her, and yet the impression she has made on me, at the first view, is
unexpectedly great. I do not yet feel able to go wandering from one
church, museum, picture or sculpture gallery to another, from morning
till night, as others do: I need to pause and think. Of course, I shall
leave without seeing even a tenth part of the objects of decided interest;
but if I should thus be enabled to carry away any clear and abiding
impression of a small part, I shall prefer this to a confused and foggy
perception of a greater multiplicity of details.
That single view of the Eternal City, from the tower of the Capitol, is
one that I almost wish I had given up the first day to. The entire of
Rome and its inhabited suburbs lies so fully and fairly before the eye,
with the Seven Hills, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Obelisks, the
Pillars, the Vatican, the Castle of St. Angelo, the various Triumphal
Arches, the Churches, &c., &c., around you, that it seems the best use
that could be made of one day to simply move from look-out to look-out
in that old tower, using the glass for a few moments and then pausing
for reflection. I have half a mind thus to spend one of my three
remaining days. True, the Coliseum will seem vaster close at hand, but
from no point can it be seen so completely and clearly, in its immensity
and its dilapidation combined, as from that. The Tarpeian Rock seems an
absurd fable--its fatal leap the daily sport of infants--but in all
ancient cities the same glaring discrepancy between ancient and modern
altitudes is presented, and especially, we hear, at Jerusalem. The Seven
Hills whereon Rome was built are all distinguishable, visible to-day;
but they are undoubtedly much lower than at first, while all the
intervening valleys have been filling up through centuries. Monkish
traditions say that what is now the basement of the Church of Sts. Peter
and Paul (not the modern St. Peter's) was originally on the level of the
street, and this is quite probable: though I did not so readily
lubricate the stories I was told in that basement to-day of St. Peter,
Paul and Luke having tenanted this basement, Paul having lived and
preached here for the first two years of his residence in Rome; and when
they showed me the _altar_ at which St. Paul was wont to minister, I
stopped short and didn't _try_ to believe any more. But this soil is
thickly sown with marvels and very productive.
St. Peter's, or at least its Dome, was in sight through the greater part
of the last eleven or twelve miles of our journey to the city; from most
other directions it is doubtless visible at a much greater distance. I
have of course seen the immense structure afar off, as well as glanced
at it in passing by night; but I am not yet prepared to comprehend its
vast proportions. I mean to visit it last before leaving Rome, so as to
carry away as unclouded an impression of it as possible.
Of the three hundred and sixty-five Churches of Rome, I have as yet
visited but four, and may find time to see as many more of the most
noteworthy. They seem richer in Sculpture, Porphyry, Mosaic, Carving,
Tapestry, &c. than anything elsewhere well can be; but not equal in
Architecture to the finest Churches in Genoa, the Cathedral at Pisa, and
I think not externally to Notre Dame at Paris. Indeed, though large
portions of the present Rome are very far from ruinous, and some of them
quite modern and fresh-looking, yet the general Architecture of the city
is decidedly inferior to that of Genoa, and I should say even to that of
Leghorn. In making this comparison, I of course leave out of the account
St. Peter's and the Churches of both cities, and refer mainly to private
architecture, in which Rome is not transcendent--certainly not in Italy.
The streets here are rather wide for an Italian city but would be deemed
intolerably narrow in America.
As to _Sculpture_ and _Painting_, I am tempted to say that if mankind
were compelled to choose between the destruction of what is in Rome or
that of all the rest in the world, the former should be saved at the
expense of the latter. Adequate conception of the extent, the variety,
the excellence of the works of Art here heaped together is impossible.
If every house on Broadway were a gallery, the whole six miles of them
(counting both sides of the street) might be filled from Rome with
Pictures, Statues, &c. of decided merit.
