82 LONELY HABITATIONS. for a violent death! they appear absolutely enamoured of Murder, and predetermined to quit Life by some passage of distinguished horror! A good decent"fairstrae" death is too dull and common place for them. Accordingly, no sooner do such elderly Bipeds begin to perceive that they are as frail and defenceless as any Burglar and Assassin could desire, than they forthwith cast about for some nook of special loneliness and peril, some of those " Dark Places of the Earth," where they may pretty clearly calculate upon ending their days (not in peace, but) in pieces! This propensity for defenceless solitude is considerably strengthened by the circumstance of their possessing a round sum of Spade guineas in a certain red bag, or some ancestral teapot and tankard of massive silver, or, above all, an old India cabinet, which (gorgeous as its enamelled exterior and Pagoda fabric appear) derives its principal importance from the credit of holding an untold treasury of Jewels and Ingots within its labyrinths of Recesses, and Pannels, and Drawers. And now, lest the chances should still be unfavourable to the consummation thus devoutly wished for, they take no protector to their solitary retreat, no hippogryph in the shape of a lionlike Psalm lxxiv. MICHAEL ANGELO AND FORSYTH. 83 mastiff, or brawny young servingman, to be some defence against the crapeclad Arimaspian, whom they have reason to expect nightly upon a visit to their treasures; oh no! nothing is further from their thoughts! If indeed they do condescend to introduce an associate into their ominous seclusion, you may be sure it will be some asthmatic Butler, or paralytic Housekeeper, or perhaps a Child from the Charity school, for whom they furtively design a share in the grim honours of their own impending Apotheosis. How graphically does Crabbe depict some such a dwelling as this: "With pleasing wonder I have oft-times stood There is a piece of impertinence in Forsyth respecting the famous Statue of Moses, which I must attempt to expose. "Here sits," saith the Critic, in the tone of a true Showman, "here sits the Moses of Michael Angelo, frowning with the terrific Eyebrows of an Olympian Jove. Homer, and Phidias," &c. &c. 84 STA. MARIA IN TRASTEVERE. Then ensues a piece of hypercriticism, leavened with a silly sneer at the Church of England; but let that pass. I maintain that the expression of Moses' features, so far from the supercilious frown of the Heathen Thunderer, has only so much of majestic Gravity on his brow as may well indicate the weight of a Government exposed to perpetual rebellion, which presses on his mind; while the sweet expression of the lower part of his face, especially his mouth, perfectly corresponds with his character as 66 the meekest of Men." As to the foolish remarks he quotes on the Beard and Dress, they would never have been of consequence, had not Forsyth, by his justly acquired authority, as a Critic, embalmed the things in the Amber of his generally admirable Judgment. "Who would not smile if such a Man there be? Those glorious old Columns in the Trastevere Church of St. Mary! I have seen them at last; and oh how have I seen them! Their colossal Shafts and elaborate Capitals, where the florid loveliness of the Corinthian Acanthus scarcely exceeds the minute ornaments of busts and statues, which betray the Roman corruption of the Ionic Volute, were draperied with tinsel and red, so predominant in their tasteless glare, that even the deep gloom of the high old Temple seemed to lose half its reverential effect. As for the august Band STA. MARIA IN TRASTEVERE. 85 of Pillars themselves, they look at once ashamed at the insult thus offered to their ancient majesty, and indignantly appeal to some friendly hand to vindicate their outraged dignity, and once more exhibit them in their naked beauty of proportion and form. The marvel to me is, that, with so much of the sublime ancientry of Heathendom about them, and so much of intellect and taste to appreciate and preserve its Monuments, these Italians have not the sense to see the incongruity, nay, the absurdity, of blending modern Decoration with antique Austerity. How, oh! how could those Master Minds that delivered from their tombs the Buried of the Baths, whose munificence exercised the pencils of Painters and the chisels of Sculptors for their palaces and temples, whose Pride appropriated the choicest Relics of Athens and Rome to their halls, or whose Piety devoted their gigantic Remains to their churches,-how could they be so foolish or so unfeeling as to make the Captive Masterpieces stoop to be disguised in yards of red cloth, or tarnished with bandages of trumpery tinsel! Alas! it is the meretricious Spirit that like a leprosy pervades the Papal system, which spreads even over its Architecture. "It seemeth to me there is, as it were, a Plague in the House." "It is a fretting Leprosy in the House: it is unclean.”—Leviticus xiv. 35, &c. 86 THE LAOCOON. Rome, 30th May, 1844. ONCE more, then, I have seen the Laocoon! Such a Struggle, and so beautiful! Those noble features in such transports of Pain, yet rapt rather than distorted by it. The bodily Anguish is so evidently subordinate to the Parental throes. Why my Lord Byron calls him "the Old Man,” I am at a loss to conceive. That frame, in its naked agony, discloses all the vigour of life's meridian. The left shoulder with its swelling veins, the broad palpitating breast, oh! it is enough to make one in love with Torture. This sublime conception affects one equally, but in quite a different way from the Dying Gladiator. They are each in different stages of suffering. With the noble Creature of Ctesilas the worst is over. Light has left his eyes, Death is rapidly and mercifully supplanting Pain; this world is no more for him; its miseries have done their worst. But the Trojan Priest is writhing in his first agonies; the deadly fangs of the Serpent gripe his manly Chest; and, if one may judge from the tightened cordage of those deadly coils, each limb of that magnificent Frame is in the very act of being crushed. But this is little-evidently a secondary source of suffering to the Father, in whose ears his Children's shrieks are ringing, his Children involved in the same excruciating death, and |