TIBERIUS-AGRIPPINA-CLAUDIUS. 101 the dreadful and sickening scenes of Capriæ. We can almost fancy the monster in the act of condemning the most virtuous men of Rome to death, and precipitating the victims of his lust or jealousy over the rocks of his solitary island! The mind is, in some measure, consoled by the reflection, that this inhuman composition of " mud and blood" (as his preceptor pronounced him in youth) suffered all the torments (mentally) which he inflicted on others. Sejanus, the minister of his cruelty, was in his turn strangled-and when Tiberius himself was on the bed of death, and within a few hours of his final extinction, his successor and minister, Caligula and Macro, had not patience to let Nature do her work-they heaped the bed-clothes on the face of the expiring fiend! Nearly opposite we see the fair form of Agrippina. Whether this statue be meant to represent the mother or the daughter-the wife of Germanicus or the parent of Nero, it is calculated to call forth a host of reflections. Does it stand in the character of the former? we fancy her wandering, with her infant in her arms, through the wilds of Germany, after the revolt of the legions or landing at Brundusium with the ashes of Germanicus-or prosecuting Piso, the poisoner of her husband, in imperial Rome-or, finally, expiring of famine, in the dungeon of Panditaria, by order of Tiberius !! Does this beautiful marble statue represent the daughter? The blood curdles in our veins to find ourselves in the presence of Nero's mother, Caligula's sisterthe poisoner of two husbands, (one of them the Emperor Claudius) and the scourge of Rome! Incest ended in parricide, and the younger Agrippina was murdered by her son! In the head of CLAUDIUS, the phrenologist and physiognomist will discover nothing but imbecility. It was by the energy of his freed-man, Narcissus, that the infamous Messalina and her paramour, Silius, were slaughtered; but his niece and second wife, the diabolical Agrippina, triumphed (as it is said) through the instrumentality of Locusta, the poisoner by profession, and (with shame be it spoken) of Zenophon the physician.* * If we can credit Tacitus and other historians, the ancients must have been better versed in the art of poisoning than the more scientific moderns. Locusta administered a slow poison in the Emperor's dish of mushrooms-but the poison or the mushrooms producing an unexpected effect, Zenophon, the physician, put a poisoned feather down the Emperor's throat, under pretence of exciting vomiting, and dispatched his patient at once! With all due veneration for Tacitus, I do not believe one word of the story. Mushrooms are known to be sometimes poisonous; and, unless poor Zenophon was acquainted with the properties of Prussic acid, he had about as much to do with the death of Claudius as I had. The poisoning of Germanicus by Piso is still more incredible, and absolutely ridiculous. The heads of Caligula and Caracalla rouse sentiments that cannot be expressed, and recal scenes that cannot be described! What a Pandemonium does this gallery present to the imagination! When I looked around me, and saw Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Galba, Domitian, Caracalla, Heliogabalus, &c. &c. &c. I began to doubt whether I was not at a levee of His Satannic Majesty (who, by the way, has been more indebted to Italy for his cortege of crowned heads than to all Europe besides); but this somewhat unpleasant apprehension was relieved, by the sight of a few personages who, I was pretty certain, would not be found in such low company. Among these I distinguished Vespasian, Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and a few others of the "imperial family," besides some philosophers, orators, and citizens, that convinced me I was still on that theatre where good and evil are permitted to exist where rewards and punishments are not (apparently) distributed with much rigour-and where the just and unjust are not finally separated. MARSYAS, LAOCOON, NIOBE. Wherever we turn our eyes on this classic soil, we see the gods imbued with the passions and propensities of man—and men clothed in the attributes of the gods. This, indeed, is the land of metamorphoses. Religion itself has changed its form, though not its substance. It was mythological—it is catholic. Even the gods have undergone their revolutions. The cloudcompelling Jove descended, first to the Capitol and thence to the Cathedral. He and all the second-rate divinities have changed their names into those of saints and angels, to whom the altars rise, the incense smokes, and the prayer is offered up, now as 2000 years ago! What the ancient poets fancied in verse the sculptors formed in marble-what the priests invented afterwards in their cells, the painters have perpetuated on