What little I have seen does not impress me with the superiority of
Ancient over Modern Art. Of course, if you compare the dozen best things
produced in twenty centuries against a like number chosen from the
productions of the last single century, you will show a superiority on
the part of the former; but that decides nothing. The Capitoline Venus
is a paragon, but there is no collection of ancient sculpture which will
compare with the extensive gallery of heads by Canova alone. When
benignant Time shall have done his appointed work of covering with the
pall of oblivion the worse nineteen twentieths of the productions of the
modern chisel, the genuine successes of the Nineteenth Century will
shine out clearer and brighter than they now do. So, I trust, with
Painting, though I do not know what painter of our age to place on a
perilous eminence with Canova as the champion or representative of
Modern as compared with Ancient Art.
It is well that there should be somewhere an Emporium of the Fine Arts,
yet not well that the heart should absorb all the blood and leave the
limbs destitute. I think Rome has been grasping with regard to works of
Art, and in some instances unwisely so. For instance, in a single
private gallery I visited to-day, there were not less than twenty
decidedly good pictures by Anibal Caracci--probably twice as many as
there are in all the world out of Italy. That gallery would scarcely
miss half of these, which might be fully replaced by as many modern
works of equal merit, whereby the gallery and Rome would lose nothing,
while the world outside would decidedly gain. If Rome would but consider
herself under a sort of moral responsibility to impart as well as
receive, and would liberally dispose of so many of her master-pieces as
would not at all impoverish her, buying in return such as could be
spared her from abroad, and would thus enrich her collections by
diversifying them, she would render the cause of Art a signal service
and earn the gratitude of mankind, without the least prejudice to her
own permanent well-being. It is in her power to constitute herself the
center of an International Art-Union really worthy of the name--to
establish a World's Exhibition of Fine Arts unequaled in character and
beneficence. Is it too much to hope that she will realize or surpass
this conception?
These suggestions, impelled by what I have seen to-day, are at all
events much shorter than I could have made any detailed account of my
observations. I have no qualifications for a critic in Art, and make no
pretensions to the character, even had my observations been less hurried
than they necessarily were. I write only for the great multitude, as
ill-instructed in this sphere as I cheerfully admit myself, and who yet
are not unwilling to learn what impression is made by the treasures of
Rome on one like themselves.
THE COLISEUM.
_Evening._
I spent the forenoon wandering through the endless halls of the Vatican,
so far as they were accessible to the public, the more important
galleries being only open on Monday, and two or three of the very finest
not at all. I fear this restriction will deprive me of a sight of the
Apollo Belvedere, the Sistine Chapel, and one or two others of the
world's marvels. I know how ungracious it is to "look a gift horse in
the mouth," and yet, since these works exist mainly to be seen, and as
Rome derives so large a share of her income from the strangers whom
these works attract to her, I must think it unwise to send any away
regretting that they were denied a sight of the Apollo or of some of
Raphael's master-pieces contained in the Vatican. I know at what vast
expense these works have been produced or purchased, and, though all who
visit Rome are made to pay a great deal indirectly for the privileges
they enjoy here, yet I wish the Papal Government would frankly exact, as
I for one should most cheerfully pay, a fair price for admission to the
most admirable and unrivaled collections which are its property. If, for
instance, it would abolish all Passport vexations, encourage the opening
of Railroads, and stimulate the establishment of better lines of
Diligences, &c., so that traveling in the Papal States would cease to be
twice as dear and infinitely slower than elsewhere in Italy, in France
or Germany, and would then charge each stranger visiting Rome on errands
other than religious something like five dollars for all that is to be
seen here, taking care to let him see it, and to cut off all private
importunities for services rendered in showing them, the system would be
a great improvement on the present, and the number of strangers in Rome
would be rapidly doubled and quadrupled. There might be some calumny
and misrepresentation, but these would very soon be dispelled, and the
world would understand that the Papacy did not seek to make money out of
its priceless treasures, but simply to provide equitably and properly
