eBooks Base 2000

When they were painted life was not what it is now, and
the artists had not the same ends in view. . . . . It depresses the
spirits to go from picture to picture, leaving a portion of your vital
sympathy at every one, so that you come, with a kind of half-torpid
desperation, to the end. On our way down the staircase we saw several
noteworthy bas-reliefs, and among them a very ancient one of Curtius
plunging on horseback into the chasm in the Forum. It seems to me,
however, that old sculpture affects the spirits even more dolefully than
old painting; it strikes colder to the heart, and lies heavier upon it,
being marble, than if it were merely canvas.
My wife went to revisit the museum, which we had already seen, on the
other side of the piazza; but, being cold, I left her there, and went out
to ramble in the sun; for it was now brightly, though fitfully, shining
again. I walked through the Forum (where a thorn thrust itself out and
tore the sleeve of my talma) and under the Arch of Titus, towards the
Coliseum.


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