[36] 'Objects of horror and disgust, the cold detail of deliberate barbarity, can never be proper subjects of art, because they exclude the efforts of genius. Even the powers of Shakspeare are annihilated in the butcheries of Titus Andronicus. Yet the reputation of some of the most celebrated Italian painters has been principally founded on this kind of representation. "Ici," says M. Tenhove, "c'est S. Etienne qu'on lapide, et dont je crains que la cervelle ne rejaillisse sur moi; plus loin, c'est S. Barthélémi tout sanglant, tout écorché; je compte ses muscles et ses nerfs. Vingt fleches ont criblé Sebastien. L'horrible tête du Baptiste est dans ce plat. Le gril de S. Laurent sert de pendant à la chaudière de S. Jean. Je recule d'horreur."--_Mem. Gen. lib._ x. May it not be doubted whether spectacles of this kind, so frequent in places devoted to religious purposes, may not have had a tendency rather to keep alive a spirit of ferocity and resentment, than to inculcate those mild and benevolent principles in which the essence of religion consists?' [37] Our author has given ample opportunities to Mr. Tenhove, a Dutch writer on nearly the same subject with his own, to display a disparity of manner singularly contrasting with his own sober and authentic page. Mr. T. is apparently a wit and a man of feeling, but at all times ready to sacrifice matter to whim, or to substitute assertion for proof: thus, in talking of the celebrated cameo representing the punishment of Marsyas, once the property of Lorenzo, he tells us, that of old it belonged to Nero, who used it as the seal of his death-warrants, and who probably assumed the attitude of the Apollo engraved on it, whilst he assisted at the flogging of one Menedemus, a singer who had excited his jealousy; a tale partly invented, partly perverted from Suetonius, who tells something similar of Caligula and Apelles. In another place, (p. 178, note b.) after ridiculing with somewhat prolix propriety the Florentine custom of substituting, even in grave writing, the nicknames of their countrymen to their real ones, he adds, that it is a custom laughed at and disapproved by the rest of Italian writers, though undoubtedly he had read of Cola di Rienzi, Massaniello, Titta Borghese, Giorgione, Il Tintoretto, Frà Bastiano, and Titian himself. "Pauperis esset numerare pecus."