heir, with this proviso, that he should not so much as aleniate one statue upon pain of forfeiting the whole house and goods. Judge then whether he had not need to keep the statues chain’d up, as the Tyrians did their gods, in a siege; or whether the throwing of one of these statues out of the window, would not be properly a throwing the house out of the windows. Upon which occasion, I cannot omit to tell you how the ancient statues of Rome were grown at last to be so many in number, that (as Cassiodore saith wittily of them) posteritas pene parem populum urbi dedit, quam natura procreavit, Posterity had made almodt as many men, by art, in the city, as were made by nature. And these statues grew to that excess too, that marble ones were thought too vulgar, and gold and silver ones were erected by riotous men, who scorned to be like others in any thing but in being mortal. But to return again to this house, I cannot leave it without minding you of some rare pictures, of Titian and other prime matters, which are shown in the gallery above; especially the rare picture of St John the Evangelist of the hand of Raphael Urbin; and that of our Lady and St Joseph in another room, which is a rare copy of that famous picture in the cloister of the Annunciata in Florence, of Andrea del Sarta.
From hence I went to the Church of St Eustachio, having seen in the way the goodly ruins of the Thermae of Alexander Severus. In the porch of this church I saw an inscription in a Stone, which told me that Alexander of Parma was christened here with his brother, being twins
