But the Romans, whatever were their motives, spared the Pantheon, which is known to have suffered no damage from the zeal of the pontiffs, or the indignation of the saints, before the first siege of Rome by Alaric. It remained so rich till about the year 655, as to excite the avarice of Constantine II. who came from Constantinople to pillage the Pantheon, and executed his purpose so far as to strip it both of its inside and outside brazen coverings, which he transported to Syracuse, where they soon after fell into the hands of the Saracens.

About 50 years before this, Pope Boniface IV. had obtained the Pantheon of the Emperor Phocas, to make a church of it. The artists of those days were totally ignorant of the excellence of the Greek and Roman architecture, and spoiled every thing they laid their hands upon. To this period, certain alterations are to be referred, of which I shall speak by and by.

1

After the devastations of the Barbarians, Rome was contracted within a narrow compass, the seven hills were abandoned, and the Campus Martius, being an even plain, and near the Tyber, became the ground plat of the whole city. The Pantheon happening to stand at the entrance of the Campus Martius, was presently surrounded with houses, which spoiled the fine prospect of it; and it was yet more deplorably disgraced by some of them which stood close to its walls. Pedlars sheds were built even within its portico, and the intercolumniations were bricked up, to the irreparable damage of the matchless pillars, of which some lost part of their capitals, some of their bases, and others were chisseled out six or se

ven inches deep, and as many feet high, to let in posts. Which excavations are to this day half filled up with brick and mortar, a sad monument of the licentiousness of the vulgar, of the stupid avarice of those who sold them the privilege to ruin the noblest piece of art in the world!

This disorder continued till the pontificate of Eugene IV. whose zeal for the decency of a consecrated place, prevailed upon him to have all the houses cleared away that incumbered the Pantheon, and so the miserable barracks in the portico were knocked down.

From the time Constantius carried off the brass plating of the external roof, that part was exposed to the injuries of the weather, or, at best, was but slightly tiled in, till Benedict II. covered it with lead, which Nicholas V, renewed in a better style.

I cannot find that from this time to Urban VIII. any pope did any thing remarkable to the Pantheon.

Raphael Urbin, who had no equal as a painter, and who as an architect had no superior, left a considerable sum by his will, for the reparation of the Pantheon, where his tomb is placed. Perino de la Vagua, Jacomo Udino, Annibale Carrachi, Flaminio Vacca, and the celebrated Archangelo Corelli did the same. All the ornaments within, that have any claim to be called good, are of the latter times, the paintings merit esteem, and the statues, though not masterpieces, do honour to sculpture, which alone is a proof that they are posterior to the 15th century.

But I must say, with all the respect due to a pontiff, who was otherwise a protector, and, even a practiser of the arts, it were much to

be

be wished that Urban VIII. had not known that the Pantheon existed. The inscriptions cut at the side of the door inform us, that he repaired it; yet, at the same time that he built up with one hand, he pulled down with the other. He caused two bellfries of a wretched taste to be erected on the ancient front work, and he divested the portico of all the remains of its ancient grandeur, I mean the brazen coverture * of the cross beans, which amounted to such a prodigious quantity, that not only the vast baldaquin, or canopy, of the confessional in St. Peter's was cast out of it, but like. wise a great number of cannon for the castle of St. Angelo.

Is it not marvellous, that whilst all these operations were carrying on in the portico, he never once thought of repairing the damages which time had wrought in it? Of the sixteen pillars, which supported this magnificent pile, there were no more than thirteen left; the three next the temple of Minerva had disappeared; with these the entablature and an angle of the front had tumbled down. Were there not in Rome fragments enough of antique columns that might have been put together and set up, to have prevented the downfal of a pile, which deserved to stand as long as the world endured?

