gentlemen with whom I formed a particular intimacy and who were my
frequent companions in the visits which I made to the monuments of the
grandeur of the old Romans and to the masterpieces of ancient and modern
art. One of them I shall call Ambrosio: he was a man of highly
cultivated taste, great classical erudition, and minute historical
knowledge. In religion he was of the Roman Catholic persuasion; but a
Catholic of the most liberal school, who in another age might have been
secretary to Ganganelli. His views upon the subjects of politics and
religion were enlarged; but his leaning was rather to the power of a
single magistrate than to the authority of a democracy or even of an
oligarchy. The other friend, whom I shall call Onuphrio, was a man of a
very different character. Belonging to the English aristocracy, he had
some of the prejudices usually attached to birth and rank; but his
manners were gentle, his temper good, and his disposition amiable. Having
been partly educated at a northern university in Britain, he had adopted
views in religion which went even beyond toleration and which might be
regarded as entering the verge of scepticism. For a patrician he was
very liberal in his political views. His imagination was poetical and
discursive, his taste good and his tact extremely fine, so exquisite,
indeed, that it sometimes approached to morbid sensibility, and disgusted
him with slight defects and made him keenly sensible of small perfections
to which common minds would have been indifferent.

In the beginning of October on a very fine afternoon I drove with these
two friends to the Colosaeum, a monument which, for the hundredth time
even, I had viewed with a new admiration; my friends partook of my
sentiments. I shall give the conversation which occurred there in their
own words. Onuphrio said, "How impressive are those ruins!--what a
character do they give us of the ancient Romans, what magnificence of
design, what grandeur of execution! Had we not historical documents to