The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansed, the
scaffold taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed. The
executioner: an outlaw ex officio (what a satire on the
Punishment!) who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge of St.
Angelo but to do his work: retreated to his lair, and the show was
over.
At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, the Vatican,
of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous galleries, and
staircases, and suites upon suites of immense chambers, ranks
highest and stands foremost. Many most noble statues, and
wonderful pictures, are there; nor is it heresy to say that there
is a considerable amount of rubbish there, too. When any old piece
of sculpture dug out of the ground, finds a place in a gallery
because it is old, and without any reference to its intrinsic
merits: and finds admirers by the hundred, because it is there,
and for no other reason on earth: there will be no lack of
objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who
employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles of
Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of taste
for the mere trouble of putting them on.
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