Pliny mentions this statue, or at least one of the same nature, as the masterpiece of Grecian art that was then to be found in Rome. He ascribes it to _three statuaries_! If this fact were well authenticated, I should hesitate about believing it any thing more than a copy from the bronze. Is not Pliny’s authority enough, you may be inclined to ask, to settle a question like this?—I think not. Pliny wrote about the year 90. Winkelman refers this statue to the age of Alexander the Great; who died four centuries earlier. Now, you may judge how much more likely Pliny, in the condition of the world in his time, would be, than we ourselves, to get at the truth of a similar fact of an old date. Europe is filled with pictures that the imputed artists never saw. The celebrated “Belle Jardinière” of the Louvre is said to be a copy surreptitiously obtained by Mazarin; and I remember one day, when admiring the beautiful Marriage of St. Catharine, in the same gallery, to have been almost persuaded against my will that it was a copy, and yet Correggio has not been dead three centuries. While writing this letter, I find proof of the doubtful character of authorities. The work of Mrs. Starke is well known, and it certainly has great merit in its way. This lady, however, like most of her sex, has no definite notions of distances, surfaces, &c. Few mere writers have; for they usually are not practical people. In speaking of the Vatican, Mrs. Starke, whom I had consulted with the hope of being able to give you something in feet and inches, says, its “present circumference is computed to be near _seventy thousand feet_.” To adopt this lady’s own mode of expressing admiration, “!!!!” A mile contains five thousand two hundred and eighty feet; and this will make a circumference of rather more than thirteen miles which is but little short of the circuit of the existing walls of Rome. Seven thousand feet may be true; though even that appears a large allowance to me.