As soon as I had refreshed myself with a few hours’ rest, I visited the Zampieri Palace. It is undoubtedly the best and most valuable collection here, not eked out like the others with trash.[141] ‘St. Peter Weeping,’ by _Guido_, reckoned the first of his works and the most faultless picture in Italy. It is in his strong manner, and in the highest preservation. Two hoary-headed old men, one crying and the other upbraiding, inspire but a small portion of interest, and one is glad to quit this _perfect_ picture to contemplate the work of a more faulty painter, who, however, eludes that censure in this charming composition. Abraham, in compliance with envious old Sarah, dismisses his youthful handmaid Hagar and her son Ishmael: _Guercino_. _Agostin Caracci_ is nowhere so great as in his mellow picture representing the ‘Woman taken in Adultery.’ A lovely little _Guido_, ‘A Heavenly Concert,’ done when he was eighteen.... _25th._--Ld. Holland and Mr. Wyndham set off for Turin. Lord Wycombe, M. Gely, Webby, and myself remained at the Pellegrino. Lord W. dined with me every day, and several learned Bolognese, among them a lady who was reckoned a very good Greek scholar. She wrote an impromptu Greek epigram upon me, but for aught I know it might be as old as Homer. ‘St. Agnes,’ in the chapel of the monastery of that name.[142] It represents the martyrdom of that saint, but fails in the effect that the principal object ought to produce. It is taken at the moment when the executioner is plunging the sword into her bosom; the countenance is insipidly livid, without the dignity of resignation nor the anguish of pain. This group is not enough distinguished, as it falls in with a heap of dead saints. Three women and a child form a pretty group on the right-hand side. The upper part seems a separate composition, and very likely is done by a scholar of Domenichino’s. Ld. Holland read me a passage out of a letter from Charles Fox, from which it appears that he reckons this picture almost the best in Italy, and the masterpiece of Domenichino. I visited all that was remarkable in the neighbourhood, and saw much more than I did the first time I was there. I read the _Tragedies_ of Crébillon; the horrible subjects affected my imagination, and several nights of restlessness and groundless terror I owe to their perusal. He said to a friend who was lamenting the _sombre_ of his taste, that Corneille had exhausted all historical subjects, that Racine had taken heaven, and _l’enfer seul_ remained to him. Ld. Wycombe left me the day before Ld. Holland returned from Turin. Ld. Bristol,[143] with some wretched dependants, came to my inn; he dined one day with me. He is a clever, bad man. He asked me to let him have a copy of my picture, the one done by Fagan, and belonging to my friend Italinski.[144] I hesitated much, and implied, without giving it, a denial. He told me of Ly. Louisa Hervey’s marriage to Mr. Jenkinson, a son of Ld. Hawkesbury’s.