I Suppose There Is More Concealed Below Ground Than Appears Above.

The miserable houses, and even garden-walls of the peasants in this district, are built with these precious materials.

I mean shafts and capitals of marble columns, heads, arms, legs, and mutilated trunks of statues. What pity it is that among all the remains of antiquity, at Rome, there is not one lodging-house remaining. I should be glad to know how the senators of Rome were lodged. I want to be better informed touching the cava aedium, the focus, the ara deorum penatum, the conclavia, triclinia, and caenationes; the atria where the women resided, and employed themselves in the woolen manufacture; the praetoria, which were so spacious as to become a nuisance in the reign of Augustus; and the Xysta, which were shady walks between two porticos, where the men exercised themselves in the winter. I am disgusted by the modern taste of architecture, though I am no judge of the art. The churches and palaces of these days are crowded with pretty ornaments, which distract the eye, and by breaking the design into a variety of little parts, destroy the effect of the whole. Every door and window has its separate ornaments, its moulding, frize, cornice. and tympanum; then there is such an assemblage of useless festoons, pillars, pilasters, with their architraves, entablatures, and I know not what, that nothing great or uniform remains to fill the view; and we in vain look for that simplicity of grandeur, those large masses of light and shadow, and the inexpressible EUSUINOPTON, which characterise the edifices of the antients. A great edifice, to have its full effect, ought to be isole, or detached from all others, with a large space around it: but the palaces of Rome, and indeed of all the other cities of Italy, which I have seen, are so engaged among other mean houses, that their beauty and magnificence are in a great measure concealed. Even those which face open streets and piazzas are only clear in front. The other apartments are darkened by the vicinity of ordinary houses; and their views are confined by dirty and disagreeable objects. Within the court there is generally a noble colonnade all round, and an open corridore above, but the stairs are usually narrow, steep, and high, the want of sash-windows, the dullness of their small glass lozenges, the dusty brick floors, and the crimson hangings laced with gold, contribute to give a gloomy air to their apartments; I might add to these causes, a number of Pictures executed on melancholy subjects, antique mutilated statues, busts, basso relieves, urns, and sepulchral stones, with which their rooms are adorned. It must be owned, however, there are some exceptions to this general rule. The villa of cardinal Alexander Albani is light, gay, and airy; yet the rooms are too small, and too much decorated with carving and gilding, which is a kind of gingerbread work. The apartments of one of the princes Borghese are furnished in the English taste; and in the palazzo di colonna connestabile, there is a saloon, or gallery, which, for the proportions, lights, furniture, and ornaments, is the most noble, elegant, and agreeable apartment I ever saw.

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