Sebastian
stands opposite, to shew that he could likewise excel in the pathetic.
Titian's famous Magdalen, of which the King of France boasts one copy, a
noble family at Venice another, is protested by the Roman connoisseurs
to reside here only; but why should not the artist be fond of repeating
so fine an idea? Guercino's Sybil however, intelligently pensive, and
sweetly sensible, is the single figure I should prefer to them all.
Before we quit the Capitol, it is pity not to name Marforio; broken,
old, and now almost forgotten: though once companion, or rather
respondent to Pasquin, and once, a thousand years before those days, a
statue of the river _Nar_, as his recumbent posture testifies; not _Mars
in the forum_, as has been by some supposed. The late Pope moved him
from the street, and shut him up with his betters in the Capitol.
Of Trajan and Antonine's Pillars what can one say? That St. Peter and
St. Paul stand on the tops of each, setting forth that uncertainty of
human affairs which they preached in their life-time, and shewing that
_they_, who were once the objects of contempt and abhorrence, are now
become literally _the head stones of the corner_; being but too
profoundly venerated in that very city, which once cruelly persecuted,
and unjustly put them to death.
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