A person cannot look upon these pictures one minute
before he becomes enthralled in the woes which every way present
themselves. You see the good Bishop confessing the sick, the carts
carrying out the dead, children sucking at the breasts of their dead
mothers, wives and husbands bewailing, dead bodies lowering out of the
higher windows by cords, the slaves plundering, the Priests exhorting,
and such a variety of interesting and afflicting scenes so forcibly
struck out by the painter, that you seem to hear the groans, weepings,
and bewailings, from the dying, the sick and the sound; and the eye and
mind have no other repose on these pictures but by fixing it on a dead
body. The painter, who was upon the spot, has introduced his own figure,
but armed like a serjeant with a halberd. The pictures are indeed
dreadfully fine; one is much larger than the other; and it is said the
town Magistrates cut it to fit the place it is in; but it is impossible
to believe any body of men could be guilty of such an act of
_barbarism_! There is still standing in this town, the house of a Roman
senator, now inhabited by a shoe-maker.
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