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140 CONTINENTAL MARBLES. as nearly 500 years before our era (b.c. 496), they are still in remarkably good preservation. Amongst the countless illustrations of the use of Greek marble in statuary, it is difficult to select even a few examples, especially after a visit to the galleries of Florence, Rome, and Naples; where, from the number of specimens recovered from the ruins of ancient cities, we may conjecture how numerous must have been those that are lost. As an example of the beautiful, the Venus de Medici, found in the villa of Hadrian near Tivoli, now deposited in the Galleria degli Uffizi, at Florence, would by many be considered as entitled to the first place; an opinion in which I do not concur. Then the group of Niobe and her chil dren, fourteen in number, which must originally have adorned the portico of a temple. This truly marvel lous group of figures, when we consider the variety of attitudes they exhibit, supposed to be copies of works by Scopas or Praxiteles, was found in Pome in 1583, is now in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. The group of Laocoon and his two sons, the original of which is in the Vatican Gallery at Rome; the torso of Hercules, in the same collection; and the draped figure of Sophocles larger than life, found at Terra- cina in 1838, and now preserved in the Gallery of the Lateran at Rome, are all of Grecian marble. Admirable as are these works of art, they are not superior, as it seems to me, in boldness and largeness