canvas. Thus the poetic fiction and the sacerdotal miracle-the ancient fable and the modern legend, under the magic influence of the chissel and the pencil, are admired by the critics and credited by the populace from generation to generation. If we merely regard execution, the flaying of Marsyas (in the third corridor) is not so unnatural as the excoriation of St. Bartolomeo, in the Cathedral of Milan. Marsyas is tied to a tree-Bartholomew is in the attitude of a dancing master! But let us look beyond the execution of the three figures or groups at the head of this section, and contemplate the humiliating picture of man's reason which they convey. A god and a human being (an humble piper) contend for the mastery in flute-playing. The man is apparently superior; but the god has recourse to a quibble, and insists that singing must be taken into the contest, because respiration is employed in both kinds of music!! If the cause had been tried in Westminster Abbey, Apollo would have been kicked out of court, and ducked by the populace in the neighbouring Thames. But, instead of this, the god stands by, with his lyre in his hand, and sees his competitor flayed alive! Let us look to the moral of the Laocoon. A man, a holy man, and his two innocent children are strangled by sea-serpents-and that by order of a DIVINITY. For what crime? For endeavouring to avert the ruin and subjugation of his country, by detecting the stratagems of the invading enemy! This heroic deed, for which the perpetrator would swing at the Old Bailey, is commemorated in marble, and carefully preserved in the holy Vatican-copied in marble in the gallery of the Gran Duca-and transmitted to posterity by ten thousand imitations, in paintings, prints, and casts, for the admiration of the million! Even my excellent and truly religious friend Mr. Nash, has placed the LAOCOON among the first groups that present themselves to the visiters and admirers of his interesting gallery. With the workmanship of Agesander and his assistants, I shall not interfere. The Laocoon is purely imaginary. Brother Jonathan's sea-serpents did not then exist-neither did the tortures of the Inquisition. But still I insist that, the poet who invented the fable, and the sculptor who eternized it in marble, have erected imperishable monuments to the victory of morbid fancy over manly reason! On turning into a splendid hall near the Laocoon, we shudder to find ourselves in the last act of a bloody tragedy, where the gods, as usual, have been enacting their favourite characters of murderers and assassins! Two ladies (Latona and Niobe) quarrel about precedency; and one of them, mother to a brace of illegitimate deities, applies to their divinityships for the slaughter of her rival's family, born in lawful wedlock. This natural and humane request is instantly complied with-Apollo and Diana take their stands, and, with all the sang-froid of pigeon-shooters, discharge arrow after arrow against the innocent sons and daughters of Niobe, till only one out of fourteen remains unbutchered! This is not all. The God of Gods, on his sacred throne, is bribed or corrupted, and causes the slaughtered victims of his two bastard deities to remain unburied on the field of execution! Such is the moral of this celebrated tragic group. Materiam superabat opus! I know not what effect such striking and sensible representations of pagan mythology may produce in the minds of others; but I will say that they excite in my mind, a more exalted idea of the beauty and truth of Christianity than the most eloquent sermons of modern divines. In this land of pretended miracles I was anxious to behold a real one—a flying statue. I could not doubt a fact of this kind, authenticated by such authority as that of Lady Morgan, who assures us that the "winged foot of the beautiful god is balanced on the breath of a zephyr—he is already in the air-in air less light than his own form." Never having seen either a god or a man winging his flight in air, excepting in a balloon, I cannot pretend to criticize the celebrated flying Mercury of John of Bologna. The statue is certainly in air, excepting that part of the foot which sustains the whole weight of the figure on earth. Why did not the sculptor copy Nature, and represent an opera-dancer actually in the air? He could not. The painter has an advantage over the statuary, in the means of outraging nature and credibility. After all, Lady Morgan acknowledges, that—" the conception is, perhaps, a conceit." The figure is probably that which a man would assume, who had the power of mounting in air without wings—for those appendages to the human form, in Mercury's case, can have no operative effect on the spring which he is taking from the ground. There is one shew-room in this gallery which the Grand Duke should