There is a very interesting subterranean church here: the roof
supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there seemed to
be at least one beggar in ambush: to say nothing of the tombs and
secluded altars. From every one of these lurking-places, such
crowds of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men and
women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic
gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad infirmity, came
hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in the cathedral
above, had been suddenly animated, and had retired to this lower
church, they could hardly have made a greater confusion, or
exhibited a more confounding display of arms and legs.
There is Petrarch's Monument, too; and there is the Baptistery,
with its beautiful arches and immense font; and there is a gallery
containing some very remarkable pictures, whereof a few were being
copied by hairy-faced artists, with little velvet caps more off
their heads than on. There is the Farnese Palace, too; and in it
one of the dreariest spectacles of decay that ever was seen--a
grand, old, gloomy theatre, mouldering away.
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