for their preservation and due increase. Here, as we all see, have
immense sums been already spent by this Government in excavating,
preserving, and in some cases partially restoring such decayed but
inimitable structures as the Coliseum, the Capitol, the various
Triumphal Arches, the Baths of Titus, Caracalla, &c., all of which
labors and expenditures we who visit Rome share the benefit, and it is
but the simplest justice that we should contribute to defray the cost,
especially when we know that every dollar so paid would be expended in
continuing these excavations, &c., and in completing the galleries and
other modern structures which are already so peerless. Rome is too
commonly regarded as only a ruin, or, more strictly, as deriving all its
eminence from the Past, while in fact it has more inestimable treasures,
the product of our own century, our own day, than any other city, and I
suspect nearly as many as all the rest of the world. Even the Vatican is
still unfinished; workmen were busy in it to-day, laying additional
floors of variegated marble, putting up new book-cases, &c., none of
them restorations, but all extensions of the Library, which, apart from
the value of its books and manuscripts, is a unique and masterly
exposition of ancient and modern Art. Here are single Vases, Tables,
Frescoes, &c., which would be the pride of any other city: one large
vase of Malachite, a present to Pius IX. from the Russian Autocrat, and
unequaled out of Russia, if in the world. I should judge that
three-fourths of the Frescoes which nearly cover the walls and ceiling
of the fifteen or twenty large halls devoted to the Library are less
than two centuries old. This part of the Vatican is approached through a
magnificent corridor, probably five hundred feet long, with an arched
ceiling entirely inlaid with beautiful Mosaic, and the same is
continued through another gallery some two hundred feet long, which
leads at right angles from this to another wing of the edifice; but the
corridor leading down this wing, and facing that first named, has a
naked, barren-looking ceiling, evidently waiting to be similarly inlaid
when time and means shall permit. This is but a specimen of what is
purposed throughout; and if the money which visitors leave in Rome
could, in some small part at least, be devoted to these works, instead
of being frittered away vexatiously and uselessly on petty extortioners,
official and unofficial, the change would be a very great improvement.
It does seem a shame that, where so much is necessarily expended, so
little of it should be devoted to those still progressing works, from
which are derived all this instruction and intellectual enjoyment.
Here let me say one word in justice to the princely families of Rome,
whose palaces and immense collections of Paintings and Sculptures are
almost daily open to strangers without charge, save the trifle that you
choose to give the attendant who shows you through them. I looked for
hours to-day through the ten spacious apartments of the Palace of the
Orsini family devoted to the Fine Arts, as I had already done through
that of the Doria family, and shall to-morrow do through others, and
doubtless might do through hundreds of others--all hospitably open to
every stranger on the simple condition that he shall deport himself
civilly and refrain from doing any injury to the priceless treasures
which are thus made his own without the trouble even of taking care of
them. I know there are instances of like liberality elsewhere; but is it
anywhere else the rule? and is it in our country even the exception?
What American ever thought of spending half an immense fortune in the
collection of magnificent galleries of Pictures, Statues, &c., and then
quietly opening the whole to the public without expecting a word of
compliment or acknowledgment in return?--without being even personally
known to those whom he thus benefited? We have something to learn of
Rome in this respect. Some of the English nobility whom the Press has
shamed into following this munificent example have done it so grudgingly
as to deprive the concession of all practical value. By requiring all
who wish to visit their galleries to make a formal written application
for the privilege, and await a written answer, they virtually restrict
the favor to persons of leisure, position and education. But in Rome not
even a card nor a name is required; and you walk into a strange private
palace as if you belonged there, lay down your stick or umbrella, and
are shown from hall to hall by an intelligent, courteous attendant,
study at will some of the best productions of Claude, Raphael, Salvator
Rosa, Poussin, Murillo, &c., pay two shillings if you see fit, to the
attendant, and are thanked for it as if you were a patron; going thence
to another such collection, and so for weeks, if you have time. If
wealth were always thus employed, it were a pity that great fortunes are
not more numerous.
