He saw my countenance express something he did not like, and
continued, "_Eh basta! sara stato un uovo strepitoso, e cosi sinisce
l'istoria_[AE]."
[Footnote AE: Well, well! it was a famous egg we'll say, and there's an
end.]
In this repository of wonders, this glorious _campidoglio_, one is first
shewn as the most valuable curiosity, the two pigeons mentioned by Pliny
in old mosaic; and of prodigious nicety is the workmanship, though done
at such a distant period: and here is the very wolf which bears the very
mark of the lightning mentioned by Cicero:--and here is the beautiful
Antinous again; _he_ meets one at every turn, I think, and always hangs
his head as if ashamed: here too is the dying gladiator; wonderfully
fine! savage valour! mean extraction! horrible anguish! all marking, all
strongly characteristical expressions--_all there_; yet all swallowed
up, in that which does inevitably and certainly swallow up all
things--approaching death.
The collection of pictures here would put any thing but these statues
out of one's head: Guido's Fortune flying over the globe, scattering her
gifts; of which she gave him _one_, the most precious, the most
desirable. How elegantly gay and airy is this picture! But St.
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