Alexander VII. did what Urban VIII, had neglected to do. At the same time that Bernini was constructing the colonade of St. Peter,

this pontiff ordered search to be made for pillars to match those of the portico of the Pantheon, and some were found not far from the French church of St. Louis, of the very same model. They were granite of the isle of Elva, and those of the portico were Egyptian granite; the colour however was the same, so that the effect was equal. The pope's zeal did not stop here; he caused all the old houses before the portico to be pulled down, and the soil and rubbish to be cleared away, which covered the steps, and even the bases of some of the pillars. He began covering the roof with marble, and raised a lantern over the aperture, to keep out rain; but death took him off before his project was completed. Clement IX. his successor, enclosed the portico within iron rails. Several later popes have added to its decorations, which were all in the taste of the times they were done in, and the body of the edifice and its architecture, gained nothing from them. The main object of their holinesses liberality was the embellishment of the grand altar. One gave purple curtains, another bestowed silver tabernacles, others again vases, and the superb dresses, suited to the solemn ceremonies of religion. All these might be called rich, but they had in no sense a tendency to retrieve the ancient majesty or original splendour of the temple. The true gusto of the ornamients was a little imitated at

46

the

the revival of the arts. Good statues took place of the skeletons and squat figures that ridiculously disgraced the altars for the space of eight centuries. The paintings of Perugino, Cozza, and Gressi, covered the dull mosaics, with which the Greeks of Constantinople had loaded the walls of most of the churches in Rome. The porphyry and the green and yellow antique, found among the old ruins, were employed to much advantage.

Thus you have seen, Sir, how far the ancient Pantheon has been modernized from age to age: you may observe by the by, that before Alexander VII. none presumed to meddle with the roof, nor has any since, till in the year 1757, when a monstrous project took place for modernizing it all over. These new works inay, perhaps, be the subject of some future letters.

The alterations lately proposed to be made in the Pantheon, having been censured, the following is a defence of them.

N°

O alteration is proposed except in the dome, the attic, and the pavement. The balustrade of the sanctuary indeed has been new done already; but there is no reason that this should at all disgust the antiquarians, for the old one was certainly of much later date than the age of Agrippa, or even of Septimius Severus.

Nothing at this time remains of the ancient ornaments of the dome, but the cornice of gilt brass which surrounds the grand aperture; all the other parts having been stript of the marbles and metals which covered them, offer nothing to the

view but rough masonry of a dark dirty complexion. The pannels, heretofore decorated with silver, still retain some fragments of the lead to which the plating was affixed; but most of them have lost even that; and the whole raises the idea of an edifice falling to ruin, rather than of the magnificence of ancient architecture. What then can the critics, who thus severely censure the reparations now carrying on, find to admire, in any thing which the reparations will hide?

As for the attic, there is great reason to doubt of its antiquity, and to suspect that the pilasters are of that kind of ornaments distinguished by the appellation of modern antiques. Fontina was of opinion, that in Agrippa's time the place of these pilasters was supplied by the Caryatides whichPliny speaks of, and which the antiquarians have sought for in vain. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive where these Caryatides could be placed, if the pilasters are really coeval with the temple itself; but granting the pilasters to have been of the best age of architecture, they were two years ago broken to pieces, and fallen into ruins.

It is with still less reason the new laying of the pavement gives so much offence; for it is almost certain, that this part of the Pantheon was not antique, I mean not as old as Agrippa, or Severus; but if it were so, its shattered condition called loudly for repair. The fact however is, that five or six feet below the pavement there lies another, several eminent artists have assured me; so that the antiquity of the upper one must fall to the ground; and it is probable that it did not exist before Boniface IV. obtained

as

the

the Pantheon of the emperor Phocas, to convert it into a church.

But though it cannot be demonstrated precisely at what time the floor of the building was laid, it is nevertheless certain that it had not always the elevation it has now; this is manifest from the plinths of the columns being buried more than two thirds under ground, four of which are even upon a level with the pavement.

There remains one article of alteration, as to which I will not take upon me to justify those who thought fit to propose it; the lantern to be placed over the grand aperture of the dome. This, however, is no conceit of the architect, but proceeds from a much higher authority. At the same time that it was resolved to embellish the dome, it was likewise determined, by means of this lantern, to secure it from the future injuries of the weather. It ́must indeed be admitted, that the large aperture of the dome is extremely incommodious to the congregation. Together with snow and rain, catarrhs and rheumatisms are too apt to descend through it; but to close it up with a cupola, is not only to exclude much of the light, but likewise to surcharge the edifice with a most ridiculous addition. In a word, it is to be wished that this project had never taken place.