close. It is a public nuisance. When the ladies get into it, the custodes take their seats and go to sleep. There is an end to all progression for that dayand even the TRIBUNA is neglected. A lady only could give an idea of this chamber. "THE CABINET OF GEMS-the boudoir of a Croesus, or a Sheba, is a thing in itself unique, and peculiar to the age, the family, and the country, of which it is an epitome. This room or casket, Enchased with all the riches of the world,' is worthy, by its beauty and magnificence, of its splendid deposit. Four columns of purest oriental alabaster, and four of precious verd-antique, support the glittering roof of this cabinet. Six armoires of exquisite workmanship contain the brilliant produce of Indian mines, sculptured into every form, receiving every impression which the magic finger of Genius could give to their unyielding surfaces. For this, Cellini was forced to neglect his Perseus, Bandinello his Hercules, and Valerio Vicentio, to give those powers to chiselling a toy, which might have produced a Laocoon, or a Niobe. This cabinet is a monument of a new and rare epoch in the history of the Arts-it marks a period when public taste declined with public spirit, and when the caprice of powerful individuals, seconded by their unparalleled wealth, gave a fantastic direction to talent; and, diverting it from its higher purposes, substituted private patronage for public encouragement, and replaced the stimulus of competition by the salary of dependence. "The six armoires of the Cabinet of Gems are decorated with eight columns of agate, and eight of crystal, whose bases and capitals are studded with topazes and turquoises. They contain vases cut out of rubies, and urns each Of one entire and perfect crysolite,' cups of emerald, in saucers of onyx; Roman emperors, in calcedony; and Roman beauties, shedding from their amethyst brows, the true lumen purpureum of love and loveliness. But the objects most curious are, St. Paul and St. Peter preaching, in jasper; a knight fighting in a mail of diamonds; a pearl dog, with a tail of gold and paws of rubies; Duke Cosimo the Second, in gold and enamel, praying before an altar of gems and jewels; and a shrine of crystal, representing the Passion: the whole infinitely fitter for a Parisian Magazin de Bijouterie in the Palais Royal, than for the high altar, for which they were destined by the toy-shop piety of that true Medici, Pope Clement the Seventh." THE TRIBUNE. It was not want of respect for the ancient Queen of Love that led me to pay my devoirs first to her younger sister; nor was it that wisdom of arrangement which keeps the best things for the last, that brought me to the Tribune at the conclusion of the first day's rounds in the Royal Gallery. It was principally owing to want of fore-knowledge. Various avocations had prevented me from reading the tours of modern travellers—and when unexpectedly on the road myself, I purposely avoided the perusal of descriptions and reflections, in order that all impressions might fall on a mind unbiassed and unencumbered by the impressions received by other minds. I do not regret this mode of proceeding; but I would not recommend it to others. It has its advantages, in a few cases; but, generally speaking, a tour in Italy requires a very considerable course of previous study, otherwise many things will not be seen at all-and still more will be seen unprofitably. Such a systematic procedure, however, was out of the question in my case, and the same "WEAR and TEAR" of avocation which sent me unprepared to this classic soil, prevented all but a very limited comparison of my own ideas with those of others, after my return to "MODERN BABYLON." This comparison, however brief, has been productive of profit as well as pleasure. It has convinced me that impres sions cannot have fair play, where the mind is pre-occupied, if not tinctured by the conceptions of others; and that the reflections growing out of these impressions cannot be quite genuine under such circumstances. The TRIBUNE (the sanctum sanctorum of the gallery) is wisely reserved by the custodes for the last exhibition in their Sysiphean occupation. I entered it the first day, without knowing where I was going. The VENUS DE MEDICI instantly told me I was in the presence of beauty personified. Her averted look certainly indicates, according to my impression, some degree of shame, or even denial. When we advance and turn to the right, so as to command her countenance, I fancied that I could perceive a triumphant, if not a sarcastic smile, playing on features that are mellowed rather than faded by TIME. The position of the hands is more artful than honest-pointing to, rather than concealing what female modesty has veiled from observation. 'Ipsa Venus pubem, quoties velamina ponit, P |