ROME.

37 Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, January 24th.--We left

Marseilles in the Neapolitan steamer Calabrese, as noticed above, a week

ago this morning. There was no fault to be found with the steamer, which

was very clean and comfortable, contrary to what we had understood

beforehand; except for the coolness of the air (and I know not that this

was greater than that of the Atlantic in July), our voyage would have

been very pleasant; but for myself, I enjoyed nothing, having a cold upon

me, or a low fever, or something else that took the light and warmth out

of everything.

I went to bed immediately after my last record, and was rocked to sleep

pleasantly enough by the billows of the Mediterranean; and, coming on

deck about sunrise next morning, found the steamer approaching Genoa. We

saw the city, lying at the foot of a range of hills, and stretching a

little way up their slopes, the hills sweeping round it in the segment of

a circle, and looking like an island rising abruptly out of the sea; for

no connection with the mainland was visible on either side. There was

snow scattered on their summits and streaking their sides a good way

down. They looked bold, and barren, and brown, except where the snow

whitened them. The city did not impress me with much expectation of size

or splendor. Shortly after coming into the port our whole party landed,

and we found ourselves at once in the midst of a crowd of cab-drivers,

hotel-runnets, and coin missionaires, who assaulted us with a volley of

French, Italian, and broken English, which beat pitilessly about our

ears; for really it seemed as if all the dictionaries in the world had

been torn to pieces, and blown around us by a hurricane. Such a pother!

We took a commissionaire, a respectable-looking man, in a cloak, who said

his name was Salvator Rosa; and he engaged to show us whatever was

interesting in Genoa.

In the first place, he took us through narrow streets to an old church,

the name of which I have forgotten, and, indeed, its peculiar features;

but I know that I found it pre-eminently magnificent,--its whole interior

being incased in polished marble, of various kinds and colors, its

ceiling painted, and its chapels adorned with pictures. However, this

church was dazzled out of sight by the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which

we were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is covered with

alternate slabs of black and white marble, which were brought, either in

whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious

richness of precious marbles, and a pillar, if I mistake not, from

Solomon's Temple; and a picture of the Virgin by St. Luke; and others

(rather more intrinsically valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in

superb marble frames, within the arches of the chapels. I used to try to

imagine how the English cathedrals must have looked in their primeval

glory, before the Reformation, and before the whitewash of Cromwell's

time had overlaid their marble pillars; but I never imagined anything at

all approaching what my eyes now beheld: this sheen of polished and

variegated marble covering every inch of its walls; this glow of

brilliant frescos all over the roof, and up within the domes; these

beautiful pictures by great masters, painted for the places which they

now occupied, and making an actual portion of the edifice; this wealth of

silver, gold, and gems, that adorned the shrines of the saints, before

which wax candles burned, and were kept burning, I suppose, from year's

end to year's end; in short, there is no imagining nor remembering a

hundredth part of the rich details. And even the cathedral (though I

give it up as indescribable) was nothing at all in comparison with a

church to which the commissionaire afterwards led us; a church that had

been built four or five hundred years ago, by a pirate, in expiation of

his sins, and out of the profit of his rapine. This last edifice, in its

interior, absolutely shone with burnished gold, and glowed with pictures;

its walls were a quarry of precious stones, so valuable were the marbles

out of which they were wrought; its columns and pillars were of

inconceivable costliness; its pavement was a mosaic of wonderful beauty,

and there were four twisted pillars made out of stalactites. Perhaps the

best way to form some dim conception of it is to fancy a little

casket, inlaid inside with precious stones, so that there shall not a

hair's-breadth be left unprecious-stoned, and then to conceive this

little bit of a casket iucreased to the magnitude of a great church,

without losing anything of the excessive glory that was compressed into

its original small compass, but all its pretty lustre made sublime by the

consequent immensity. At any rate, nobody who has not seen a church

like this can imagine what a gorgeous religion it was that reared it.

In the cathedral, and in all the churches, we saw priests and many

persons kneeling at their devotions; and our Salvator Rosa, whenever we

passed a chapel or shrine, failed not to touch the pavement with one

knee, crossing himself the while; and once, when a priest was going

through some form of devotion, he stopped a few moments to share in it.

He conducted us, too, to the Balbi Palace, the stateliest and most

sumptuous residence, but not more so than another which he afterwards

showed us, nor perhaps than many others which exist in Genoa, THE SUPERB.

The painted ceilings in these palaces are a glorious adornment; the walls

of the saloons, incrusted with various-colored marbles, give an idea of

splendor which I never gained from anything else. The floors, laid in

mosaic, seem too precious to tread upon. In the royal palace, many of

the floors were of various woods, inlaid by an English artist, and they

looked like a magnification of some exquisite piece of Tunbridge ware;

but, in all respects, this palace was inferior to others which we saw. I

say nothing of the immense pictorial treasures which hung upon the walls

of all the rooms through which we passed; for I soon grew so weary of

admirable things, that I could neither enjoy nor understand them. My

receptive faculty is very limited, and when the utmost of its small

capacity is full, I become perfectly miserable, and the more so the

better worth seeing are the things I am forced to reject. I do not know

a greater misery; to see sights, after such repletion, is to the mind

what it would be to the body to have dainties forced down the throat long

after the appetite was satiated.

All this while, whenever we emerged into the vaultlike streets,

we were wretchedly cold. The commissionaire took us to a sort of

pleasure-garden, occupying the ascent of a hill, and presenting seven

different views of the city, from as many stations. One of the objects

pointed out to us was a large yellow house, on a hillside, in the

outskirts of Genoa, which was formerly inhabited for six months by

Charles Dickens. Looking down from the elevated part of the

pleasure-gardens, we saw orange-trees beneath us, with the golden fruit

hanging upon them, though their trunks were muffled in straw; and, still

lower down, there was ice and snow.

Gladly (so far as I myself was concerned) we dismissed the

commissionaire, after he had brought us to the hotel of the Cross of

Malta, where we dined; needlessly, as it proved, for another dinner

awaited us, after our return on board the boat.

We set sail for Leghorn before dark, and I retired early, feeling still

more ill from my cold than the night before. The next morning we were in

the crowded port of Leghorn. We all went ashore, with some idea of

taking the rail for Pisa, which is within an hour's distance, and might

have been seen in time for our departure with the steamer. But a

necessary visit to a banker's, and afterwards some unnecessary

formalities about our passports, kept us wandering through the streets

nearly all day; and we saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting,

except the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to the English

Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron railing, and marked by a slender

obelisk of white marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated over

surrounding graves.

We went into a Jewish synagogue,--the interior cased in marbles, and

surrounded with galleries, resting upon arches above arches. There were

lights burning at the altar, and it looked very like a Christian church;

but it was dirty, and had an odor not of sanctity.

In Leghorn, as everywhere else, we were chilled to the heart, except when

the sunshine fell directly upon us; and we returned to the steamer with a

feeling as if we were getting back to our home; for this life of

wandering makes a three days' residence in one place seem like home.

We found several new passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a

long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little

black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray

beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one

of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in

Italian; but we found it impossible to hold much conversation.

The evening was beautiful, with a bright young moonlight, not yet

sufficiently powerful to overwhelm the stars, and as we walked the deck,

Miss M------ showed the children the constellations, and told their

names. J----- made a slight mistake as to one of them, pointing it out

to me as "O'Brien's belt!"

Elba was presently in view, and we might have seen many other interesting

points, had it not been for our steamer's practice of resting by day, and

only pursuing its voyage by night. The next morning we found ourselves

in the harbor of Civita Vecchia, and, going ashore with our luggage, went

through a blind turmoil with custom-house officers, inspectors of

passports, soldiers, and vetturino people. My wife and I strayed a

little through Civita Vecchia, and found its streets narrow, like clefts

in a rock (which seems to be the fashion of Italian towns), and smelling

nastily. I had made a bargain with a vetturino to send us to Rome in a

carriage, with four horses, in eight hours; and as soon as the

custom-house and passport people would let us, we started, lumbering

slowly along with our mountain of luggage. We had heard rumors of

robberies lately committed on this route; especially of a Nova Scotia

bishop, who was detained on the road an hour and a half, and utterly

pillaged; and certainly there was not a single mile of the dreary and

desolate country over which we passed, where we might not have been

robbed and murdered with impunity. Now and then, at long distances, we

came to a structure that was either a prison, a tavern, or a barn, but

did not look very much like either, being strongly built of stone, with

iron-grated windows, and of ancient and rusty aspect. We kept along by

the seashore a great part of the way, and stopped to feed our horses at a

village, the wretched street of which stands close along the shore of the

Mediterranean, its loose, dark sand being made nasty by the vicinity.

The vetturino cheated us, one of the horses giving out, as he must have

known it would do, half-way on our journey; and we staggered on through

cold and darkness, and peril, too, if the banditti were not a myth,--

reaching Rome not much before midnight. I perpetrated unheard-of

briberies on the custom-house officers at the gates, and was permitted to

pass through and establish myself at Spillman's Hotel, the only one where

we could gain admittance, and where we have been half frozen ever since.

And this is sunny Italy, and genial Rome!

Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana, February 3d.--We have been in Rome

a fortnight to-day, or rather at eleven o'clock to-night; and I have

seldom or never spent so wretched a time anywhere. Our impressions were

very unfortunate, arriving at midnight, half frozen in the wintry rain,

and being received into a cold and cheerless hotel, where we shivered

during two or three days; meanwhile seeking lodgings among the sunless,

dreary alleys which are called streets in Rome. One cold, bright day

after another has pierced me to the heart, and cut me in twain as with a

sword, keen and sharp, and poisoned at point and edge. I did not think

that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a

feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in

the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of

malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten

rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this

house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being

impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, inartificial

fireplaces, unless we had the great logs of a New England forest to burn

in them; so I have sat in my corner by the fireside with more clothes on

than I ever wore before, and my thickest great-coat over all. In the

middle of the day I generally venture out for an hour or two, but have

only once been warm enough even in the sunshine, and out of the sun never

at any time. I understand now the force of that story of Diogenes when

he asked the Conqueror, as the only favor he could do him, to stand out

of his sunshine, there being such a difference in these Southern climes

of Europe between sun and shade. If my wits had not been too much

congealed, and my fingers too numb, I should like to have kept a minute

journal of my feelings and impressions during the past fortnight. It

would have shown modern Rome in an aspect in which it has never yet been

depicted. But I have now grown somewhat acclimated, and the first

freshness of my discomfort has worn off, so that I shall never be able to

express how I dislike the place, and how wretched I have been in it; and

soon, I suppose, warmer weather will come, and perhaps reconcile

me to Rome against my will. Cold, narrow lanes, between tall, ugly,

mean-looking whitewashed houses, sour bread, pavements most uncomfortable

to the feet, enormous prices for poor living; beggars, pickpockets,

ancient temples and broken monuments, and clothes hanging to dry about

them; French soldiers, monks, and priests of every degree; a shabby

population, smoking bad cigars,--these would have been some of the points

of my description. Of course there are better and truer things to be

said. . . . .

It would be idle for me to attempt any sketches of these famous sites and

edifices,--St. Peter's, for example,--which have been described by a

thousand people, though none of them have ever given me an idea of what

sort of place Rome is. . . . .

The Coliseum was very much what I had preconceived it, though I was not

prepared to find it turned into a sort of Christian church, with a pulpit

on the verge of the open space. . . . . The French soldiers, who keep

guard within it, as in other public places in Rome, have an excellent

opportunity to secure the welfare of their souls.

February 7th.--I cannot get fairly into the current of my journal since

we arrived, and already I perceive that the nice peculiarities of Roman

life are passing from my notice before I have recorded them. It is a

very great pity. During the past week I have plodded daily, for an hour

or two, through the narrow, stony streets, that look worse than the worst

backside lanes of any other city; indescribably ugly and disagreeable

they are, . . . . without sidewalks, but provided with a line of larger

square stones, set crosswise to each other, along which there is somewhat

less uneasy walking. . . . . Ever and anon, even in the meanest streets,

--though, generally speaking, one can hardly be called meaner than

another,--we pass a palace, extending far along the narrow way on a line

with the other houses, but distinguished by its architectural windows,

iron-barred on the basement story, and by its portal arch, through which

we have glimpses, sometimes of a dirty court-yard, or perhaps of a clean,

ornamented one, with trees, a colonnade, a fountain, and a statue in the

vista; though, more likely, it resembles the entrance to a stable, and

may, perhaps, really be one. The lower regions of palaces come to

strange uses in Rome. . . . . In the basement story of the Barberini

Palace a regiment of French soldiers (or soldiers of some kind [we find

them to be retainers of the Barberini family, not French]) seems to be

quartered, while no doubt princes have magnificent domiciles above. Be

it palace or whatever other dwelling, the inmates climb through rubbish

often to the comforts, such as they may be, that await them above. I

vainly try to get down upon paper the dreariness, the ugliness,

shabbiness, un-home-likeness of a Roman street. It is also to be said

that you cannot go far in any direction without coming to a piazza, which

is sometimes little more than a widening and enlarging of the dingy

street, with the lofty facade of a church or basilica on one side, and a

fountain in the centre, where the water squirts out of some fantastic

piece of sculpture into a great stone basin. These fountains are often

of immense size and most elaborate design. . . . .

There are a great many of these fountain-shapes, constructed under the

orders of one pope or another, in all parts of the city; and only the

very simplest, such as a jet springing from a broad marble or porphyry

vase, and falling back into it again, are really ornamental. If an

antiquary were to accompany me through the streets, no doubt he would

point out ten thousand interesting objects that I now pass over

unnoticed, so general is the surface of plaster and whitewash; but often

I can see fragments of antiquity built into the walls, or perhaps a

church that was a Roman temple, or a basement of ponderous stones that

were laid above twenty centuries ago. It is strange how our ideas of

what antiquity is become altered here in Rome; the sixteenth century, in

which many of the churches and fountains seem to have been built or

re-edified, seems close at hand, even like our own days; a thousand

years, or the days of the latter empire, is but a modern date, and

scarcely interests us; and nothing is really venerable of a more recent

epoch than the reign of Constantine. And the Egyptian obelisks that

stand in several of the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican

antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New York newspaper an

account of one of the public buildings of that city,--a relic of "the

olden time," the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825! I am glad

I saw the castles and Gothic churches and cathedrals of England before

visiting Rome, or I never could have felt that delightful reverence for

their gray and ivy-hung antiquity after seeing these so much older

remains. But, indeed, old things are not so beautiful in this dry

climate and clear atmosphere as in moist England. . . . .

Whatever beauty there may be in a Roman ruin is the remnant of what was

beautiful originally; whereas an English ruin is more beautiful often in

its decay than even it was in its primal strength. If we ever build such

noble structures as these Roman ones, we can have just as good ruins,

after two thousand years, in the United States; but we never can have a

Furness Abbey or a Kenilworth. The Corso, and perhaps some other

streets, does not deserve all the vituperation which I have bestowed on

the generality of Roman vias, though the Corso is narrow, not averaging

more than nine paces, if so much, from sidewalk to sidewalk. But palace

after palace stands along almost its whole extent,--not, however, that

they make such architectural show on the street as palaces should. The

enclosed courts were perhaps the only parts of these edifices which the

founders cared to enrich architecturally. I think Linlithgow Palace, of

which I saw the ruins during my last tour in Scotland, was built, by an

architect who had studied these Roman palaces. There was never any idea

of domestic comfort, or of what we include in the name of home, at all

implicated in such structures, they being generally built by wifeless and

childless churchmen for the display of pictures and statuary in galleries

and long suites of rooms.

I have not yet fairly begun the sight-seeing of Rome. I have been four

or five times to St. Peter's, and always with pleasure, because there is

such a delightful, summerlike warmth the moment we pass beneath the

heavy, padded leather curtains that protect the entrances. It is almost

impossible not to believe that this genial temperature is the result of

furnace-heat, but, really, it is the warmth of last summer, which will be

included within those massive walls, and in that vast immensity of space,

till, six months hence, this winter's chill will just have made its way

thither. It would be an excellent plan for a valetudinarian to lodge

during the winter in St. Peter's, perhaps establishing his household in

one of the papal tombs. I become, I think, more sensible of the size of

St. Peter's, but am as yet far from being overwhelmed by it. It is not,

as one expects, so big as all out of doors, nor is its dome so immense as

that of the firmament. It looked queer, however, the other day, to see a

little ragged boy, the very least of human things, going round and

kneeling at shrine after shrine, and a group of children standing on

tiptoe to reach the vase of holy water. . . . .

On coming out of St. Peter's at my last visit, I saw a great sheet of ice

around the fountain on the right hand, and some little Romans awkwardly

sliding on it. I, too, took a slide, just for the sake of doing what I

never thought to do in Rome. This inclement weather, I should suppose,

must make the whole city very miserable; for the native Romans, I am

told, never keep any fire, except for culinary purposes, even in the

severest winter. They flee from their cheerless houses into the open

air, and bring their firesides along with them in the shape of small

earthen vases, or pipkins, with a handle by which they carry them up and

down the streets, and so warm at least their hands with the lighted

charcoal. I have had glimpses through open doorways into interiors, and

saw them as dismal as tombs. Wherever I pass my summers, let me spend my

winters in a cold country.

We went yesterday to the Pantheon. . . . .

When I first came to Rome, I felt embarrassed and unwilling to pass, with

my heresy, between a devotee and his saint; for they often shoot their

prayers at a shrine almost quite across the church. But there seems to

be no violation of etiquette in so doing. A woman begged of us in

the Pantheon, and accused my wife of impiety for not giving her an

alms. . . . . People of very decent appearance are often unexpectedly

converted into beggars as you approach them; but in general they take a

"No" at once.

February 9th.--For three or four days it has been cloudy and rainy, which

is the greater pity, as this should be the gayest and merriest part of

the Carnival. I go out but little,--yesterday only as far as Pakenham's

and Hooker's bank in the Piazza de' Spagna, where I read Galignani and

the American papers. At last, after seeing in England more of my

fellow-compatriots than ever before, I really am disjoined from my

country.

To-day I walked out along the Pincian Hill. . . . . As the clouds still

threatened rain, I deemed it my safest course to go to St. Peter's for

refuge. Heavy and dull as the day was, the effect of this great world of

a church was still brilliant in the interior, as if it had a sunshine of

its own, as well as its own temperature; and, by and by, the sunshine of

the outward world came through the windows, hundreds of feet aloft, and

fell upon the beautiful inlaid pavement. . . . . Against a pillar, on one

side of the nave, is a mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration, fitly

framed within a great arch of gorgeous marble; and, no doubt, the

indestructible mosaic has preserved it far more completely than the

fading and darkening tints in which the artist painted it. At any rate,

it seemed to me the one glorious picture that I have ever seen. The

pillar nearest the great entrance, on the left of the nave, supports the

monument to the Stuart family, where two winged figures, with inverted

torches, stand on either side of a marble door, which is closed forever.

It is an impressive monument, for you feel as if the last of the race had

passed through that door.

