and his sins
against good taste and propriety. One wishes that he had allayed the
heat of his fancy with some cooling drops of discretion. Even his
colouring so admired in general, has something florid and meretricious
to my eye and taste.

One of the finest pictures here is Domenichino's Cumean Sibyl, which,
like all other masterpieces, defies the copyist and engraver. The
Sibilla Persica of Guercino hangs a little to the left; and with her
contemplative air, and the pen in her hand, she looks as if she were
recording the effusions of her more inspired sister. The former is a
chaste and beautiful picture, full of feeling and sweetly coloured;
but the vicinity of Domenichino's magnificent creation throws it
rather into shade. Two unfinished pictures upon which Guido was
employed at the time of his death are preserved in the Capitol: one is
the Bacchus and Ariadne, so often engraved and copied; the other, a
single figure, the size of life, represents the Soul of the righteous
man ascending to heaven. Had Guido lived to finish this divine
picture, it would have been one of his most splendid productions; but
he was snatched away to realize, I trust, in his own person, his
sublime conception. The head alone is finished, or nearly so; and has
a most extatic expression. The globe of the earth seems to sink from
beneath the floating figure, which is just sketched upon the canvass,
and has a shadowy indistinctness which to my fancy added to its
effect. Guercino's chef-d'oeuvre, the Resurrection of Saint
Petronilla, (a saint, I believe, of very hypothetical fame,) is also
here; and has been copied in mosaic for St. Peters. A magnificent
Rubens, the She Wolf nursing Romulus and Remus; a fine copy of
Raffaelle's Triumph of Galatea by Giulo Romano; Domenichino's Saint
Barbara, with the same lovely inspired eyes he always gives his female
saints, and a long et cetera.

From the Capitol we immediately drove to the Borghese palace, where I
spent half an hour looking at the picture _called_ the Cumean Sibyl of
Domenichino, and am more and more convinced that it is a Saint Cecilia
and not a Sibyl.

We have now visited the Borghese palace four times; and a-propos to
pictures, I may as well make a few memoranda of its contents. It is
not the most numerous, but it is by far the most valuable and select
private gallery in Rome.

Domenichino's Chase of Diana, with the two beautiful nymphs in the
foreground, is a splendid picture. Titi