MUSEO CHIARAMONTI. 197 happy, thought I, is the believer; he can exclaim, with truth "L'ombre s'enfuit, je vois l'aurore Briller sur la sainte Cité, Voici le jour il vient d'éclore, Je vais aussi crier Victoire, Et partager leurs saints transports; Leaving the inscriptions, we entered the Museo Chiaramonti, a prodigious long gallery, furnished from the treasures of art found underground at Ostia, and near the Coliseum, &c. &c. You fix your eyes on a beautiful female figure: it is covered with the attributes of autumn— the summer is past-the leaves have fallen. Another devotes an altar to Isis and Serapis, and the Lares, for the safe return of Antoninus Pius. But the gods and their devotees are gone together. “The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplar pale, The parting genius is with sighing sent ; With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The nymphs, in twilight shade of tangled thickets, mourn. "In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lares and Lemures mourn with midnight plaint; In urns and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.” A child, between its parents, seems struggling to retain them. Countless are the beautifully told tales of human 198 MUSEO CHIARAMONTI. woe. From this corridor we passed into the new part of the Museo Chiaramonti. Its pillars are of cippolino, granite, giallo antico, &c. &c. It contains a noble collection of busts and statues, and very beautiful mosaic. The famous statue of Minerva Medica (found in the little temple of Minerva Medica, so visible from many parts of Rome) has a serpent-the emblem of wisdom and of cure! And the Minerva of the Pantheon of Athens, the work of Phidias, has this attribute: how came this animal associated with wisdom in Minerva-with cure in Esculapius? how is it that this same accompaniment is found in Hindostan, in Mexico, in Egypt? We saw a curious colossal statue, in white marble, of the Nile, surrounded with sixteen children. It was found in the Temple of Serapis, and is described by Pliny. Here is a vast and beautiful collection of things, brought from Adrian's villa at Tivoli ;-from the Temple of Diana, a mosaic pavement, with the Ephesian Diana in the centre. Is this then, said I, the great goddess Diana, "the image that fell down from Jupiter?" She has the lotus on her head; thus uniting the character of Isis with that of Diana. It is covered with close garments and vegetable productions; the toes are naked. Ephesus is still called by the Turks the City of the Moon. The temple of this goddess, we are told, was built at the expense of all the states of Greece. Its altar was adorned by Praxiteles: all the Ionians resorted thither with solemn offerings. The original idol, according to Pliny, was a small statue of ebony, made by one Canitia, and "was at first put into a niche, in an elm, by the Amazons." You then enter the second part of the new Museo Chiaramonti, comprising a succession of busts and statues→→ MUSEO CHIARAMONTI. 199 gods, emperors, men, and animals; and, passing from beauty to deformity, you reach the Hemicycle de Belvedere. You are almost startled by ten similar statues of black granite, with lion's heads; and how is one's astonishment increased, when told that this is the chief of the Egyptian deities, Athor!-The Venus-the Isis, of this learned nation; the most ancient of its gods, and originally denoting Chaos, or night: as the mother of all things, it is called "the Venus Cœlestis." Night soon became the moon--the moon symbolized by the horns of a cow. Isis as the moon, and Osiris as the sun, served every astronomical purpose with the learned, and every idolatrous one with the people. The black granite figure, with a lion's head, had temples in Egypt, and priests devoted to its service. Through this mist of error, one discerns the far-off dream of truth, and "the earth without form and void; and darkness upon the face of the deep." I observed also animal mummies of all sorts, from Thebes and Gournach: what an enigma is the mind of man! The three next rooms contain casts from the metopes of the Parthenon: a present from our king to the Pope Pius the Seventh. It is, I suppose, a piece of Italian wit to place them close to the Egyptian beauties. They are so roughly managed, they would make but a poor figure amidst the Greek marbles. The Museo Clementino contains all that is calculated to interest the antiquary, the artist, and the lover of the fine arts. CHAPTER XX. Vatican-Vestibule-Meleager-Perseus-Laocoon-Apollo Belvedere-Saloon of Animals-The School of Athens-The Transfiguration-St. Jerome, by Domenichino. THE first little square vestibule contains the celebrated Torso, called the Torso de Belvedere, (from its station in this vestibule, whence there is la più bella veduta di Roma.) It is a fragment of the statue of Hercules at rest. Its legs, arms, and head are gone. It was sculptured by Apollonius, the Athenian, and found in the baths of Caracalla, on Mount Aventine. 66 Behind this is a sarcophagus, in peperino, ornamented with rosettes and hieroglyphics. It is the tomb of the great-grandfather of Scipio Africanus. It was found in the vineyard Sassi," near the Porta Sebastiano. It did not appear to me possible to get such a tomb through such a passage as I saw in the peperino rocks, of the burying-place of the family of Scipio:-probably it has been taken to pieces, and re-formed. There is over it a bust, of the same material. The whole of this part of the Vatican is called the Belvedere, and you now find yourself amongst its greatest treasures. To the right is the statue of Meleager, found in the Esquiline. Passing from this chamber, you enter a rotunda: in the centre is a fountain. Sixteen pillars support a circular corridor, and the inner circle opens upon separate chambers, where, like the magnificent monarchs of the east, who can neither bear rival nor equal, the stupendous productions of genius dwell alone. In the first to the right is a Perseus, and two fighters, by Canova: the attitude, and lightness, and correctness of Perseus are exquisite; it is of the finest Carrara marble; the muscular strength of the fighters is prodigious. Canova appears to have studied the Greek sculpture till his thought and chisel became theirs-the same truth-the same nature. The next chamber contains the celebrated Mercury, in calm beauty. One might fancy him just hearing the sounds of that lyre which he formed on the banks of the Nile: "Sweet parent of the bending lyre, Thy praises shall its sounds inspire." The next apartment possesses the Laocoon. The paternal love of an agonized man is most wonderfully expressed; and one scarcely knows which to admire most-the moral or anatomical beauty of this surprising group. It is of marble, the production of the united genius of Polydorus, Athenodorus, and Agesander, the three famous artists of Rhodes. Laocoon, the priest of Apollo and of Neptune, is represented with two enormous serpents clinging round his body and that of his sons, who seem to say, "Father, help!" This group was found, in the sixteenth century, near the Sette Salle, on the Esquiline. Pliny mentions its being in the palace of Titus there. We now entered the chamber which contains the Apollo Belvedere. No one can look upon it without feeling, at once, that the expression is more divine than human:majesty, grace, ease, strength, love, beam forth. I no longer think the critique of West just, when he exclaimed, "Tis a Mohawk Indian!" It is to me by far the most beautiful work of art my eye ever beheld. I seemed to |