A very hungry boy, seeing in one of the cabinets a vast
porphyry vase, forty-four feet in circumference, wished that he had it
full of soup.
Yesterday, we went to the Pamfili Doria Palace, which, I believe, is the
most splendid in Rome. The entrance is from the Corso into a court,
surrounded by a colonnade, and having a space of luxuriant verdure and
ornamental shrubbery in the centre. The apartments containing pictures
and sculptures are fifteen in number, and run quite round the court in
the first piano,--all the rooms, halls, and galleries of beautiful
proportion, with vaulted roofs, some of which glow with frescos; and all
are colder and more comfortless than can possibly be imagined without
having been in them. The pictures, most of them, interested me very
little. I am of opinion that good pictures are quite as rare as good
poets; and I do not see why we should pique ourselves on admiring any but
the very best. One in a thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause
of men, from generation to generation, till its colors fade or blacken
out of sight, and its canvas rots away; the rest should be put in
garrets, or painted over by newer artists, just as tolerable poets are
shelved when their little day is over.
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