Emerging from the church, I saw a French sergeant drilling his men in the

piazza. These French soldiers are prominent objects everywhere about the

city, and make up more of its sight and sound than anything else that

lives. They stroll about individually; they pace as sentinels in all the

public places; and they march up and down in squads, companies, and

battalions, always with a very great din of drum, fife, and trumpet; ten

times the proportion of music that the same number of men would require

elsewhere; and it reverberates with ten times the noise, between the high

edifices of these lanes, that it could make in broader streets.

Nevertheless, I have no quarrel with the French soldiers; they are fresh,

healthy, smart, honest-looking young fellows enough, in blue coats and

red trousers; . . . . and, at all events, they serve as an efficient

police, making Rome as safe as London; whereas, without them, it would

very likely be a den of banditti.

On my way home I saw a few tokens of the Carnival, which is now in full

progress; though, as it was only about one o'clock, its frolics had not

commenced for the day. . . . . I question whether the Romans themselves

take any great interest in the Carnival. The balconies along the Corso

were almost entirely taken by English and Americans, or other foreigners.

As I approached the bridge of St. Angelo, I saw several persons engaged,

as I thought, in fishing in the Tiber, with very strong lines; but on

drawing nearer I found that they were trying to hook up the branches, and

twigs, and other drift-wood, which the recent rains might have swept into

the river. There was a little heap of what looked chiefly like willow

twigs, the poor result of their labor. The hook was a knot of wood, with

the lopped-off branches projecting in three or four prongs. The Tiber

has always the hue of a mud-puddle; but now, after a heavy rain which has

washed the clay into it, it looks like pease-soup. It is a broad and

rapid stream, eddying along as if it were in haste to disgorge its

impurities into the sea. On the left side, where the city mostly is

situated, the buildings hang directly over the stream; on the other,

where stand the Castle of St. Angelo and the Church of St. Peter, the

town does not press so imminent upon the shore. The banks are clayey,

and look as if the river had been digging them away for ages; but I

believe its bed is higher than of yore.

February 10th.--I went out to-day, and, going along the Via Felice and

the Via delle Quattro Fontane, came unawares to the Basilica of Santa

Maria Maggiore, on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. I entered it,

without in the least knowing what church it was, and found myself in a

broad and noble nave, both very simple and very grand. There was a long

row of Ionic columns of marble, twenty or thereabouts on each side,

supporting a flat roof. There were vaulted side aisles, and, at the

farther end, a bronze canopy over the high altar; and all along the

length of the side aisles were shrines with pictures, sculpture, and

burning lamps; the whole church, too, was lined with marble: the roof was

gilded; and yet the general effect of severe and noble simplicity

triumphed over all the ornament. I should have taken it for a Roman

temple, retaining nearly its pristine aspect; but Murray tells us that it

was founded A. D. 342 by Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out

by a miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and it has

undergone many alterations since his time. But it is very fine, and

gives the beholder the idea of vastness, which seems harder to attain

than anything else. On the right hand, approaching the high altar, there

is a chapel, separated from the rest of the church by an iron paling;

and, being admitted into it with another party, I found it most

elaborately magnificent. But one magnificence outshone another, and made

itself the brightest conceivable for the moment. However, this chapel

was as rich as the most precious marble could make it, in pillars and

pilasters, and broad, polished slabs, covering the whole walls (except

where there were splendid and glowing frescos; or where some monumental

statuary or bas-relief, or mosaic picture filled up an arched niche).

Its architecture was a dome, resting on four great arches; and in size it

would alone have been a church. In the centre of the mosaic pavement

there was a flight of steps, down which we went, and saw a group in

marble, representing the nativity of Christ, which, judging by the

unction with which our guide talked about it, must have been of peculiar

sanctity. I hate to leave this chapel and church, without being able to

say any one thing that may reflect a portion of their beauty, or of the

feeling which they excite. Kneeling against many of the pillars there

were persons in prayer, and I stepped softly, fearing lest my tread on

the marble pavement should disturb them,--a needless precaution, however,

for nobody seems to expect it, nor to be disturbed by the lack of it.

The situation of the church, I should suppose, is the loftiest in Rome:

it has a fountain at one end, and a column at the other; but I did not

pay particular attention to either, nor to the exterior of the church

itself.

On my return, I turned aside from the Via delle Quattro Fontane into the

Via Quirinalis, and was led by it into the Piazza di Monte Cavallo. The

street through which I passed was broader, cleanlier, and statelier than

most streets in Rome, and bordered by palaces; and the piazza had noble

edifices around it, and a fountain, an obelisk, and two nude statues in

the centre. The obelisk was, as the inscription indicated, a relic of

Egypt; the basin of the fountain was an immense bowl of Oriental granite,

into which poured a copious flood of water, discolored by the rain; the

statues were colossal,--two beautiful young men, each holding a fiery

steed. On the pedestal of one was the inscription, OPUS PHIDIAE; on the

other, OPUS PRAXITELIS. What a city is this, when one may stumble, by

mere chance,--at a street corner, as it were,--on the works of two such

sculptors! I do not know the authority on which these statues (Castor

and Pollux, I presume) are attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles; but they

impressed me as noble and godlike, and I feel inclined to take them for

what they purport to be. On one side of the piazza is the Pontifical

Palace; but, not being aware of this at the time, I did not look

particularly at the edifice.

I came home by way of the Corso, which seemed a little enlivened by

Carnival time; though, as it was not yet two o'clock, the fun had not

begun for the day. The rain throws a dreary damper on the festivities.

February 13th.--Day before yesterday we took J----- and R----- in a

carriage, and went to see the Carnival, by driving up and down the Corso.

It was as ugly a day, as respects weather, as has befallen us since we

came to Rome,--cloudy, with an indecisive wet, which finally settled into

a rain; and people say that such is generally the weather in Carnival

time. There is very little to be said about the spectacle. Sunshine

would have improved it, no doubt; but a person must have very broad

sunshine within himself to be joyous on such shallow provocation. The

street, at all events, would have looked rather brilliant under a sunny

sky, the balconies being hung with bright-colored draperies, which were

also flung out of some of the windows. . . . . Soon I had my first

experience of the Carnival in a handful of confetti, right slap in my

face. . . . . Many of the ladies wore loose white dominos, and some of

the gentlemen had on defensive armor of blouses; and wire masks over the

face were a protection for both sexes,--not a needless one, for I

received a shot in my right eye which cost me many tears. It seems to be

a point of courtesy (though often disregarded by Americans and English)

not to fling confetti at ladies, or at non-combatants, or quiet

bystanders; and the engagements with these missiles were generally

between open carriages, manned with youths, who were provided with

confetti for such encounters, and with bouquets for the ladies. We had

one real enemy on the Corso; for our former friend Mrs. T------ was

there, and as often as we passed and repassed her, she favored us with a

handful of lime. Two or three times somebody ran by the carriage and

puffed forth a shower of winged seeds through a tube into our faces and

over our clothes; and, in the course of the afternoon, we were hit with

perhaps half a dozen sugar-plums. Possibly we may not have received our

fair share of these last salutes, for J----- had on a black mask, which

made him look like an imp of Satan, and drew many volleys of confetti

that we might otherwise have escaped. A good many bouquets were flung at

our little R-----, and at us generally. . . . . This was what is called

masking-day, when it is the rule to wear masks in the Corso, but the

great majority of people appeared without them. . . . . Two fantastic

figures, with enormous heads, set round with frizzly hair, came and

grinned into our carriage, and J----- tore out a handful of hair

(which proved to be sea-weed) from one of their heads, rather to

the discomposure of the owner, who muttered his indignation in

Italian. . . . . On comparing notes with J----- and R-----, indeed with

U---- too, I find that they all enjoyed the Carnival much more than I

did. Only the young ought to write descriptions of such scenes. My cold

criticism chills the life out of it.

February 14th.--Friday, 12th, was a sunny day, the first that we had had

for some time; and my wife and I went forth to see sights as well as to

make some calls that had long been due. We went first to the church of

Santa Maria Maggiore, which I have already mentioned, and, on our return,

we went to the Piazza di Monte Cavallo, and saw those admirable ancient

statues of Castor and Pollux, which seem to me sons of the morning, and

full of life and strength. The atmosphere, in such a length of time, has

covered the marble surface of these statues with a gray rust, that

envelops both the men and horses as with a garment; besides which, there

are strange discolorations, such as patches of white moss on the elbows,

and reddish streaks down the sides; but the glory of form overcomes all

these defects of color. It is pleasant to observe how familiar some

little birds are with these colossal statues,--hopping about on their

heads and over their huge fists, and very likely they have nests in their

ears or among their hair.

We called at the Barberini Palace, where William Story has established

himself and family for the next seven years, or more, on the third piano,

in apartments that afford a very fine outlook over Rome, and have the sun

in them through most of the day. Mrs. S---- invited us to her fancy

ball, but we declined.

On the staircase ascending to their piano we saw the ancient Greek

bas-relief of a lion, whence Canova is supposed to have taken the idea of

his lions on the monument in St. Peter's. Afterwards we made two or

three calls in the neighborhood of the Piazza de' Spagna, finding only

Mr. Hamilton Fish and family, at the Hotel d'Europe, at home, and next

visited the studio of Mr. C. G. Thompson, whom I knew in Boston. He has

very greatly improved since those days, and, being always a man of

delicate mind, and earnestly desiring excellence for its own sake, he has

won himself the power of doing beautiful and elevated works. He is now

meditating a series of pictures from Shakespeare's "Tempest," the

sketches of one or two of which he showed us, likewise a copy of a small

Madonna, by Raphael, wrought with a minute faithfulness which it makes

one a better man to observe. . . . . Mr. Thompson is a true artist, and

whatever his pictures have of beauty comes from very far beneath the

surface; and this, I suppose, is one weighty reason why he has but

moderate success. I should like his pictures for the mere color, even if

they represented nothing. His studio is in the Via Sistina; and at a

little distance on the other side of the same street is William Story's,

where we likewise went, and found him at work on a sitting statue of

Cleopatra.

