“His high talents were combined with the most amiable disposition, and a most grateful heart. His good old grandmother lived to see the success and the excellence of the object of her care; and Canova, who cherished every affectionate feeling, enjoyed that first of pleasures—the repaying former benefits. After the death of his grandfather he brought her to reside with him at Rome, and his friends still remember his tender anxiety to make the close of her life happy.
“Canova sculptured the bust of his grandmother, in the dress of her native province, which was the same as that of Titian’s mother; and this bust he kept in his own apartment.—Pointing it out one day to a visiter, he said, with much emotion, ‘That is a piece which I greatly value;—it is the likeness of her to whom I owe as much as it is possible for one human being to owe to another;’ adding, ‘you see she is dressed nearly as Titian’s mother; but unless affection renders me a partial judge, my grandmother is much the finer old woman.’”
12th.—Mary has a most enviable memory; she has just been entertaining me with what she read in Waddington’s travels in Dongola.
She says, the houses there are either a sort of mud fortresses intended for defence, or else low cottages of straw and branches, tied together with bands, and supported at each corner by the dry stem of a palm, to which the walls are united.
The vale of Farjas is described as a most romantic little spot; a green and cultivated valley not two hundred yards broad, closely shut in between a range of high granite rocks, and a narrow branch of the Nile; and flourishing in freshness and fertility, in the middle of the wildest waste. The simple inhabitants offered a great many little civilities to Mr. W. and his companions.
She mentioned also two very curious passes through the hills; one called the “Pass of the Water’s Mouth,” near the entrance of which are two immense stones, as regular as if formed and placed there by art; and the other a winding pass amongst high rocks, that required an hour and forty minutes to travel through it; it is oddly called “The Father of the Acacias,” though from beginning to end it contains not one symptom of vegetation.
But I can write no more now, for my aunt has sent for me to walk with her, if I am so inclined—and that indeed I am.
13th, Sunday.—The conversation, at breakfast this morning, having turned on the history of Moses, my aunt observed, that the entire account of his life is told in the most plain and artless manner, unmixed with any circumstances likely to exalt his personal character, and is throughout distinguished by that candour and impartiality, with which Moses always speaks of himself.
I asked her, how soon after the death of Joseph, the destruction of the first-born of the Israelites was decreed by Pharaoh.
“There is reason to think,” said my aunt, “that it was about sixty-four years after the death of Joseph; probably soon after the birth of Aaron, who had not been subject to this decree; and about one hundred and thirty-three years after their settlement in Egypt.