Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1825. Excerpt: ... 1818.] ROME--THE VATICAS. Ill all the appearance of painted wood. Yet we collect from Pliny that this was considered as superior to any work of art, in sculpture or painting.* As we find that these sculptors lived as early as the year of Rome 320, it is probable that Virgil took his description from this group; and indeed he has hit off the expression of the statue exactly, in his comparison of the cries of Laocoon to the bellowing of a bull-- Clamores simul liorrendos ad sidera tollit: Quales mngitus, fugit cjuum saucius arara Tanrus.-- The ancients were as perfect in their representation of animals as of men; and there are the most delightful specimens of this kind in the chambers of animals. But it would be endless, and indeed hopeless, to attempt a description of the contents of the Vatican. Sculpture and painting, strictly speaking, do not perhaps admit of description. The ideas of beauty received by one sense can hardly be transmitted by another. A man may give the exact proportions of the Venus de Medicis, with the projections of the nose and chin ;--but all this, which is literally description, can never impart a single idea of the grace and dignity diffused over that divine statue--and if he mention that grace, he describes his own sensations rather than the figure. He who could, by his description, place before the eyes of his reader the effect produced by the Venus;--who could convey by words, the manly, resigned, patient suffering of the dying Gladiator, conscious that he is breathing his last;--or that melan * Sicut in Laocoonte, qui est in Titi imperatoris domo, opus, omnibus et pictures et statuaries artis, anteferendum ; ex uno lapicle, eum et liberos draconumque mirabiles nexus, de consilii sententia,Jecere sunimi artifices Agesander, et Polydqrus, et Athenodorus Rh...