But I purpose to speak of the COLISEUM. I will assume that most
of my readers know that this was an immense amphitheater, constructed in
the days of Rome's imperial greatness, used for gladiatorial combats of
men with ferocious beasts and with each other, and calculated to afford
a view of the spectacle to about one hundred thousand persons at once.
The circuit of the building is over sixteen hundred feet; the arena in
its center is about three hundred and eighty by two hundred and eighty
feet. Most of the walls have fallen for perhaps half their height,
though some part of them still retain very nearly their original
altitude. In the darker ages, after this vast edifice had fallen into
ruin, its materials were carried away by thousands and tens of thousands
of tuns to build palaces and churches, and one side of the exterior wall
was actually for ages drawn upon as if it were a quarry. But in later
years the Papal Government has disbursed thousands upon thousands in the
uncovering and preservation of this stupendous ruin, and with the
amplest success. The fall of its roof and a great portion of its walls
had filled and buried it with rubbish to a depth of some twenty to forty
feet, all of which has been taken away, so that the floor of the
interior is now the veritable sand whereon the combatants fought and
bled and rendered up their lives, while the forty or fifty entrances for
emperors, senators and people, and even the underground passage for the
introduction of the wild beasts, with a part of their cages, are now
palpable. In some places, restorations have been made where they were
necessary to avert the danger of further dilapidation, but as sparingly
as possible; and, though others think differently, the Coliseum seems to
me as majestic and impressive in its utter desolation as it ever could
have been in its grandeur and glory.
We were fortunate in the hour of our visit. As we slowly made the
circuit of the edifice, a body of French cavalry were exercising their
horses along the eastern side of it, while at a little distance, in the
grove or garden at the south, the quick rattle of the drum told of the
evolutions of infantry. At length the horsemen rode slowly away to the
southward, and our attention was drawn to certain groups of Italians in
the interior, who were slowly marching and chanting. We entered, and
were witnesses of a strange, impressive ceremony. It is among the
traditions of Rome that a great number of the early Christians were
compelled by their heathen persecutors to fight and die here as
gladiators as a punishment for their contumacious, treasonable
resistance to the "lower law" then in the ascendant, which the high
priests and circuit judges of that day were wont in their sermons and
charges to demonstrate that every one was bound as a law-abiding citizen
to obey, no matter what might be his private, personal convictions with
regard to it. Since the Coliseum has been cleared of rubbish, fourteen
little oratories or places of prayer have been cheaply constructed
around its inner circumference, and here at certain seasons prayers are
offered for the eternal bliss of the martyred Christians of the
Coliseum. These prayers were being offered on this occasion. Some twenty
or thirty men (priests or monks I inferred), partly bare-headed, but as
many with their heads completely covered by hooded cloaks which left
only two small holes for the eyes, accompanied by a larger number of
women, marched slowly and sadly to one oratory, chanting a prayer by the
way, setting up their lighted tapers by its semblance of an altar,
kneeling and praying for some minutes, then rising and proceeding to the
next oratory, and so on until they had repeated the service before every
one. They all seemed to be of the poorer class, and I presume the
ceremony is often repeated or the participators would have been much
more numerous. The praying was fervent and I trust excellent,--as the
music decidedly was not; but the whole scene with the setting sun
shining redly through the shattered arches and upon the ruined wall,
with a few French soldiers standing heedlessly by, was strangely
picturesque and to me affecting. I came away before it concluded, to
avoid the damp night-air; but many chequered years and scenes of
stirring interest must intervene to efface from my memory that sunset
and those strange prayers in the Coliseum.
XXV.
ST. PETER'S.
ROME, Saturday, June 29, 1851.
