ness of
which is pernicious to the colours of the pallet, I will not yet
compare to the productions of the pencil. The glassyness (if I may be
allowed the expression) of the surface, throws, in my opinion, a false
light on some parts of the picture; and when you approach it, the
joinings of the pieces look like so many cracks on painted canvas.
Besides, this method is extremely tedious and expensive. I went to see
the artists at work, in a house that stands near the church, where I
was much pleased with the ingenuity of the process; and not a little
surprized at the great number of different colours and tints, which are
kept in separate drawers, marked with numbers as far as seventeen
thousand. For a single head done in Mosaic, they asked me fifty
zequines. But to return to the church. The altar of St. Peter's choir,
notwithstanding all the ornaments which have been lavished upon it, is
no more than a heap of puerile finery, better adapted to an Indian
pagod, than to a temple built upon the principles of the Greek
architecture. The four colossal figures that support the chair, are
both clumsy and disproportioned. The drapery of statues, whether in
brass or stone, when thrown into large masses, appears hard and
unpleasant to the eye and for that reason the antients always imitated
wet linen, which exhibiting the shape of the limbs underneath, and
hanging in a multiplicity of wet folds, gives an air of lightness,
softness, and ductility to the whole.

These two statues weigh 116,257 pounds, and as they sustain nothing but
a chair, are out of all proportion, inasmuch as the supporters ought to
be suitable to the things supported. Here are four giants holding up
the old wooden chair of the apostle Peter, if we may believe the book
De Identitate Cathedrae Romanae, Of the Identity of the Roman Chair.
The implements of popish superstition; such as relicks of pretended
saints, ill-proportioned spires and bellfreys, and the nauseous
repetition of the figure of the cross, which is in itself a very mean
and disagreeable object, only fit for the prisons of condemned
criminals, have contributed to introduce a vitious taste into the
external architecture, as well as in the internal ornaments of our
temples. All churches are built in the figure of a cross, which
effectually prevents the eye from taking in the scope of the building,
either without side or within; consequently robs the edifice of its
proper effect. The palace of the Es