I need not mention the two equestrian statues of Constantine the Great, and Charlemagne, which stand at opposite ends of the great portico of St. Peter's church; because there is nothing in them which particularly engaged my attention. The sleeping Cleopatra, as you enter the court of the Belvedere, in the Vatican, is much admired; but I was better pleased with the Apollo, which I take to be the most beautiful statue that ever was formed. The Nile, which lies in the open court, surmounted with the little children, has infinite merit; but is much damaged, and altogether neglected. Whether it is the same described in Pliny, as having been placed by Vespasian in the Temple of Peace, I do not know. The sixteen children playing about it, denoted the swelling of the Nile, which never rose above sixteen cubits. As for the famous groupe of Laocoon, it surpassed my expectation. It was not without reason that Buonaroti called it a portentous work; and Pliny has done it no more than justice in saying it is the most excellent piece that ever was cut in marble; and yet the famous Fulvius Ursini is of opinion that this is not the same statue which Pliny described. His reasons, mentioned by Montfaucon, are these. The statues described by Pliny were of one stone; but these are not. Antonioli, the antiquary, has in his Possession, pieces of Laocoon's snakes, which were found in the ground, where the baths of Titus actually stood, agreeable to Pliny, who says these statues were placed in the buildings of Titus. Be that as it may, the work which we now see does honour to antiquity. As you have seen innumerable copies and casts of it, in marble, plaister, copper, lead, drawings, and prints, and read the description of it in Keysler, and twenty other books of travels, I shall say nothing more on the subject; but that neither they nor I, nor any other person, could say too much in its praise. It is not of one piece indeed. In that particular Pliny himself might be mistaken. "Opus omnibus et picturae, et statuariae artis praeponendum. Ex uno lapide eum et Liberos draconumque mirabiles nexus de consilii sententia fecere succubi artifices." "A work preferable to all the other Efforts of Painting and Statuary. The most excellent artists joined their Talents in making the Father and his Sons, together with the admirable Twinings of the Serpents, of one Block." Buonaroti discovered the joinings, though they were so artfully concealed as to be before invisible. This amazing groupe is the work of three Rhodian sculptors, called Agesander, Polydore, and Athenodorus, and was found in the thermae of Titus Vespasian, still supposing it to be the true antique. As for the torso, or mutilated trunk of a statue, which is called the school of Michael Angelo, I had not time to consider it attentively; nor taste enough to perceive its beauties at first sight. The famous horses on Monte Cavallo, before the pope's palace, which are said to have been made in emulation, by Phidias and Praxiteles, I have seen, and likewise those in the front of the Capitol, with the statues of Castor and Pollux; but what pleased me infinitely more than all of them together, is the equestrian statue of Corinthian brass, standing in the middle of this Piazza (I mean at the Capitol) said to represent the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Others suppose it was intended for Lucius Verus; a third set of antiquaries contend for Lucius Septimius Severus; and a fourth, for Constantine, because it stood in the Piazza of the Lateran palace, built by that emperor, from whence pope Paul III. caused it to be removed to the Capitol. I considered the trophy of Marius as a very curious piece of sculpture, and admired the two sphinxes at the bottom of the stairs leading to this Piazza, as the only good specimens of design I have ever seen from Aegypt: for the two idols of that country, which stand in the ground floor of the Musaeum of the Capitol, and indeed all the Aegyptian statues in the Camera Aegyptiaca of this very building, are such monstrous misrepresentations of nature, that they never could have obtained a place among the statues of Rome, except as curiosities of foreign superstition, or on account of the materials, as they are generally of basaltes, porphyry, or oriental granite.