tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels
that are incrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put
pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon; in short,
they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not
in the least troubled by the proximity. It must be that their sense of
the beautiful is stronger than in the Anglo-Saxon mind, and that it
observes only what is fit to gratify it.

To-day, which was bright and cool, my wife and I set forth immediately
after breakfast, in search of the Baths of Diocletian, and the church of
Santa Maria degl' Angeli. We went too far along the Via di Porta Pia,
and after passing by two or three convents, and their high garden walls,
and the villa Bonaparte on one side, and the villa Torlonia on the other,
at last issued through the city gate. Before us, far away, were the
Alban hills, the loftiest of which was absolutely silvered with snow and
sunshine, and set in the bluest and brightest of skies. We now retraced
our steps to the Fountain of the Termini, where is a ponderous heap of
stone, representing Moses striking the rock; a colossal figure, not
without a certain enormous might and dignity, though rather too evidently
looking his awfullest. This statue was the death of its sculptor, whose
heart was broken on account of the ridicule it excited. There are many
more absurd aquatic devices in Rome, however, and few better.

We turned into the Piazza de' Termini, the entrance of which is at this
fountain; and after some inquiry of the French soldiers, a numerous
detachment of whom appear to be quartered in the vicinity, we found our
way to the portal of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. The exterior of this
church has no pretensions to beauty or majesty, or, indeed, to
architectural merit of any kind, or to any architecture whatever; for it
looks like a confused pile of ruined brickwork, with a facade resembling