It is usual to desire strangers, on their first entering this church, to guess at the size of the objects, which, on account of the distance, always seem less than they are in reality. The statues of the Angels, in particular, which support the founts of holy water, when viewed from the door, seem no bigger than children; but when you approach nearer, you perceive they are six feet high. We make no such mistake on seeing a living man at the same, or a greater distance; because the knowledge we have of a man’s real size precludes the possibility of our being mistaken, and we make allowance for the diminution which distance occasions; but Angels, and other figures in sculpture, having no determined standard, but being under the arbitrary will of the statuary, who gives them the bulk of giants or dwarfs as best suits his purpose, we do not know what allowance to make; and the eye, unused to such large masses, is confounded, and incapacitated from forming a right judgment of an object six feet high, or of any other dimensions, which it was not previously acquainted with. It is not my design to attempt a description of the statues, basso relievos, columns, pictures, and various ornaments of this church; Such an account, faithfully executed, would fill volumes. The finest of all the ornaments have a probability of being longer preserved than would once have been imagined, by the astonishing improvements which have of late been made in the art of copying pictures in Mosaic. Some of the artists here, have already made copies with a degree of accuracy, which nobody could believe who had not seen the performances. By this means, the works of Raphael, and other great painters, will be transmitted to a later posterity than they themselves expected; and although all the beauty of the originals cannot be retained in the copy, it would be gross affectation to deny that a great part of it is. How happy would it make the real lovers of the art in this age, to have such specimens of the genius of Zeuxis, Apelles, and other ancient painters!