William Story looks quite as vivid, in a graver way, as when I saw him

last, a very young man. His perplexing variety of talents and

accomplishments--he being a poet, a prose writer, a lawyer, a painter, a

musician, and a sculptor--seems now to be concentrating itself into this

latter vocation, and I cannot see why he should not achieve something

very good. He has a beautiful statue, already finished, of Goethe's

Margaret, pulling a flower to pieces to discover whether Faust loves her;

a very type of virginity and simplicity. The statue of Cleopatra, now

only fourteen days advanced in the clay, is as wide a step from the

little maidenly Margaret as any artist could take; it is a grand subject,

and he is conceiving it with depth and power, and working it out with

adequate skill. He certainly is sensible of something deeper in his art

than merely to make beautiful nudities and baptize them by classic names.

By the by, he told me several queer stories of American visitors to his

studio: one of them, after long inspecting Cleopatra, into which he has

put all possible characteristics of her time and nation and of her own

individuality, asked, "Have you baptized your statue yet?" as if the

sculptor were waiting till his statue were finished before he chose the

subject of it,--as, indeed, I should think many sculptors do. Another

remarked of a statue of Hero, who is seeking Leander by torchlight, and

in momentary expectation of finding his drowned body, "Is not the face a

little sad?" Another time a whole party of Americans filed into his

studio, and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much

silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what

is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little

anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to perfection. . . . .

The statue of his father, his first work, is very noble, as noble and

fine a portrait-statue as I ever saw. In the outer room of his studio a

stone-cutter, or whatever this kind of artisan is called, was at work,

transferring the statue of Hero from the plaster-cast into marble; and

already, though still in some respects a block of stone, there was a

wonderful degree of expression in the face. It is not quite pleasant to

think that the sculptor does not really do the whole labor on his

statues, but that they are all but finished to his hand by merely

mechanical people. It is generally only the finishing touches that are

given by his own chisel.

Yesterday, being another bright day, we went to the basilica of St. John

Lateran, which is the basilica next in rank to St. Peter's, and has the

precedence of it as regards certain sacred privileges. It stands on a

most noble site, on the outskirts of the city, commanding a view of the

Sabine and Alban hills, blue in the distance, and some of them hoary with

sunny snow. The ruins of the Claudian aqueduct are close at hand. The

church is connected with the Lateran palace and museum, so that the whole

is one edifice; but the facade of the church distinguishes it, and is

very lofty and grand,--more so, it seems to me, than that of St. Peter's.

Under the portico is an old statue of Constantine, representing him as a

very stout and sturdy personage. The inside of the church disappointed

me, though no doubt I should have been wonderstruck had I seen it a month

ago. We went into one of the chapels, which was very rich in colored

marbles; and, going down a winding staircase, found ourselves among the

tombs and sarcophagi of the Corsini family, and in presence of a marble

Pieta very beautifully sculptured. On the other side of the church we

looked into the Torlonia Chapel, very rich and rather profusely gilded,

but, as it seemed to me, not tawdry, though the white newness of the

marble is not perfectly agreeable after being accustomed to the milder

tint which time bestows on sculpture. The tombs and statues appeared

like shapes and images of new-fallen snow. The most interesting thing

which we saw in this church (and, admitting its authenticity, there can

scarcely be a more interesting one anywhere) was the table at which the

Last Supper was eaten. It is preserved in a corridor, on one side of the

tribune or chancel, and is shown by torchlight suspended upon the wall

beneath a covering of glass. Only the top of the table is shown,

presenting a broad, flat surface of wood, evidently very old, and showing

traces of dry-rot in one or two places. There are nails in it, and the

attendant said that it had formerly been covered with bronze. As well as

I can remember, it may be five or six feet square, and I suppose would

accommodate twelve persons, though not if they reclined in the Roman

fashion, nor if they sat as they do in Leonardo da Vinci's picture. It

would be very delightful to believe in this table.

There are several other sacred relics preserved in the church; for

instance, the staircase of Pilate's house up which Jesus went, and the

porphyry slab on which the soldiers cast lots for his garments. These,

however, we did not see. There are very glowing frescos on portions of

the walls; but, there being much whitewash instead of incrusted marble,

it has not the pleasant aspect which one's eye learns to demand in Roman

churches. There is a good deal of statuary along the columns of the

nave, and in the monuments of the side aisles.

In reference to the interior splendor of Roman churches, I must say that

I think it a pity that painted windows are exclusively a Gothic ornament;

for the elaborate ornamentation of these interiors puts the ordinary

daylight out of countenance, so that a window with only the white

sunshine coming through it, or even with a glimpse of the blue Italian

sky, looks like a portion left unfinished, and therefore a blotch in the

rich wall. It is like the one spot in Aladdin's palace which he left for

the king, his father-in-law, to finish, after his fairy architects had

exhausted their magnificence on the rest; and the sun, like the king,

fails in the effort. It has what is called a porta santa, which we saw

walled up, in front of the church, one side of the main entrance. I know

not what gives it its sanctity, but it appears to be opened by the pope

on a year of jubilee, once every quarter of a century.

After our return . . . . . I took R----- along the Pincian Hill, and

finally, after witnessing what of the Carnival could be seen in the

Piazza del Popolo from that safe height, we went down into the Corso, and

some little distance along it. Except for the sunshine, the scene was

much the same as I have already described; perhaps fewer confetti and

more bouquets. Some Americans and English are said to have been brought

before the police authorities, and fined for throwing lime. It is

remarkable that the jollity, such as it is, of the Carnival, does not

extend an inch beyond the line of the Corso; there it flows along in a

narrow stream, while in the nearest street we see nothing but the

ordinary Roman gravity.

February 15th.--Yesterday was a bright day, but I did not go out till the

afternoon, when I took an hour's walk along the Pincian, stopping a good

while to look at the old beggar who, for many years past, has occupied

one of the platforms of the flight of steps leading from the Piazza de'

Spagna to the Triniti de' Monti. Hillard commemorates him in his book.

He is an unlovely object, moving about on his hands and knees,

principally by aid of his hands, which are fortified with a sort of

wooden shoes; while his poor, wasted lower shanks stick up in the air

behind him, loosely vibrating as he progresses. He is gray, old, ragged,

a pitiable sight, but seems very active in his own fashion, and bestirs

himself on the approach of his visitors with the alacrity of a spider

when a fly touches the remote circumference of his web. While I looked

down at him he received alms from three persons, one of whom was a young

woman of the lower orders; the other two were gentlemen, probably either

English or American. I could not quite make out the principle on which

he let some people pass without molestation, while he shuffled from one

end of the platform to the other to intercept an occasional individual.

He is not persistent in his demands, nor, indeed, is this a usual fault

among Italian beggars. A shake of the head will stop him when wriggling

towards you from a distance. I fancy he reaps a pretty fair harvest, and

no doubt leads as contented and as interesting a life as most people,

sitting there all day on those sunny steps, looking at the world, and

making his profit out of it. It must be pretty much such an occupation

as fishing, in its effect upon the hopes and apprehensions; and probably

he suffers no more from the many refusals he meets with than the angler

does, when he sees a fish smell at his bait and swim away. One success

pays for a hundred disappointments, and the game is all the better for

not being entirely in his own favor.

Walking onward, I found the Pincian thronged with promenaders, as also

with carriages, which drove round the verge of the gardens in an unbroken

ring.

To-day has been very rainy. I went out in the forenoon, and took a

sitting for my bust in one of a suite of rooms formerly occupied by

Canova. It was large, high, and dreary from the want of a carpet,

furniture, or anything but clay and plaster. A sculptor's studio has not

the picturesque charm of that of a painter, where there is color, warmth,

and cheerfulness, and where the artist continually turns towards you the

glow of some picture, which is resting against the wall. . . . . I was

asked not to look at the bust at the close of the sitting, and, of

course, I obeyed; though I have a vague idea of a heavy-browed

physiognomy, something like what I have seen in the glass, but looking

strangely in that guise of clay. . . . .

It is a singular fascination that Rome exercises upon artists. There is

clay elsewhere, and marble enough, and heads to model, and ideas may be

made sensible objects at home as well as here. I think it is the

peculiar mode of life that attracts, and its freedom from the

inthralments of society, more than the artistic advantages which Rome

offers; and, no doubt, though the artists care little about one another's

works, yet they keep each other warm by the presence of so many of them.

The Carnival still continues, though I hardly see how it can have

withstood such a damper as this rainy day. There were several people--

three, I think--killed in the Corso on Saturday; some accounts say that

they were run over by the horses in the race; others, that they were

ridden down by the dragoons in clearing the course.

After leaving Canova's studio, I stepped into the church of San Luigi de'

Francesi, in the Via di Ripetta. It was built, I believe, by Catherine

de' Medici, and is under the protection of the French government, and a

most shamefully dirty place of worship, the beautiful marble columns

looking dingy, for the want of loving and pious care. There are many

tombs and monuments of French people, both of the past and present,--

artists, soldiers, priests, and others, who have died in Rome. It was so

dusky within the church that I could hardly distinguish the pictures in

the chapels and over the altar, nor did I know that there were any worth

looking for. Nevertheless, there were frescos by Domenichino, and

oil-paintings by Guido and others. I found it peculiarly touching to

read the records, in Latin or French, of persons who had died in this

foreign laud, though they were not my own country-people, and though I

was even less akin to them than they to Italy. Still, there was a sort

of relationship in the fact that neither they nor I belonged here.

