he designed every thing but the old shot-tower, and they would have

attributed that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the

perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn and the custom house

regulations of Civita Vecchia. But, here--here it is frightful. He

designed St. Peter's; he designed the Pope; he designed the Pantheon, the

uniform of the Pope's soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the Coliseum, the

Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock, the Barberini Palace, St. John Lateran, the

Campagna, the Appian Way, the Seven Hills, the Baths of Caracalla, the

Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Maxima--the eternal bore designed the

Eternal City, and unless all men and books do lie, he painted every thing

in it! Dan said the other day to the guide, "Enough, enough, enough!

Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from

designs by Michael Angelo!"

I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled

with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael

Angelo was dead.

But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through miles

of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and

through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has

shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to

frescoe the heavens--pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him

we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us

--imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect--they

have no idea of a sarcasm.

326

The Innocents Abroad