A head of hair was not the greatest conquest of the Romans, but it was one of the most lasting: we often take from the tombs of women the whole of that ornament, which has resisted the scissors of the daughters of the night, and we look in vain for the comely brow which it adorned. The perfumed tresses, the object of the idolatry of the lightest of the passions, have outlived empires; death, which shatters all chains, has been unable to break that net. To-day the Italians wear their own hair, which the women of the people plait with coquettish grace. De Brosses, the traveller magistrate, bears, in his portraits and writings, a false air of Voltaire, with whom he had a comical dispute about a field. De Brosses often sat chatting on the edge of the bed of a Princess Borghese. In 1803, I saw in the Borghese Palace another princess who was shining with all the brilliancy of her brother's glory: Pauline Bonaparte is no more[633]! Had she lived in the days of Raphael, he would have represented her in the form of one of those Loves which recline on the backs of the lions in the Farnese Palace, and the same languor would have carried off the painter and the model. How many flowers have already passed away in those plains in which I made Jerome and Augustine, Eudorus and Cymodocœa roam! [Sidenote: De Brosses, King James III.] De Brosses represents the English on the Piazza d'Espagna much as we see them to-day, living together, making a great noise, eyeing poor mortals from head to foot, and returning to their brick-red dog-hole in London, after scarce so much as glancing at the Coliseum. De Brosses obtained the honour of paying his court to James III.: "Of the two sons of the Pretender," he says, "the elder[634] is about twenty years old, the younger[635] fifteen. I have heard say by those who know them thoroughly that the elder is worth by far the more and is better loved in private; that he has a good heart and great courage; that he feels his position keenly and that, if he does not escape from it one day, it will not be for want of fearlessness. I was told that, being taken, when quite young, to the siege of Gaeta[636], at the time of the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples by the Spaniards, during the crossing his hat came to fall into the sea. They wanted to pick it up: "'No,' said he, 'it is not worth while; I shall surely have to go to fetch it myself one day.'" De Brosses believes that, if the Prince of Wales attempts anything, he will not succeed, and he gives his reasons. Returning to Rome after his gallant exploits, Charles Edward, who bore the name of Count of Albany, lost his father[637]; he married the Princess of Stolberg-Gedern[638] and settled in Tuscany. Is it true that he secretly visited London in 1753 and 1761, as Hume tells us, that he was present at the coronation of George III., and that he said to some one who recognised him in the crowd: