in themselves; what are they to a
thousand scenes in the wilder parts of Greece, of Asia Minor,
Switzerland, or even of Cintra in Portugal, or to many scenes of
Italy, and the Sierras of Spain?

But it is the "art," the columns, the temples, the wrecked vessels,
which give them their antique and their modern poetry and not the
spots themselves. Without them, the spots of earth would be unnoticed
and unknown; buried, like Babylon and Nineveh, in indistinct
confusion, without poetry, as without existence; but to whatever spot
of earth these ruins were transported, if they were capable of
transportation, like the obelisk, and the sphinx, and Memnon's head,
there they would still exist in the perfection of their beauty, and in
the pride of their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the
robbery of ruins from Athens to instruct the English in sculpture; but
why did I do so? The ruins are as poetical in Piccadilly as they were
in the Parthenon; but the Parthenon and its rock are less so without
them. Such is the poetry of art.

Mr. Bowles contends again that the pyramids of Egypt are poetical
because of "the association with boundless deserts," and that a
"pyramid of the same dimensions" would not be sublime in
"Lincoln's-Inn-Fields": not so poetical certainly; but take away the
"pyramids," and what is the "desert"? Take away Stonehenge from
Salisbury Plain, and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath, or any
other uninclosed down. It appears to me that St. Peter's the Coliseum,
the Pantheon, the Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venus dei
Medici, the Hercules, the Dying Gladiator, the Moses of Michelangelo,
and all the higher works of Canova (I have already spoken of those of
ancient Greece, still extant in that country, or transported to
England), are as poetical as Mont Blanc, or Mount AEtna, perhaps still
more so, as they are direct manifestations of mind, and presuppose
poetry in their very conception; and have, moreover, as being such, a
something of actual life, which can not belong to any part of
inanimate nature--unless we adopt the system of Spinoza, that the
world is the Deity. There can be nothing more poetical in its aspect
than the city of Venice; does this depend upon the sea, or the canals?

"The dirt and seaweed whence proud Venice rose?"

Is it the canal which runs between the palace and the prison, or the
Bridge of Sighs, which connects them, that renders it poetical? Is it
the Canal Grand