February 17th.--Yesterday morning was perfectly sunny, and we went out

betimes to see churches; going first to the Capuchins', close by the

Piazza Barberini.

["The Marble Faun" takes up this description of the church and of the

dead monk, which we really saw, just as recounted, even to the sudden

stream of blood which flowed from the nostrils, as we looked at him.--

ED.]

We next went to the Trinita de' Monti, which stands at the head of the

steps, leading, in several flights, from the Piazza de' Spagna. It is

now connected with a convent of French nuns, and when we rang at a side

door, one of the sisterhood answered the summons, and admitted us into

the church. This, like that of the Capuchins', had a vaulted roof over

the nave, and no side aisles, but rows of chapels instead. Unlike the

Capuchins', which was filthy, and really disgraceful to behold, this

church was most exquisitely neat, as women alone would have thought it

worth while to keep it. It is not a very splendid church, not rich in

gorgeous marbles, but pleasant to be in, if it were only for the sake of

its godly purity. There was only one person in the nave; a young girl,

who sat perfectly still, with her face towards the altar, as long as we

stayed. Between the nave and the rest of the church there is a high iron

railing, and on the other side of it were two kneeling figures in black,

so motionless that I at first thought them statues; but they proved to be

two nuns at their devotions; and others of the sisterhood came by and by

and joined them. Nuns, at least these nuns, who are French, and probably

ladies of refinement, having the education of young girls in charge, are

far pleasanter objects to see and think about than monks; the odor of

sanctity, in the latter, not being an agreeable fragrance. But these

holy sisters, with their black crape and white muslin, looked really pure

and unspotted from the world.

On the iron railing above mentioned was the representation of a golden

heart, pierced with arrows; for these are nuns of the Sacred Heart. In

the various chapels there are several paintings in fresco, some by

Daniele da Volterra; and one of them, the "Descent from the Cross," has

been pronounced the third greatest picture in the world. I never should

have had the slightest suspicion that it was a great picture at all, so

worn and faded it looks, and so hard, so difficult to be seen, and so

undelightful when one does see it.

From the Trinita we went to the Santa Maria del Popolo, a church built on

a spot where Nero is said to have been buried, and which was afterwards

made horrible by devilish phantoms. It now being past twelve, and all

the churches closing from twelve till two, we had not time to pay much

attention to the frescos, oil-pictures, and statues, by Raphael and other

famous men, which are to be seen here. I remember dimly the magnificent

chapel of the Chigi family, and little else, for we stayed but a short

time; and went next to the sculptor's studio, where I had another sitting

for my bust. After I had been moulded for about an hour, we turned

homeward; but my wife concluded to hire a balcony for this last afternoon

and evening of the Carnival, and she took possession of it, while I went

home to send to her Miss S------ and the two elder children. For my

part, I took R-----, and walked, by way of the Pincian, to the Piazza del

Popolo, and thence along the Corso, where, by this time, the warfare of

bouquets and confetti raged pretty fiercely. The sky being blue and the

sun bright, the scene looked much gayer and brisker than I had before

found it; and I can conceive of its being rather agreeable than

otherwise, up to the age of twenty. We got several volleys of confetti.

R----- received a bouquet and a sugar-plum, and I a resounding hit from

something that looked more like a cabbage than a flower. Little as I

have enjoyed the Carnival, I think I could make quite a brilliant sketch

of it, without very widely departing from truth.

February 19th.--Day before yesterday, pretty early, we went to St.

Peter's, expecting to see the pope cast ashes on the heads of the

cardinals, it being Ash-Wednesday. On arriving, however, we found no

more than the usual number of visitants and devotional people scattered

through the broad interior of St. Peter's; and thence concluded that the

ceremonies were to be performed in the Sistine Chapel. Accordingly, we

went out of the cathedral, through the door in the left transept, and

passed round the exterior, and through the vast courts of the Vatican,

seeking for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriage-entrance of

the palace; there is an entrance from some point near the front of the

church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest

antique and antic costume that was ever seen,--a party-colored dress,

striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and

ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds,--were on duty at the

gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached

a large court, where some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages

were drawn up, but were still at a loss as to the whereabouts of the

chapel. At last an attendant kindly showed us the proper door, and led

us up flights of stairs, along passages and galleries, and through halls,

till at last we came to a spacious and lofty apartment adorned with

frescos; this was the Sala Regia, and the antechamber to the Sistine

Chapel.

The attendant, meanwhile, had informed us that my wife could not be

admitted to the chapel in her bonnet, and that I myself could not enter

at all, for lack of a dress-coat; so my wife took off her bonnet, and,

covering her head with her black lace veil, was readily let in, while I

remained in the Sala Regia, with several other gentlemen, who found

themselves in the same predicament as I was. There was a wonderful

variety of costume to be seen and studied among the persons around me,

comprising garbs that have been elsewhere laid aside for at least three

centuries,--the broad, plaited, double ruff, and black velvet cloak,

doublet, trunk-breeches, and sword of Queen Elizabeth's time,--the papal

guard, in their striped and party-colored dress as before described,

looking not a little like harlequins; other soldiers in helmets and

jackboots; French officers of various uniform; monks and priests;

attendants in old-fashioned and gorgeous livery; gentlemen, some in black

dress-coats and pantaloons, others in wide-awake hats and tweed

overcoats; and a few ladies in the prescribed costume of black; so that,

in any other country, the scene might have been taken for a fancy ball.

By and by, the cardinals began to arrive, and added their splendid purple

robes and red hats to make the picture still more brilliant. They were

old men, one or two very aged and infirm, and generally men of bulk and

substance, with heavy faces, fleshy about the chin. Their red hats,

trimmed with gold-lace, are a beautiful piece of finery, and are

identical in shape with the black, loosely cocked beavers worn by the

Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Wolsey's hat, which I saw at the

Manchester Exhibition, might have been made on the same block, but

apparently was never cocked, as the fashion now is. The attendants

changed the upper portions of their master's attire, and put a little cap

of scarlet cloth on each of their heads, after which the cardinals, one

by one, or two by two, as they happened to arrive, went into the chapel,

with a page behind each holding up his purple train. In the mean while,

within the chapel, we heard singing and chanting; and whenever the

voluminous curtains that hung before the entrance were slightly drawn

apart, we outsiders glanced through, but could see only a mass of people,

and beyond them still another chapel, divided from the hither one by a

screen. When almost everybody had gone in, there was a stir among the

guards and attendants, and a door opened, apparently communicating with

the inner apartments of the Vatican. Through this door came, not the

pope, as I had partly expected, but a bulky old lady in black, with a red

face, who bowed towards the spectators with an aspect of dignified

complaisance as she passed towards the entrance of the chapel. I took

off my hat, unlike certain English gentlemen who stood nearer, and found

that I had not done amiss, for it was the Queen of Spain.

There was nothing else to be seen; so I went back through the

antechambers (which are noble halls, richly frescoed on the walls and

ceilings), endeavoring to get out through the same passages that had let

me in. I had already tried to descend what I now supposed to be the

Scala Santa, but had been turned back by a sentinel. After wandering to

and fro a good while, I at last found myself in a long, long gallery, on

each side of which were innumerable inscriptions, in Greek and Latin, on

slabs of marble, built into the walls; and classic altars and tablets

were ranged along, from end to end. At the extremity was a closed iron

grating, from which I was retreating; but a French gentleman accosted me,

with the information that the custode would admit me, if I chose, and

would accompany me through the sculpture department of the Vatican. I

acceded, and thus took my first view of those innumerable art-treasures,

passing from one object to another, at an easy pace, pausing hardly a

moment anywhere, and dismissing even the Apollo, and the Laocoon, and the

Torso of Hercules, in the space of half a dozen breaths. I was well

enough content to do so, in order to get a general idea of the contents

of the galleries, before settling down upon individual objects.

Most of the world-famous sculptures presented themselves to my eye with a

kind of familiarity, through the copies and casts which I had seen; but I

found the originals more different than I anticipated. The Apollo, for

instance, has a face which I have never seen in any cast or copy. I must

confess, however, taking such transient glimpses as I did, I was more

impressed with the extent of the Vatican, and the beautiful order in

which it is kept, and its great sunny, open courts, with fountains,

grass, and shrubs, and the views of Rome and the Campagna from its

windows,--more impressed with these, and with certain vastly capacious

vases, and two seat sarcophagi,--than with the statuary. Thus I went

round the whole, and was dismissed through the grated barrier into the

gallery of inscriptions again; and after a little more wandering, I made

my way out of the palace. . . . .

Yesterday I went out betimes, and strayed through some portion of ancient

Rome, to the Column of Trajan, to the Forum, thence along the Appian Way;

after which I lost myself among the intricacies of the streets, and

finally came out at the bridge of St. Angelo. The first observation

which a stranger is led to make, in the neighborhood of Roman ruins, is

that the inhabitants seem to be strangely addicted to the washing of

clothes; for all the precincts of Trajan's Forum, and of the Roman Forum,

and wherever else an iron railing affords opportunity to hang them, were

whitened with sheets, and other linen and cotton, drying in the sun. It

must be that washerwomen burrow among the old temples. The second

observation is not quite so favorable to the cleanly character of the

modern Romans; indeed, it is so very unfavorable, that I hardly know how

to express it. But the fact is, that, through the Forum, . . . . and

anywhere out of the commonest foot-track and roadway, you must look well

to your steps. . . . . If you tread beneath the triumphal arch of Titus

or Constantine, you had better look downward than upward, whatever be the

merit of the sculptures aloft. . . . .

