Though the works of no modern artist can stand a comparison with the great master-pieces now alluded to, yet nothing can be more absurd than the idea which some people entertain, that all antique statues are of more excellent workmanship than the modern. We see, every day, numberless specimens of every species of sculpture, from the largest statues and bassos-relievos, to the smallest cameos and intaglios, that are undoubtedly antique, and yet far inferior, not only to the works of the best artists of Leo the Tenth’s time, but also to those of many artists now alive in various parts of Europe. The passion for sculpture, which the Romans caught from the Greeks, became almost universal. Statues were not only the chief ornaments of their temples and palaces, but also of the houses of the middle, and even the lowest, order of citizens. They were prompted to adorn them with the figures of a few favourite deities, by religion, as well as vanity: no man, but an atheist or a beggar, could be without them. This being the case, we may easily conceive what graceless divinities many of them must have been; for in this, no doubt, as in every other manufactory, there must occasionally have been bungling workmen employed, even in the most flourishing æra of the arts, and goods finished in a very careless and hurried manner, to answer the constant demand, and suit the dimensions of every purse. We must have a very high idea of the number of statues of one kind or other, which were in old Rome, when we consider, how many are still to be seen; how many have at different periods been carried away, by the curious, to every country in Europe; how many were mutilated and destroyed by the gothic brutality of Barbarians, and the ill-directed zeal of the early Christians, who thought it a duty to exterminate every image, without distinction of age or sex, and without considering whether they were of God or man. This obliged the wretched heathens to hide the statues of their gods and of their ancestors in the bowels of the earth, where unquestionably great numbers of them still remain. Had they not been thus barbarously hewed to pieces, and buried, I had almost said, alive, we might have had several equal to the great master-pieces in the Vatican; for it is natural to imagine, that the rage of the zealots would be chiefly directed against those statues which were in the highest estimation with the heathens; and we must likewise imagine, that these would be the pieces which they, on their part, would endeavour, by every possible means, to preserve from their power, and bury in the earth. Of those which have been dug up, I shall mention only a very few, beginning with the Farnesian Hercules, which has been long admired as an exquisite model of masculine strength; yet, admirable as it is, it does not please all the world. I am told that the women in particular find something unsatisfactory, and even odious,