ngs and
generals over whom they triumphed; being made on purpose for them
without hands and arms, of which they were deprived immediately on their
arrival at Rome.

Enormous heads and feet, to which the other parts are wanting, let one
see, or at least guess; what colossal figures were once belonging to
them; yet somehow these celebrated artists seem to me to have a little
confounded the ideas of _big_ and _great_ like my countryman Fluellyn in
Shakespear's play: while the two famous demi-gods Castor and Pollux,
each his horse in his hand, stand one on each side the stairs which lead
to the Capitol, and are of a prodigious size--fifteen feet, as I
remember. The knowing people tell us they are portraits, and bid us
observe that one has pupils to his eyes, the other _not_; but our
_laquais de place_, who was a very sensible fellow too, as he saw me
stand looking at them, cried out, "Why now to be sure here are a vast
many miracles in this holy city--that there are:" and I heard one of our
own folks telling an Englishman the other day, how these two monstrous
statues, horses and all I believe, _came out of an egg_: a very
extraordinary thing certainly; but it is our business to believe, not to
enquire. He saw my countenance express something he did not like, and
continued, "_Eh basta! sara stato un uovo strepitoso, e cosi sinisce
l'istoria_[AE]."

[Footnote AE: Well, well! it was a famous egg we'll say, and there's an
end.]

In this repository of wonders, this glorious _campidoglio_, one is first
shewn as the most valuable curiosity, the two pigeons mentioned by Pliny
in old mosaic; and of prodigious nicety is the workmanship, though done
at such a distant period: and here is the very wolf which bears the very
mark of the lightning mentioned by Cicero:--and here is the beautiful
Antinous again; _he_ meets one at every turn, I think, and always hangs
his head as if ashamed: here too is the dying gladiator; wonderfully
fine! savage valour! mean extraction! horrible anguish! all marking, all
strongly characteristical expressions--_all there_; yet all swallowed
up, in that which does inevitably and certainly swallow up all
things--approaching death.

The collection of pictures here would put any thing but these statues
out of one's head: Guido's Fortune flying over the globe, scattering her
gifts; of which she gave him _one_, the most precious, the most
desirable. How elegantly gay and airy is this picture! But St. Sebast