After a while the visitant finds himself getting accustomed to this

horrible state of things; and the associations of moral sublimity and

beauty seem to throw a veil over the physical meannesses to which I

allude. Perhaps there is something in the mind of the people of these

countries that enables them quite to dissever small ugliness from great

sublimity and beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St.

Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking wooden

confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap

little colored prints of the crucifixion; they hang tin hearts and other

tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels

that are incrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put

pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon; in short,

they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not

in the least troubled by the proximity. It must be that their sense of

the beautiful is stronger than in the Anglo-Saxon mind, and that it

observes only what is fit to gratify it.

To-day, which was bright and cool, my wife and I set forth immediately

after breakfast, in search of the Baths of Diocletian, and the church of

Santa Maria degl' Angeli. We went too far along the Via di Porta Pia,

and after passing by two or three convents, and their high garden walls,

and the villa Bonaparte on one side, and the villa Torlonia on the other,

at last issued through the city gate. Before us, far away, were the

Alban hills, the loftiest of which was absolutely silvered with snow and

sunshine, and set in the bluest and brightest of skies. We now retraced

our steps to the Fountain of the Termini, where is a ponderous heap of

stone, representing Moses striking the rock; a colossal figure, not

without a certain enormous might and dignity, though rather too evidently

looking his awfullest. This statue was the death of its sculptor, whose

heart was broken on account of the ridicule it excited. There are many

more absurd aquatic devices in Rome, however, and few better.

We turned into the Piazza de' Termini, the entrance of which is at this

fountain; and after some inquiry of the French soldiers, a numerous

detachment of whom appear to be quartered in the vicinity, we found our

way to the portal of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. The exterior of this

church has no pretensions to beauty or majesty, or, indeed, to

architectural merit of any kind, or to any architecture whatever; for it

looks like a confused pile of ruined brickwork, with a facade resembling

half the inner curve of a large oven. No one would imagine that there

was a church under that enormous heap of ancient rubbish. But the door

admits you into a circular vestibule, once an apartment of Diocletian's

Baths, but now a portion of the nave of the church, and surrounded with

monumental busts; and thence you pass into what was the central hall;

now, with little change, except of detail and ornament, transformed into

the body of the church. This space is so lofty, broad, and airy, that

the soul forthwith swells out and magnifies itself, for the sake of

filling it. It was Michael Angelo who contrived this miracle; and I feel

even more grateful to him for rescuing such a noble interior from

destruction, than if he had originally built it himself. In the ceiling

above, you see the metal fixtures whereon the old Romans hung their

lamps; and there are eight gigantic pillars of Egyptian granite, standing

as they stood of yore. There is a grand simplicity about the church,

more satisfactory than elaborate ornament; but the present pope has paved

and adorned one of the large chapels of the transept in very beautiful

style, and the pavement of the central part is likewise laid in rich

marbles. In the choir there are several pictures, one of which was

veiled, as celebrated pictures frequently are in churches. A person, who

seemed to be at his devotions, withdrew the veil for us, and we saw a

Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by Domenichino, originally, I believe,

painted in fresco in St. Peter's, but since transferred to canvas, and

removed hither. Its place at St. Peter's is supplied by a mosaic copy.

I was a good deal impressed by this picture,--the dying saint, amid the

sorrow of those who loved him, and the fury of his enemies, looking

upward, where a company of angels, and Jesus with them, are waiting to

welcome him and crown him; and I felt what an influence pictures might

have upon the devotional part of our nature. The nailmarks in the hands

and feet of Jesus, ineffaceable, even after he had passed into bliss and

glory, touched my heart with a sense of his love for us. I think this

really a great picture. We walked round the church, looking at other

paintings and frescos, but saw no others that greatly interested us. In

the vestibule there are monuments to Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa, and

there is a statue of St. Bruno, by Houdon, which is pronounced to be very

fine. I thought it good, but scarcely worthy of vast admiration. Houdon

was the sculptor of the first statue of Washington, and of the bust,

whence, I suppose, all subsequent statues have been, and will be, mainly

modelled.

After emerging from the church, I looked back with wonder at the stack of

shapeless old brickwork that hid the splendid interior. I must go there

again, and breathe freely in that noble space.

February 20th.--This morning, after breakfast, I walked across the city,

making a pretty straight course to the Pantheon, and thence to the bridge

of St. Angelo, and to St. Peter's. It had been my purpose to go to the

Fontana Paolina; but, finding that the distance was too great, and being

weighed down with a Roman lassitude, I concluded to go into St. Peter's.

Here I looked at Michael Angelo's Pieta, a representation of the dead

Christ, in his mother's lap. Then I strolled round the great church, and

find that it continues to grow upon me both in magnitude and beauty, by

comparison with the many interiors of sacred edifices which I have lately

seen. At times, a single, casual, momentary glimpse of its magnificence

gleams upon my soul, as it were, when I happen to glance at arch opening

beyond arch, and I am surprised into admiration. I have experienced that

a landscape and the sky unfold the deepest beauty in a similar way; not

when they are gazed at of set purpose, but when the spectator looks

suddenly through a vista, among a crowd of other thoughts. Passing near

the confessional for foreigners to-day, I saw a Spaniard, who had just

come out of the one devoted to his native tongue, taking leave of his

confessor, with an affectionate reverence, which--as well as the benign

dignity of the good father--it was good to behold. . . . .

I returned home early, in order to go with my wife to the Barberini

Palace at two o'clock. We entered through the gateway, through the Via

delle Quattro Fontane, passing one or two sentinels; for there is

apparently a regiment of dragoons quartered on the ground-floor of the

palace; and I stumbled upon a room containing their saddles, the other

day, when seeking for Mr. Story's staircase. The entrance to the

picture-gallery is by a door on the right hand, affording us a sight of a

beautiful spiral staircase, which goes circling upward from the very

basement to the very summit of the palace, with a perfectly easy ascent,

yet confining its sweep within a moderate compass. We looked up through

the interior of the spiral, as through a tube, from the bottom to the

top. The pictures are contained in three contiguous rooms of the lower

piano, and are few in number, comprising barely half a dozen which I

should care to see again, though doubtless all have value in their way.

One that attracted our attention was a picture of "Christ disputing with

the Doctors," by Albert Duerer, in which was represented the ugliest,

most evil-minded, stubborn, pragmatical, and contentious old Jew that

ever lived under the law of Moses; and he and the child Jesus were

arguing, not only with their tongues, but making hieroglyphics, as it

were, by the motion of their hands and fingers. It is a very queer, as

well as a very remarkable picture. But we passed hastily by this, and

almost all others, being eager to see the two which chiefly make the

collection famous,--Raphael's Fornarina, and Guido's portrait of Beatrice

Cenci. These were found in the last of the three rooms, and as regards

Beatrice Cenci, I might as well not try to say anything; for its spell is

indefinable, and the painter has wrought it in a way more like magic than

anything else. . . . .

It is the most profoundly wrought picture in the world; no artist did it,

nor could do it, again. Guido may have held the brush, but he painted

"better than he knew." I wish, however, it were possible for some

spectator, of deep sensibility, to see the picture without knowing

anything of its subject or history; for, no doubt, we bring all our

knowledge of the Cenci tragedy to the interpretation of it.

Close beside Beatrice Cenci hangs the Fornarina. . . . .

While we were looking at these works Miss M------ unexpectedly joined us,

and we went, all three together, to the Rospigliosi Palace, in the Piazza

di Monte Cavallo. A porter, in cocked hat, and with a staff of office,

admitted us into a spacious court before the palace, and directed us to a

garden on one side, raised as much as twenty feet above the level on

which we stood. The gardener opened the gate for us, and we ascended a

beautiful stone staircase, with a carved balustrade, bearing many marks

of time and weather. Reaching the garden-level, we found it laid out in

walks, bordered with box and ornamental shrubbery, amid which were

lemon-trees, and one large old exotic from some distant clime. In the

centre of the garden, surrounded by a stone balustrade, like that of the

staircase, was a fish-pond, into which several jets of water were

continually spouting; and on pedestals, that made part of the balusters,

stood eight marble statues of Apollo, Cupid, nymphs, and other such sunny

and beautiful people of classic mythology. There had been many more of

these statues, but the rest had disappeared, and those which remained had

suffered grievous damage, here to a nose, there to a hand or foot, and

often a fracture of the body, very imperfectly mended. There was a

pleasant sunshine in the garden, and a springlike, or rather a genial,

autumnal atmosphere, though elsewhere it was a day of poisonous Roman

chill.

At the end of the garden, which was of no great extent, was an edifice,

bordering on the piazza, called the Casino, which, I presume, means a

garden-house. The front is richly ornamented with bas-reliefs, and

statues in niches; as if it were a place for pleasure and enjoyment, and

therefore ought to be beautiful. As we approached it, the door swung

open, and we went into a large room on the ground-floor, and, looking up

to the ceiling, beheld Guido's Aurora. The picture is as fresh and

brilliant as if he had painted it with the morning sunshine which it

represents. It could not be more lustrous in its lines, if he had given

it the last touch an hour ago. Three or four artists were copying it at

that instant, and positively their colors did not look brighter, though a

great deal newer than his. The alacrity and movement, briskness and

morning stir and glow, of the picture are wonderful. It seems impossible

to catch its glory in a copy. Several artists, as I said, were making

the attempt, and we saw two other attempted copies leaning against the

wall, but it was easy to detect failure in just essential points. My

memory, I believe, will be somewhat enlivened by this picture hereafter:

not that I remember it very distinctly even now; but bright things leave

a sheen and glimmer in the mind, like Christian's tremulous glimpse of

the Celestial City.

