individual and faithful portrait than any other in the series. All the
busts of Caracalla--of which I have seen many--give the same evidence of
their truth; and I should like to know what it was in this abominable
emperor that made him insist upon having his actual likeness perpetuated,
with all the ugliness of its animal and moral character. I rather
respect him for it, and still more the sculptor, whose hand, methinks,
must have trembled as he wrought the bust. Generally these wicked old
fellows, and their wicked wives and daughters, are not so hideous as we
might expect. Messalina, for instance, has small and pretty features,
though with rather a sensual development of the lower part of the face.
The busts, it seemed to me, are usually superior as works of art to those
in the Capitol, and either better preserved or more thoroughly restored.
The bust of Nero might almost be called handsome here, though bearing his
likeness unmistakably.

I wish some competent person would undertake to analyze and develop his
character, and how and by what necessity--with all his elegant tastes,
his love of the beautiful, his artist nature--he grew to be such a
monster. Nero has never yet had justice done him, nor have any of the
wicked emperors; not that I suppose them to have been any less monstrous
than history represents them; but there must surely have been something
in their position and circumstances to render the terrible moral disease
which seized upon them so generally almost inevitable. A wise and
profound man, tender and reverent of the human soul, and capable of
appreciating it in its height and depth, has a great field here for the
exercise of his powers. It has struck me, in reading the history of the
Italian republics, that many of the tyrants, who sprung up after the
destruction of their liberties, resembled the worst of the Roman
emperors. The subject of Nero and his brethren has often perplexed me
with vain desires to come at the truth.