and
beautiful face among them is that of the seated figure which used to be
known as that of Agrippina but which, known now as that of a Roman
matron, does not relieve the imperial average of plainness.
The rest
could rival the average American society woman only in the prevailing
modernity of their expression; imperial Rome was very modern, as we all
know, and nothing in our own time could be more up to date than the
lives and looks of its smart people.
The general impression of the other marbles of the Capitoline Museum
remains a composite of standing, sitting, stooping, and leaning figures,
of urns and vases, of sarcophaguses and bas-reliefs. If you can be
definite about some such delightful presence as that old River dozing
over his fountain in the little cold court you see first and last as you
come and go, it is more than your reader, if he is as wise as you wish
him, can ask of you. I have been wondering whether he could profitably
ask of me some record of my experiences in the official and scientific
company with which I was honored that day at the Campidoglio; but I
should have to offer him again a sort of composite psychograph of
objects printed one upon another and hardly separable in their
succession.
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