In two other rooms of the Casino we saw pictures by Domenichino, Rubens,

and other famous painters, which I do not mean to speak of, because I

cared really little or nothing about them. Returning into the garden,

the sunny warmth of which was most grateful after the chill air and cold

pavement of the Casino, we walked round the laguna, examining the

statues, and looking down at some little fishes that swarmed at the stone

margin of the pool. There were two infants of the Rospigliosi family:

one, a young child playing with a maid and head-servant; another, the

very chubbiest and rosiest boy in the world, sleeping on its nurse's

bosom. The nurse was a comely woman enough, dressed in bright colors,

which fitly set off the deep lines of her Italian face. An old painter

very likely would have beautified and refined the pair into a Madonna,

with the child Jesus; for an artist need not go far in Italy to find a

picture ready composed and tinted, needing little more than to be

literally copied.

Miss M------ had gone away before us; but my wife and I, after leaving

the Palazzo Rospigliosi, and on our way hone, went into the Church of St.

Andrea, which belongs to a convent of Jesuits. I have long ago exhausted

all my capacity of admiration for splendid interiors of churches, but

methinks this little, little temple (it is not more than fifty or sixty

feet across) has a more perfect and gem-like beauty than any other. Its

shape is oval, with an oval dome, and, above that, another little dome,

both of which are magnificently frescoed. Around the base of the larger

dome is wreathed a flight of angels, and the smaller and upper one is

encircled by a garland of cherubs,--cherub and angel all of pure white

marble. The oval centre of the church is walled round with precious and

lustrous marble of a red-veined variety interspersed with columns and

pilasters of white; and there are arches opening through this rich wall,

forming chapels, which the architect seems to have striven hard to make

even more gorgeous than the main body of the church. They contain

beautiful pictures, not dark and faded, but glowing, as if just from the

painter's hands; and the shrines are adorned with whatever is most rare,

and in one of them was the great carbuncle; at any rate, a bright, fiery

gem as big as a turkey's egg. The pavement of the church was one star of

various-colored marble, and in the centre was a mosaic, covering, I

believe, the tomb of the founder. I have not seen, nor expect to see,

anything else so entirely and satisfactorily finished as this small oval

church; and I only wish I could pack it in a large box, and send it home.

I must not forget that, on our way from the Barberini Palace, we stopped

an instant to look at the house, at the corner of the street of the four

fountains, where Milton was a guest while in Rome. He seems quite a man

of our own day, seen so nearly at the hither extremity of the vista

through which we look back, from the epoch of railways to that of the

oldest Egyptian obelisk. The house (it was then occupied by the Cardinal

Barberini) looks as if it might have been built within the present

century; for mediaeval houses in Rome do not assume the aspect of

antiquity; perhaps because the Italian style of architecture, or

something similar, is the one more generally in vogue in most cities.

February 21st.--This morning I took my way through the Porta del Popolo,

intending to spend the forenoon in the Campagna; but, getting weary of

the straight, uninteresting street that runs out of the gate, I turned

aside from it, and soon found myself on the shores of the Tiber. It

looked, as usual, like a saturated solution of yellow mud, and eddied

hastily along between deep banks of clay, and over a clay bed, in which

doubtless are hidden many a richer treasure than we now possess. The

French once proposed to draw off the river, for the purpose of recovering

all the sunken statues and relics; but the Romans made strenuous

objection, on account of the increased virulence of malaria which would

probably result. I saw a man on the immediate shore of the river, fifty

feet or so beneath the bank on which I stood, sitting patiently, with an

angling rod; and I waited to see what he might catch. Two other persons

likewise sat down to watch him; but he caught nothing so long as I

stayed, and at last seemed to give it up. The banks and vicinity of the

river are very bare and uninviting, as I then saw them; no shade, no

verdure,--a rough, neglected aspect, and a peculiar shabbiness about the

few houses that were visible. Farther down the stream the dome of St.

Peter's showed itself on the other side, seeming to stand on the

outskirts of the city. I walked along the banks, with some expectation

of finding a ferry, by which I might cross the river; but my course was

soon interrupted by the wall, and I turned up a lane that led me straight

back again to the Porta del Popolo. I stopped a moment, however, to see

some young men pitching quoits, which they appeared to do with a good

deal of skill.

I went along the Via di Ripetta, and through other streets, stepping into

two or three churches, one of which was the Pantheon. . . . .

There are, I think, seven deep, pillared recesses around the

circumference of it, each of which becomes a sufficiently capacious

chapel; and alternately with these chapels there is a marble structure,

like the architecture of a doorway, beneath which is the shrine of a

saint; so that the whole circle of the Pantheon is filled up with the

seven chapels and seven shrines. A number of persons were sitting or

kneeling around; others came in while I was there, dipping their fingers

in the holy water, and bending the knee, as they passed the shrines and

chapels, until they reached the one which, apparently, they had selected

as the particular altar for their devotions. Everybody seemed so devout,

and in a frame of mind so suited to the day and place, that it really

made me feel a little awkward not to be able to kneel down along with

them. Unlike the worshippers in our own churches, each individual here

seems to do his own individual acts of devotion, and I cannot but think

it better so than to make an effort for united prayer as we do. It is my

opinion that a great deal of devout and reverential feeling is kept alive

in people's hearts by the Catholic mode of worship.

Soon leaving the Pantheon, a few minutes' walk towards the Corso brought

me to the Church of St. Ignazio, which belongs to the College of the

Jesuits. It is spacious and of beautiful architecture, but not

strikingly distinguished, in the latter particular, from many others; a

wide and lofty nave, supported upon marble columns, between which arches

open into the side aisles, and at the junction of the nave and transept a

dome, resting on four great arches. The church seemed to be purposely

somewhat darkened, so that I could not well see the details of the

ornamentation, except the frescos on the ceiling of the nave, which were

very brilliant, and done in so effectual a style, that I really could not

satisfy myself that some of the figures did not actually protrude from

the ceiling,--in short, that they were not colored bas-reliefs, instead

of frescos. No words can express the beautiful effect, in an upholstery

point of view, of this kind of decoration. Here, as at the Pantheon,

there were many persons sitting silent, kneeling, or passing from shrine

to shrine.

I reached home at about twelve, and, at one, set out again, with my wife,

towards St. Peter's, where we meant to stay till after vespers. We

walked across the city, and through the Piazza de Navona, where we

stopped to look at one of Bernini's absurd fountains, of which the water

makes but the smallest part,--a little squirt or two amid a prodigious

fuss of gods and monsters. Thence we passed by the poor, battered-down

torso of Pasquin, and came, by devious ways, to the bridge of St. Angelo;

the streets bearing pretty much their weekday aspect, many of the shops

open, the market-stalls doing their usual business, and the people brisk

and gay, though not indecorously so. I suppose there was hardly a man or

woman who had not heard mass, confessed, and said their prayers; a thing

which--the prayers, I mean--it would be absurd to predicate of London,

New York, or any Protestant city. In however adulterated a guise, the

Catholics do get a draught of devotion to slake the thirst of their

souls, and methinks it must needs do them good, even if not quite so pure

as if it came from better cisterns, or from the original fountain-head.

Arriving at St. Peter's shortly after two, we walked round the whole

church, looking at all the pictures and most of the monuments, . . . .

and paused longest before Guido's "Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer."

This is surely one of the most beautiful things in the world, one of the

human conceptions that are imbued most deeply with the celestial. . . . .

We then sat down in one of the aisles and awaited the beginning of

vespers, which we supposed would take place at half past three. Four

o'clock came, however, and no vespers; and as our dinner-hour is

five, . . . . we at last cane away without hearing the vesper hymn.

February 23d.--Yesterday, at noon, we set out for the Capitol, and after

going up the acclivity (not from the Forum, but from the opposite

direction), stopped to look at the statues of Castor and Pollux, which,

with other sculptures, look down the ascent. Castor and his brother seem

to me to have heads disproportionately large, and are not so striking, in

any respect, as such great images ought to be. But we heartily admired

the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, . . . . and looked at

a fountain, principally composed, I think, of figures representing the

Nile and the Tiber, who loll upon their elbows and preside over the

gushing water; and between them, against the facade of the Senator's

Palace, there is a statue of Minerva, with a petticoat of red porphyry.

Having taken note of these objects, we went to the museum, in an edifice

on our left, entering the piazza, and here, in the vestibule, we found

various old statues and relics. Ascending the stairs, we passed through

a long gallery, and, turning to our left, examined somewhat more

carefully a suite of rooms running parallel with it. The first of these

contained busts of the Caesars and their kindred, from the epoch of the

mightiest Julius downward; eighty-three, I believe, in all. I had seen a

bust of Julius Caesar in the British Museum, and was surprised at its

thin and withered aspect; but this head is of a very ugly old man

indeed,--wrinkled, puckered, shrunken, lacking breadth and substance;

careworn, grim, as if he had fought hard with life, and had suffered in

the conflict; a man of schemes, and of eager effort to bring his schemes

to pass. His profile is by no means good, advancing from the top of his

forehead to the tip of his nose, and retreating, at about the same angle,

from the latter point to the bottom of his chin, which seems to be thrust

forcibly down into his meagre neck,--not that he pokes his head forward,

however, for it is particularly erect.

The head of Augustus is very beautiful, and appears to be that of a

meditative, philosophic man, saddened with the sense that it is not very

much worth while to be at the summit of human greatness after all. It is

a sorrowful thing to trace the decay of civilization through this series

of busts, and to observe how the artistic skill, so requisite at first,

went on declining through the dreary dynasty of the Caesars, till at

length the master of the world could not get his head carved in better

style than the figure-head of a ship.

