hould think not. Here are however amusements
enough at Rome without trying for their conversations.

The Barberini palace, whither I carried a distracting tooth-ach, amused
even that torture by the variety of its wonders. The sleeping faun,
praised on from century to century, and never yet praised enough; so
drunk, so fast asleep, so like a human body! Modesty reproving Vanity,
by Leonardo da Vinci, so totally beyond my expectation or comprehension,
great! wise! and fine! Raphael's Mistress, painted by himself, and
copied by Julio Romano; this picture gives little satisfaction though
except from curiosity gratified, the woman is too coarse. Guido's
Magdalen up stairs, the famous Magdalen, effacing every beauty, of
softness mingled with distress. A St. John too, by dear Guercino,
transcendent! but such was my anguish the very rooms turned round: I
must come again when less ill I believe.

Nothing can equal the nastiness at one's entrance to this magazine of
perfection: but the Roman nobles are not disgusted with _all sorts_ of
scents it is plain; these are not what we should call perfumes indeed,
but certainly _odori_: of the same nature as those one is obliged to
wade through before Trajan's Pillar can be climbed.

That the general appearance of a city which contains such treasures
should be mean and disgusting, while one literally often walks upon
granite, and tramples red porphyry under one's feet, is one of the
greatest wonders to me, in a town of which the wonders seem innumerable:
that it should be nasty beyond all telling, all endurance, with such
perennial streams of the purest water liberally dispersed, and
triumphantly scattered all over it, is another unfathomable wonder: that
so many poor should be suffered to beg in the streets, when not a hand
can be got to work in the fields, and that those poor should be
permitted to exhibit sights of deformity and degradations of our species
to me unseen till now, at the most solemn moments, and in churches where
silver and gold, and richly-arrayed priests, scarcely suffice to call
off attention from their squallid miseries, I do not try to comprehend.
That the palaces which taste and expence combine to decorate should look
quietly on, while common passengers use their noble vestibules, nay
flairs, for every nauseous purpose; that princes whose incomes equal
those of our Dukes of Bedford and Marlborough, should suffer their
servants to dress other men's dinners for hir