common nature and life-true, forcible, and energetic, that arrest our attention; and so correctly just, so highly finished is the execution, that we may imagine it one of those statues which, in early Greece, we know it was the labour of a life to perfect. This statue was restored by Michael Angelo with a skill scarcely inferior to the original. The parts wanting were so admirably replaced by his chisel, that it may be said to have lost nothing.

In the famous group of the Wrestlers, the flexibility of the entwined limbs, the force of the muscles, and the life and action of the figures, are wonderful; but the heads are totally destitute of meaning, and don't look as if they belonged to the bodies;* their fixed immoveable countenances have no marks even of that corporeal exertion, much less of that eager animation and passion which men struggling with each other in the heat of contest, and at the moment in which the victor triumphs over the vanquished, would naturally feel.

The dancing Faun, playing on the cymbals, is all life and animation, and his jocund face expresses so much delight in his own performance, that it is impossible not to sympathize in his mirth, and

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The statues were really headless when first discovered, but the ancient heads were afterwards found. Some critics believe that this group represents two of the sons of Niobe, not only from the circumstance of their having been found nearly in the same spot, as the statues of Niobe and her children, but from the consideration that, according to Ovid, the two young sons of Niobe were exercising themselves in wrestling, when pierced by the arrows of Apollo.

scarcely possible to refrain from beginning to caper about with him. Somebody observed, that he looked too old to be dancing with so much glee; and perhaps the criticism might be just if he were a man; but as a faun, I imagine his nature is to be forever joyous.

These three pieces of sculpture, the Whetter, the Wrestlers, and the dancing Faun, are unique, and are therefore valuable as well for their rarity as their beauty.

A little Apollo is very much admired; and perhaps his greatest fault is his diminutive size, which, in spite of his symmetry and uncommon grace, renders him but a contemptible representative of the god of light and majesty. He is in the attitude of the Lycian Apollo-one arm thrown over his head. Beside the Venus, he looks mean and effeminate. He suffers more from her neighbourhood than the other statues, because more in the same style of beauty. No female form has been suffered to approach her-none could stand the comparison.

We saw the Goddess of Beauty in painting as well as sculpture. On the wall of the room behind the statue, my eye was caught by two celebrated Venuses of Titian; one of which, however, is incomparably superior to the other. It is, indeed, an exquisite painting. She is represented voluptuously reclining on a couch, with flowers in her hand, while two hideous old women, who are opening a chest in the back ground, seem to be introduced for

no other purpose, than to heighten, by contrast, the charms of the youthful beauty.

Thus the finest Venuses that painting and sculpture ever produced, meet the eye at the same mo

ment.

I suppose I have no soul for Venuses, for my attention soon wandered from them to Raphael's St John the Baptist; one of the finest productions of that inimitable master. St John is alone in the wilderness, left, amid solitude and silence, to nature and to God. His only clothing is a leopard's skin half thrown round his graceful limbs; and his youth, not yet matured to manhood, derives deeper interest from his deserted situation, and from that glow of devoted enthusiasm which lights up his counte nance, and proclaims him equal to do, to dare, to suffer, all that may be required of him by Heaven. The fire of a prophet, and the fervour of a saint, flash in his dark eye, and the spirit of divine inspiration seems to raise him above mortality. This great picture is an example at once of the finest conceptions of elevated genius, and the execution of the most finished art.

In a very different style is the portrait of the Fornarina, a woman so called from being the wife of a baker, but famed as having been the beautiful and beloved mistress of Raphael, who himself painted her, as it would seem, con amore, for the portrait is the very perfection of female loveliness, and combines all the breathing life and magic colouring of the Venetian school, with a truth of design

and expression its best masters could never boast.* The eye dwells on it with never-satiated delight, and the unlearned and the connoisseur equally experience its fascination. What cold critic can discover a fault while he contemplates it? and who, after seeing it, can say, that Raphael was no colourist ?

The Tribune is filled with masterpieces of painting by the first Italian artists; but I must not speak of those beauties which one eager transient glance view. There was one among them, gave to my however, the work of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, which I beheld with astonishment; and if it be really his, I can only say, that some of the old women, to whom he left oil painting as a fit employment, might have gone near to rival him in it.

The gallery itself is filled with a double row of ancient statues, and the walls are adorned with a series of pictures, chiefly valuable as illustrating the history of the art, from its revival by Cimabue in the 13th century to the present times.

Twenty rooms, or cabinets, of which the Tribune is one, run along in a suite behind the gallery, and open into it. They are filled with the choicest treasures of the Museum-with specimens of the

* When this was written I had never been at Venice, and consequently had never seen those unrivalled masterpieces of Titian, which are inferior to nothing that painting ever produced. No one can judge of Titian out of Venice, of Raphael out of Rome, or of Corregio out of Parma.

different schools of painting, separately arranged -with the portraits of painters, which fill one room -with the most valuable sculptures-with ancient inscriptions, bronzes, gems, Etruscan and Grecian vases of terra cotta and marble, adorned with painting and sculptures; among which are the famous Medici and Borghese vases. The first of these is generally considered the finest in the world, of the most perfect form, the grandest dimensions, and the most exquisite sculpture. It represents the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and I need scarcely say is a work of Grecian art.

One of these rooms is entirely filled with the most costly and ingenious works in precious stones. Here are heads and figures of Roman emperors and Catholic saints; of princely sinners and pious popes of the house of Medici, who have hats of jet, faces of agate, eyes of opal, coats and petticoats of lapis lazuli, legs of jasper, and shoes of porphyry. My eye was dazzled with a profusion of vases of crystal, with candlesticks and crucifixes composed of gems of every varied colour; with diminutive columns and mimic temples; goblets that might serve for the banquets of gods, cups fit for fairies, and jewels worth the eye of an emperor.

But there are two rooms filled with what is still more valuable-the finest collection of ancient and modern vases in the world. Leaving the famous Etruscan Chimera and Orator, and all other ancient monsters and men, to be described by heads of more learning and leisure than mine, let me speak my admiration of the unrivalled Mercury of