We are told by Theophrastus and Pliny, that the natives used the root of it for firing, as well as for other purposes of wood: that they built little boats of the plant itself, and formed the inner bark into sails, mats, garments, coverlids, and cordage; that they chewed it both raw and sodden, and swallowed the juice as a dainty; but, of all its uses, the most celebrated was that of its serving to write upon, like the paper of these days, which derives its name from this plant of Egypt. The intermediate part of the stalk was cut and separated into different lamina, which were set apart, and dried in the sun for the manufacture, These lamina were joined together horizontally and transversely, in sheets or leaves, upon a smooth board; then moistened with water, which dissolved a kind of viscous glue in the pores of the plant, serving to cement and render the whole uniform. The sheet being thus formed was put into a press, and afterwards dried for use. Such was the process of making paper in Egypt: but as the sheets were coarse, brown, unequal and imperfect, the Romans invented methods to bring the fabric to perfection. They contrived a glue or gum, by means of which they could occasionally enlarge the size and vo lume. They bleached it to a surprising degree of whiteness: they beat it with hammers, so as to render it more thin and less porous: they

and by a sort of calendar, gave it a shining gloss like that of the Chinese paper. According to the different degrees of delicacy, whiteness and size, it acquired different appellations, either from the names of particular manufactures, from

the

the great personages who used it, or from the particular uses to which it was put, such as the Fanniam, the Leviathan, the Claudian, the Imperial, the Hieratic, and the Amphi

theatric.

A dissertation on the ancient manner of dating the beginning of the

year.

SI have not met with an ac

Ach of the time from whence our ancestors begun their year, treated of, either accidentally or professedly, in any late author, an historical deduction of passages in our old historians, tending to illustrate the subject, may not be unacceptable to many of our readers, since the knowledge of it is necessary to clear up several passages in English history.

From Bede's time quite down to the Norman conquest, the constant way of computation seems to be from Christmas-day. For Bede (hist. v. 23.) plainly makes January to be the beginning of the year. He places the death of Beretwald, archbishop of Canterbury, to the ides of January, A. D. 731, and further informs us, under the same year, that Tatwin was consecrated in his room, on the 10th of June following; a manifest proof, that January was at that time one of the first months, as June comes after it in the same year. The Saxon chronicle begins the year from the nativity of our Lord. See A. D. 763, 827, 963, 1066, &c. quite down to the end.

After the conquest, Gervase, a monk of Canterbury, in the preface to his chronicle (Gerv. Deroborn, int, x. script. col. 1336, &c.),

takes notice of many different ways of computation in his time, that is, at the end of the xiith, or the beginning of the xiiith century. He says, that some computed from the annunciation, some from the nativity, some from the circumcision, and others from the passion of our Lord. The solar year, continues he, according to the custom of the Romans, and of the church of God, begins from the calends of January; but he rather chuses to fix the com

mencement of it to Christmas-day, "because (ibid. 1418, 50.) we compute the age of men from the day of their birth."

This shews there was no standing fixed rule of computation in Gervase's time; and the following observation confirms it, not only in his age, but also for several centuries after him. Matt. Paris (edit. Watts, p. 5.) Matt. Westm. (p. 255.) Ralph. de Diceto (int. x. script. col. 480.) and Polydore Virgil (p. 150.) place the coronation of William the Conqueror upon Christmas-day, A. D. 1067, that is, these authors begin their new year with that day, at least in this instance; whereas, on the contrary, T. Walsingham (Ypodigma Neustria, p. 436.) R. Hoveden (p. 258.) and Brompton (int. x. script. col. 661.) all refer it to Christmas-day, A.D. 1066, which proves, that they do not in this place begin the year till after that day. Matt. Westm.(p. 268, ad ann. 1209.) takes notice of this difference in authors, for he observes, that "because King John's son was born in the Christmas holidays, which authors generally put, as it were, between the old and new year, in confinio anni præteriti & futuri, some place his birth to the year 1209, others to the foregoing

one.