As respects the comparison between manuscripts and books, the latter are more to be depended on for accuracy, since, although liable to errors of the press, the number of the editions leaves more opportunities for correction than the system of publishing by written copies. The last edition of a standard work is always chosen for its correctness, especially if printed during the author’s life; but who can say when the few manuscripts of Pliny that we possess were written out? when, or by whom, or under what correction? To lay much stress, therefore, on a fact that must necessarily be traditional, or taken at second-hand, and which rest altogether on the testimony of a book, is far from safe. There are things of public notoriety in particular places, at the time of their publication, on which a writer may generally be trusted; but when we come to matters of second-hand intelligence, or which are less notorious, it is wiser to believe a circumstance, than to believe a sentence in a book, however well turned. If the Apollo be truly of Carrara marble, for instance, it is scarcely probable it can be a Grecian statue, and then it is at once reduced to the rank of a copy; for no Roman sculptor could have made it. The alternative is to suppose it the work of some Greek, in Italy. It is just possible, it is true, that a block of Carrara marble may have found its way to Greece; but, admitting this, it would scarcely have been used by the artist of _the_ Apollo, on an original of so much merit and importance. The fresco painting of the Last Judgment, by Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel, is one of the most extraordinary blendings of the grand and the monstrous in art. You know the anecdote of this painter’s coming into the Farnesina Palace here, when Raphael was employed on its celebrated frescoes, among which is the Galatea, and finding no one in the room, by way of contempt for the prettiness of the divine master, his sketching a gigantic head in a cornice with coal. This head still remains, Raphael, having had the good-nature not to disturb it, and every one sees it as a proof of the rivalry of these celebrated men. Michael Angelo has painted the Last Judgment with the same ideas of the grand as he sketched the Farnesina head. It is not a pleasing picture, the subject scarcely admitting of this; but it is certainly an extraordinary one. I never see the works of these two men without thinking what an artist Buonarotti would have made had he possessed Raphael’s gentleness and sensibility to beauty; as one is apt to fancy what Shakspeare might have done with Milton’s subject, had he enjoyed the advantages of Milton’s learning and taste. There would have been no stealing from Virgil, through Dante, in the latter case. I refer you to the regular books for the detailed accounts of the treasures of art with which not only the Vatican, but all Rome abounds, my own gleanings being intended for little more than my own feelings and ruminations.