them not separately or individually, but as a whole. Your eye, your soul, your sympathy is with Laocoon himself. And see how they groupe with him! Would the chubby-faced undefined forms, and inexpressive features of childhood, have harmonized with that agonized form? No, the great artist here wisely sacrificed truth of detail to general effect. But although to metamorphose them into infancy would utterly spoil the group, we must acknowledge that, if their conception be fine, their execution is far inferior to that of Laocoon himself; so far, indeed, that it has been doubted whether they are the work of the same artist; and one of the first of critics* gives it as his opinion, that of the sculptors+ whom Pliny mentions as being the authors of this unrivalled work, the figure of Laocoon was executed by Agesander the Rhodian, and the children by Athenodorus and Polidorus, who are believed to have been his sons. It is now evident that the children have been executed separately, and joined to the principal figure, though it was done with such nicety, that in Pliny's time they seemed to be all formed of one block, (ex uno lapido eum et liberos.) It adds, if possible, to the inexpressible interest with which we regard this wonderful masterpiece, which sculpture has never equalled, to know, that during all the ages that have passed since it was * Vide Winkelman, lib. 6. cap. 3-10. + Fuere summi artifices Agesander et Polidorus et Athenodorus Rodii. Pliny, lib. 34. c. 8. found, the poets, the philosophers, and the princes, whose genius and virtues have blessed and enlightened the world, have gazed upon it with the same admiration we now feel-that Titus* and Trajan have admired it-that Pliny has praised it-and Virgil himself must have beheld it; for so close is the resemblance between the description in the Æneid and the statue, that it is certain the poet must either have copied the sculpture, or the sculptor realized the conception of the poet. And as the great artists who sculptured the Laocoon lived about the age of Alexander the Great, we must conclude that Virgil, and consequently that Augustus, Horace, and Mecænas, must have beheld and admired its matchless sublimity. Three thousand years have passed away since it was formed, and still it stands *It was found in the Baths, or rather Palace of Titus, which were enlarged by Trajan, on the very spot where Pliny describes it to have stood. One arm (the right) was wanting, but it has been so ably restored, though only in plaister, that the deficiency is no blemish to the statue. It seems somewhat uncertain what modern artist had the merit of this restoration; though, both from the excellence of the work, and the knowledge that Michael Angelo was charged with its execution, it seems probable that it was he. It is in the memory of some old Italians, that the unfinished marble arm, destined for its restoration, by Michael Angelo, and left unfinished in a fit of despair, was lying on the ground at the foot of the statue. It is probable this arm it now bears was his plaister model. The merit of it has lately been given to Bernini; but it is unfortunate for his claim to it, that it was done long before he was born. The two broken arms of the children have been wretchedly restored by some bungler. in unchanged, undiminished grandeur. It has been the admiration of every successive generation, that the hand of Time has swept into the common tomb; and, while the world remains, it will be the wonder and the praise of the generations yet to come! Incomprehensible power of Genius, that workest thy own immortality !—That in thy sublime aspirations after perfection, divested of the trammels of matter, seemest to soar even into the heavens, to behold revealed to thy raptured sight, the blissful creations of fancy, the purer worlds of beauty and of truth, and to bring down upon earth the fair forms of light and love that dwell in brightness there, or, more wonderously endowed with the deep powerful glance of intuitive perception, thou penetratest the hidden mysteries of nature-searchest out the dark passions of the soul, unfoldest the secrets of our being, and bringest to view the unfathomed horrors of death and of despair-What art thou, and whither dost thou tend? Light of the world! whose living fires stream with unquenchable beams through the long course of departed, or of coming time, illuminating the darkness of past ages, and tinging the future with glory and promise by whose mysterious force we are elevated to rapture, or transfixed with horror-we know thy immortality-we acknowledge thy influence-we feel thy power! You will, I know, think me distracted, and expect, of course, that my next letter will be dated from Bedlam, or, as I am not at present exactly in its neighbourhood, from the Ospedale de' Pazzi, the asylum for the unfortunate lunatics who lose their wits at Rome. People, however, cannot well lose what they never possessed; and for this reason, perhaps, my good friend, I have not lost mine here. LETTER XIII. THE WALLS AND GATES OF ROME. I FIND myself wholly unable to attend to any thing modern at Rome, before I have seen all that is ancient; and, far from jumbling together ruins, churches, palaces, pictures, statues, and museums, in one wide chaos of confusion, as I see others do, I find the antiquities by themselves more than sufficient to employ my undivided attention; so that, having satisfied the first cravings of curiosity, by seeing every thing in the usual heterogeneous sort of pell-mell manner, I have resolved to visit the remains of Ancient Rome, in her hills, her forums, her temples, her baths, her theatres, her tombs, and her aqueducts, in distinct succession, without regard to their local situation, in order to form as clear an idea of what they once were, as the obscurity in which they are now involved will admit. But first let us look back for a moment on the dual growth of Rome from the beginning,-see the succession in which the Seven Hills were added gra |