were turned upward, as if he had avoided the sight of the leathern
bag, and looked to the crucifix. Every tinge and hue of life had
left it in that instant. It was dull, cold, livid, wax. The body
also.
There was a great deal of blood. When we left the window, and went
close up to the scaffold, it was very dirty; one of the two men who
were throwing water over it, turning to help the other lift the
body into a shell, picked his way as through mire. A strange
appearance was the apparent annihilation of the neck. The head was
taken off so close, that it seemed as if the knife had narrowly
escaped crushing the jaw, or shaving off the ear; and the body
looked as if there were nothing left above the shoulder.
Nobody cared, or was at all affected. There was no manifestation
of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or sorrow. My empty pockets
were tried, several times, in the crowd immediately below the
scaffold, as the corpse was being put into its coffin. It was an
ugly, filthy, careless, sickening spectacle; meaning nothing but
butchery beyond the momentary interest, to the one wretched actor.
Yes! Such a sight has one meaning and one warning. Let me not
forget it. The speculators in the lottery, station themselves at
favourable points for counting the gouts of blood that spirt out,
here or there; and buy that number. It is pretty sure to have a
run upon it.
The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansed, the
scaffold taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed. The
executioner: an outlaw EX OFFICIO (what a satire on the
Punishment!) who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge of St.
Angelo but to do his work: retreated to his lair, and the show was
over.
At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, the Vatican,
of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous galleries, and
staircases, and suites upon suites of immense chambers, ranks
highest and stands foremost. Many most noble statues, and
wonderful pictures, are there; nor is it heresy to say that there
is a considerable amount of rubbish there, too. When any old piece
of sculpture dug out of the ground, finds a place in a gallery
because it is old, and without any reference to its intrinsic
merits: and finds admirers by the hundred, because it is there,
and for no other reason on earth: there will be no lack of
objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who
employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles of
Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of taste
for the mere trouble of putting them on.
I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave my natural
perception of what is natural and true, at a palace-door, in Italy
or elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were travelling in
the East. I cannot forget that there are certain expressions of
face, natural to certain passions, and as unchangeable in their
nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an eagle. I cannot
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dismiss from my certain knowledge, such commonplace facts as the
ordinary proportion of men’s arms, and legs, and heads; and when I
meet with performances that do violence to these experiences and
recollections, no matter where they may be, I cannot honestly
admire them, and think it best to say so; in spite of high critical
advice that we should sometimes feign an admiration, though we have
it not.
Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a jolly young
Waterman representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and Perkins’s
Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to commend or
admire in the performance, however great its reputed Painter.
Neither am I partial to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and
bassoons, for the edification of sprawling monks apparently in
liquor. Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons of galleries, Saint Francis
and Saint Sebastian; both of whom I submit should have very