_Feb. 9th, 1796._--Set off with all my children, Gely, and accompanied by Ld. H., to Rome, with the intention of seeing Loreto. Slept the first night at Levane, dined the next day at Arezzo. The effects of the recent earthquake were not so apparent as the exaggerated accounts of it at Florence had taught us to expect; the alarm had been great, the injury slight--indeed none but the fright occasioned to some old nuns, who ran out of their convent, glad even to see the world upon such terms. A few walls in the building were split. I went to see the picture of the ‘Martyrdom of St. Donato,’ by a young Aretin called _Benvenuto_,[151] who studies at Rome, and is admired and protected by the old _compère_. The picture is well coloured, but the artist is the most barefaced plagiarist, for not content with taking from pictures, he has pilfered arms, legs, and _torsi_ from half the statues in Rome. Reached Rome 18th. Ly. Plymouth had taken lodgings for me in ye Palazzo Corea (?), Strada Pontifice. [Sidenote: STATUES IN ROME] The following day I went with Ly. Plymouth, Amherst, and Ld. H., to see my old acquaintances in the Museum Clementinum. Even since last year there are alterations in the dispositions of the statues. The _Laocoon_ seems even grander than ever. The _Apollo_ is always miraculous, though it may be criticised, but its defects are mere artifices to give more spirit to the attitude, but nevertheless are deviations from correct truth. The legs are allowed to be faulty, if not of modern restoration. The new _Antinous_, discovered by Hamilton, and destined for the D. Braschi’s [_sic_] Palace, is among the finest things in Rome. It is of colossal size, and almost perfect; the restorations are very judicious, particularly the drapery. It is at present at Sposino’s, the sculptor, a man who has made a lasting monument of Ld. Bristol’s bad taste, and the merit of originality of thought is not his. Pitt is represented as the infant Hercules strangling the serpents, the heads of which are the portraits of Mr. Fox and Ld. North, the Coalition; Pitt’s head is of the natural size upon the body of an infant. The whole performance is like some of the uncouth decorations in the middle ages of our English cathedrals. The idea was taken from a caricature. The English artists all to a man refused to execute this puerile conceit. I went with Ly. Plymouth and Amherst to Tivoli; we stayed a couple of days. St. Peter’s contains a statue I never observed before, but which for beauty is equal to any representation of female perfection; indeed, the effect it produced upon an enraptured artist was such as to demand _drapery_. The sculpture is not remarkable: the artist was Della Porta, a scholar of M. Angelo’s.[152] There is also another female saint whose cold charms roused to passion the imagination of a French artist.