his capacity for acute yet sympathetic appreciation.
"In the Palazzo Altieri I admired a picture, by Carlo Maratti,
representing a saint calling down lightning from heaven to
destroy blasphemers. It was the figure of the saint I admired,
merely as a portrait. The execution of the other parts was tame
enough; perhaps they were purposely kept down in order to
preserve the importance of the principal figure. I imagine
Salvator Rosa would have made a different disposition on the same
subject--that amidst the darkness of a tempest he would have
illuminated the blasphemer with the flash of lightning by which
he was destroyed. This would have thrown a dismal gleam upon his
countenance, distorted by the horror of his situation as well as
by the effects of the fire, and rendered the whole scene
dreadfully picturesque."

Smollett confuses historical and aesthetic grandeur. What appeals
to him most is a monument of a whole past civilization, such as
the Pont du Gard. His views of art, too, as well as his views of
life, are profoundly influenced by his early training as a
surgeon. He is not inclined by temperament to be sanguine. His
gaze is often fixed, like that of a doctor, upon the end of life;
and of art, as of nature, he takes a decidedly pathological view.
Yet, upon the whole, far from deriding his artistic impressions,
I think we shall be inclined rather to applaud them, as well for
their sanity as for their undoubted sincerity.

For the return journey to Florence Smollett selected the
alternative route by Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Perugia, and
Arezzo, and, by his own account, no traveller ever suffered quite
so much as he did from "dirt," "vermin," "poison," and imposture.