XI.
Regarding the face of Pompey's statue in the Spada Palace, I was more struck than ever with a resemblance to American politicians which I had noted in all the Roman statues. It is a type of face not now to be found in Rome, but frequent enough here, and rather in the South than in the North. Pompey was like the pictures of so many Southern Congressmen that I wondered whether race had not less to do with producing types than had similarity of circumstances; whether a republicanism based upon slavery could not so far assimilate character as to produce a common aspect in people widely separated by time and creeds, but having the same unquestioned habits of command, and the same boundless and unscrupulous ambition.