The Atelier Of The Famous Artist In Mosaic Rafaelli Is Well Worth Inspecting; And Here I Had An Opportunity Of Beholding A Copy In Mosaic And Nearly Finished Of The Celebrated Picture Of Leonardo Da Vinci Representing The Caena Domini.

What a useful as well as admirable art is the mosaic to perpetuate the paintings of the greatest masters!

I recollected on beholding this work that Eustace, in his Tour thro' Italy,[55] relates with a pious horror that the French soldiers used the original picture as a target to practise at with ball cartridge, and that Christ's head was singled out as the mark. This absurd tale, which had not the least shadow of truth in it, has, it appears, gained some credit among weak-minded people; and I therefore beg leave to contradict it in the most formal manner. It was Buonaparte who, the moment the picture was discovered, ordered it to be put in mosaic. No! the French were the protectors and encouragers, and by no means the destroyers of the works of art; and this ridiculous story of the picture being used as a target was probably invented by the priesthood, who seemed to have taken great delight in imposing on poor Eustace's credulity. To me it seems that such a story could only have been invented by a monk, and believed and repeated by an old woman or a bigot. The priests and French emigrants have invented and spread the most shameful and improbable calumnies against the French republicans and against Napoleon, and that credulous gull John Bull has been silly enough to give full credence to all these tales, and stand staring with his eyes and mouth open at the recital, while a vulgar jobbing ministry (as Cobbet would say) picked his pockets.

Quite of a piece with this is the said Mr Eustace's bigotry, in not chusing to call Lombardy by its usual appellation "Lombardy," and affectedly terming it "the plain of the Po." Why so, will be asked? Why because Mr Eustace hates the ancient Lombards, and holds them very nearly in as much horror as he does the modern French; because, as he says, they were the enemies of the Church and made war on and despoiled the Holy See. The fact is that the Lombard princes were the most enlightened of all the monarchs of their time; they were the first who began to resist the encroachments of the clergy and to shake off that abject submission to the Holy See which was the characteristic of the age. The Lombards were a fine gallant race of men and not so bigoted as the other nations of Europe. Where has there ever reigned a better and more enlightened and more just and humane prince than Theodoric?[56] But Theodoric was an Arian, hence Mr Eustace's aversion, for he, with the most servile devotion, rejects, condemns and anathematizes whatever the Church rejects, condemns and anathematizes. For myself I look on the extinction of the Lombard power by Charlemagne to have been a great calamity; had it lasted, the reformation and deliverance of Europe from Papal and ecclesiastical tyranny would have happened probably three hundred years sooner and the Inquisition never have been planted in Spain.

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