kept in the aisle to the left, as you enter the Grotte Vecchie; and was the pedestal of the statue till it was removed from the crypt by Paul V., as Melchiorri informs us. The old base was left in situ, and a new one made, which is the chair of white marble, with the whole surface wrought in arabesque bas-relief, upon a pedestal of light coloured alabaster, with a central tablet of granite, called "granito verde."
3. Was this statue cast from the metal of the Capitoline Jove? Melchiorri almost favours the opinion that it was; but the evidence of Martial, already quoted, seems fatal to this supposition. It occurs to me that the idea of this statue being a Jupiter converted, either by melting down or partial alteration, may have arisen from confounding this statue with another statue of St. Peter, now kept in the crypt of the church under the dome, and in the chapel of the Madonna della Bocciata or del Portico. This is also a seated statue of St. Peter, and stood in the atrium of the ancient basilica. It seems to have been a Pagan figure converted:—
"There is reason to believe that this statue of St. Peter had been originally erected to some Gentile; and that the head, arms, and hands were changed in order to metamorphose it into a St. Peter. In the old church it was usual to vest it pontifically on the feast of St. Peter, as is now the case with the bronze statue above. The Isaurian iconoclast threatened St. Gregory II. with the demolition of this statue: but the impotent menace cost him the duchy of Rome, and placed the temporal power in the hands of the Popes."—Rome, Ancient and Modern, vol. i. p. 574.
Possibly enough, the fact of this figure of St. Peter having been converted, may have led to the idea that it was the other and better known statue. It may be well to add, that in St. Peter's there are forty metal statues, in addition to one hundred and five in marble, one hundred and sixty-one in travertine, and ninety in stucco.
Ceyrep.
LORD CLARENDON AND THE TUBWOMAN.
(Vol. vii., p. 133.)
The newspaper paragraph in question is quoted, in a MS. note in my possession, from the Salisbury Journal of August 29, 1828. From what source it was derived does not appear: the whole story is, however, fabulous. Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon, was twice married. His first wife was the daughter of Sir George Ayliffe, of Foxley, in the county of Wilts. He married her in 1628, when he was only twenty years old, and she died of the small-pox six months afterwards, before any child was born. In 1632 he married Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Ailesbury, by whom he had four sons and two daughters. Anne, the eldest daughter, became, as is well known, the wife of the Duke of York, and the mother of Queen Mary and Queen Anne. Sir Thomas Ailesbury, the father of Lord Clarendon's second wife, was a person of some distinction, both social and intellectual; of his wife, Lady Ailesbury, Pepys mentions in his Diary, November 13, 1661, that the Duke of York is in mourning for his wife's grandmother, "which (he however adds) is thought a piece of fondness." In the collection of pictures at the Grove, the seat of the present Earl of Clarendon, there are portraits by Vandyke of Sir Thomas and Lady Ailesbury, and also a portrait, by an unknown artist, of Frances, the second wife of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon. (See Lady Theresa Lewis's Lives of the Friends of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, vol. iii. pp. 355, 356. 361.)
Mr. Hyde's two marriages are fully described by himself in his Life, vol. i. pp. 12. 15, ed. 8vo. 1761.