In the next room there were better statues than we had yet seen; but in

the last room of the range we found the "Dying Gladiator," of which I had

already caught a glimpse in passing by the open door. It had made all

the other treasures of the gallery tedious in my eagerness to come to

that. I do not believe that so much pathos is wrought into any other

block of stone. Like all works of the highest excellence, however, it

makes great demands upon the spectator. He must make a generous gift of

his sympathies to the sculptor, and help out his skill with all his

heart, or else he will see little more than a skilfully wrought surface.

It suggests far more than it shows. I looked long at this statue, and

little at anything else, though, among other famous works, a statue of

Antinous was in the same room.

I was glad when we left the museum, which, by the by, was piercingly

chill, as if the multitude of statues radiated cold out of their marble

substance. We might have gone to see the pictures in the Palace of the

Conservatori, and S-----, whose receptivity is unlimited and forever

fresh, would willingly have done so; but I objected, and we went towards

the Forum. I had noticed, two or three times, an inscription over a

mean-looking door in this neighborhood, stating that here was the

entrance to the prison of the holy apostles Peter and Paul; and we soon

found the spot, not far from the Forum, with two wretched frescos of the

apostles above the inscription. We knocked at the door without effect;

but a lame beggar, who sat at another door of the same house (which

looked exceedingly like a liquor-shop), desired us to follow him, and

began to ascend to the Capitol, by the causeway leading from the Forum.

A little way upward we met a woman, to whom the beggar delivered us over,

and she led us into a church or chapel door, and pointed to a long flight

of steps, which descended through twilight into utter darkness. She

called to somebody in the lower regions, and then went away, leaving us

to get down this mysterious staircase by ourselves. Down we went,

farther and farther from the daylight, and found ourselves, anon, in a

dark chamber or cell, the shape or boundaries of which we could not make

out, though it seemed to be of stone, and black and dungeon-like.

Indistinctly, and from a still farther depth in the earth, we heard

voices,--one voice, at least,--apparently not addressing ourselves, but

some other persons; and soon, directly beneath our feet, we saw a

glimmering of light through a round, iron-grated hole in the bottom of

the dungeon. In a few moments the glimmer and the voice came up through

this hole, and the light disappeared, and it and the voice came

glimmering and babbling up a flight of stone stairs, of which we had not

hitherto been aware. It was the custode, with a party of visitors, to

whom he had been showing St. Peter's dungeon. Each visitor was provided

with a wax taper, and the custode gave one to each of us, bidding us wait

a moment while he conducted the other party to the upper air. During his

absence we examined the cell, as well as our dim lights would permit, and

soon found an indentation in the wall, with an iron grate put over it for

protection, and an inscription above informing us that the Apostle Peter

had here left the imprint of his visage; and, in truth, there is a

profile there,--forehead, nose, mouth, and chin,--plainly to be seen, an

intaglio in the solid rock. We touched it with the tips of our fingers,

as well as saw it with our eyes.

The custode soon returned, and led us down the darksome steps, chattering

in Italian all the time. It is not a very long descent to the lower

cell, the roof of which is so low that I believe I could have reached it

with my hand. We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old

Mamertine Prison, one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome,

and which served the Romans as a state-prison for hundreds of years

before the Christian era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons,

no doubt, have languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here

Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and,

methinks, there cannot be in the world another such an evil den, so

haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and

suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this

dungeon above their breath. It looks just as bad as it is; round, only

seven paces across, yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate

it from side to side,-- the stones of which it is constructed being as

black as midnight. The custode showed us a stone post, at the side of

the cell, with the hole in the top of it, into which, he said, St.

Peter's chain had been fastened; and he uncovered a spring of water, in

the middle of the stone floor, which he told us had miraculously gushed

up to enable the saint to baptize his jailer. The miracle was perhaps

the more easily wrought, inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the

dungeon oozy with wet. However, it is best to be as simple and childlike

as we can in these matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into

the stone, and wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he

ever was in the prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and

more gives a sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The

custode dipped an iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us

drank a sip; and, what is very remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and

almost brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I

suspect that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its

qualities according to the faith of those who drink it.

The staircase descending into the lower dungeon is comparatively modern,

there having been no entrance of old, except through the small circular

opening in the roof. In the upper cell the custode showed us an ancient

flight of stairs, now built into the wall, which used to lead from the

Capitol. The whole precincts are now consecrated, and I believe the

upper portion, perhaps both upper and lower, are a shrine or a chapel.

I now left S------ in the Forum, and went to call on Mr. J. P. K------ at

the Hotel d'Europe. I found him just returned from a drive,--a gentleman

of about sixty, or more, with gray hair, a pleasant, intellectual face,

and penetrating, but not unkindly eyes. He moved infirmly, being on the

recovery from an illness. We went up to his saloon together, and had a

talk,--or, rather, he had it nearly all to himself,--and particularly

sensible talk, too, and full of the results of learning and experience.

In the first place, he settled the whole Kansas difficulty; then he made

havoc of St. Peter, who came very shabbily out of his hands, as regarded

his early character in the Church, and his claims to the position he now

holds in it. Mr. K------ also gave a curious illustration, from

something that happened to himself, of the little dependence that can be

placed on tradition purporting to be ancient, and I capped his story by

telling him how the site of my town-pump, so plainly indicated in the

sketch itself, has already been mistaken in the city council and in the

public prints.

February 24th.--Yesterday I crossed the Ponte Sisto, and took a short

ramble on the other side of the river; and it rather surprised me to

discover, pretty nearly opposite the Capitoline Hill, a quay, at which

several schooners and barks, of two or three hundred tons' burden, were

moored. There was also a steamer, armed with a large gun and two brass

swivels on her forecastle, and I know not what artillery besides.

Probably she may have been a revenue-cutter.

Returning I crossed the river by way of the island of St. Bartholomew

over two bridges. The island is densely covered with buildings, and is a

separate small fragment of the city. It was a tradition of the ancient

Romans that it was formed by the aggregation of soil and rubbish brought

down by the river, and accumulating round the nucleus of some sunken

baskets.

On reaching the hither side of the river, I soon struck upon the ruins of

the theatre of Marcellus, which are very picturesque, and the more so

from being closely linked in, indeed, identified with the shops,

habitations, and swarming life of modern Rome. The most striking portion

was a circular edifice, which seemed to have been composed of a row of

Ionic columns standing upon a lower row of Doric, many of the antique

pillars being yet perfect; but the intervening arches built up with

brickwork, and the whole once magnificent structure now tenanted by poor

and squalid people, as thick as mites within the round of an old cheese.

From this point I cannot very clearly trace out my course; but I passed,

I think, between the Circus Maximus and the Palace of the Caesars, and

near the Baths of Caracalla, and went into the cloisters of the Church of

San Gregorio. All along I saw massive ruins, not particularly

picturesque or beautiful, but huge, mountainous piles, chiefly of

brickwork, somewhat tweed-grown here and there, but oftener bare and

dreary. . . . . All the successive ages since Rome began to decay have

done their best to ruin the very ruins by taking away the marble and the

hewn stone for their own structures, and leaving only the inner filling

up of brickwork, which the ancient architects never designed to be seen.

The consequence of all this is, that, except for the lofty and poetical

associations connected with it, and except, too, for the immense

difference in magnitude, a Roman ruin may be in itself not more

picturesque than I have seen an old cellar, with a shattered brick

chimney half crumbling down into it, in New England.

By this time I knew not whither I was going, and turned aside from a

broad, paved road (it was the Appian Way) into the Via Latina, which I

supposed would lead to one of the city gates. It was a lonely path: on

my right hand extensive piles of ruin, in strange shapes or

shapelessness, built of the broad and thin old Roman bricks, such as may

be traced everywhere, when the stucco has fallen away from a modern Roman

house; for I imagine there has not been a new brick made here for a

thousand years. On my left, I think, was a high wall, and before me,

grazing in the road . . . . [the buffalo calf of the Marble Faun.--ED.].

The road went boldly on, with a well-worn track up to the very walls of

the city; but there it abruptly terminated at an ancient, closed-up

gateway. From a notice posted against a door, which appeared to be the

entrance to the ruins on my left, I found that these were the remains of

Columbaria, where the dead used to be put away in pigeon-holes. Reaching

the paved road again, I kept on my course, passing the tomb of the

Scipios, and soon came to the gate of San Sebastiano, through which I

entered the Campagna. Indeed, the scene around was so rural, that I had

fancied myself already beyond the walls. As the afternoon was getting

advanced, I did not proceed any farther towards the blue hills which I

saw in the distance, but turned to my left, following a road that runs

round the exterior of the city wall. It was very dreary and solitary,--

not a house on the whole track, with the broad and shaggy Campagna on one

side, and the high, bare wall, looking down over my head, on the other.

It is not, any more than the other objects of the scene, a very

picturesque wall, but is little more than a brick garden-fence seen

through a magnifying-glass, with now and then a tower, however, and

frequent buttresses, to keep its height of fifty feet from toppling over.

The top was ragged, and fringed with a few weeds; there had been

embrasures for guns and eyelet-holes for musketry, but these were

plastered up with brick or stone. I passed one or two walled-up gateways

(by the by, the Parts, Latina was the gate through which Belisarius first

entered Rome), and one of these had two high, round towers, and looked

more Gothic and venerable with antique strength than any other portion of

the wall. Immediately after this I came to the gate of San Giovanni,

just within which is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and there I was

glad to rest myself upon a bench before proceeding homeward.

There was a French sentinel at this gateway, as at all the others; for

the Gauls have always been a pest to Rome, and now gall her worse than

ever. I observed, too, that an official, in citizen's dress, stood there

also, and appeared to exercise a supervision over some carts with country

produce, that were entering just then.