St. Peter's is the Niagara of edifices, having the same relation to
other master-pieces of human effort that the great cataract bears to
other terrestrial effects of Divine power. In either case, the first
view disappoints, because the perfection of symmetry dims the
consciousness of magnitude, and the total absence of exaggeration in the
details forbids the conception of vastness in the aggregate. In viewing
London's St. Paul's, you have a realization of bulk which St. Peter's
does not give, yet St. Paul's is but a wart beside St. Peter's. I do not
know that the resemblance has been noticed by others, but the
semi-circle of gigantic yet admirably proportioned pillars which
encloses the grand square in front of St. Peter's reminds me vividly of
the general conformation of our great water-fall, while the column or
obelisk in the center of the square (which column is a mistake, in my
humble judgment, and should be removed) has its parallel in the
unsightly tower overlooking the main cataract from the extreme point of
Goat Island. Eternal endurance and repose may be fitly typified by the
oceans and snow-crested mountains, but power and energy find their best
expressions in the cataract and the dome. Time and Genius may produce
other structures as admirable in their own way and regarded in
connection with their uses; but, viewed as a temple, St. Peter's will
ever stand unmatched and unapproachable.
I chose the early morning for my first visit. The sky was cloudless, as
it mainly is here save in winter, but the day was not yet warm, for the
summer nights are cooler here than in New-York, and the current English
talk of the excessive heat which prevails in Rome at this season is
calculated to deceive Americans. No one fails to realize from the first
the great beauty and admirable accessories of this edifice, with the
far-stretching but quite other than lofty pile of the Vatican on its
right and its own magnificent colonnade in front, but you do not feel
that it is lofty, nor spacious, nor anything but perfect. You ascend the
steps, and thus gain some idea of the immense proportions prevailing
throughout; for the church seems scarcely at all elevated above the
square, and yet many are the steps leading up to the doors. Crossing a
grand porch with an arched roof of glorious mosaic, you find yourself in
the body of the edifice, which now seems large and lofty indeed, but by
no means unparalleled. But you walk on and on, between opposing pillars
the grandest the world ever saw, the space at either side between any
two pillars constituting a separate chapel with its gorgeous altar, its
grand pictures in mosaic, its sculptured saints and angels, each of
these chapels having a larger area than any church I ever entered in
America; and by the time you have walked slowly and observingly to the
front of the main altar you realize profoundly that Earth has nothing
else to match with St. Peter's. No matter though another church were
twice as large, and erected at a cost of twice the Thirty Millions of
dollars and fifty years expended upon this, St. Peter's would still
stand unrivaled. For every detail is so marvellously symmetrical that no
one is dwarfed, no one challenges special attention. Of one hundred
distinct parts, any one by itself would command your profoundest
admiration, but everything around and beyond it is no less excellent,
and you soon cease to wonder and remain to appreciate and enjoy.
I devoted most of the day to St. Peter's, seeing it under many different
aspects, but no other view of the interior is equal to that presented in
the stillness and comparative solitude of the early morning. The
presence of multitudes does not cloud your consciousness of its
immensity, for ten thousand persons occupy no considerable portion of
its area and might very easily be present yet wholly invisible to one
who stood just inside the entrance and looked searchingly through the
body of the edifice to find them; but there are usually very few seats,
and those for the privileged, so that hundreds are constantly moving
from place to place through the day, which distracts attention and mars
the feeling of repose and delighted awe which the naked structure is
calculated to inspire. Go very early some bright summer morning, if you
would see St. Peter's in its calm and stately grandeur.
I ascended to the roof, and thence to the summit of the dome, but, apart
from a profounder consciousness of the vastness and admirable
proportions of the edifice, this is of little worth. True, the entire
city and its suburbs lie clearly and fully beneath and around you; but
so they do from the tower of the Capitol. Views from commanding heights
are obtained in almost every city. The ascent, however, as far as the
roof, is easier than any other I ever found within a building. Instead
of stairs, here is a circular road, more like the ascent of a mountain
than a Church. One single view is obtained, however, which richly
compensates for the fatigue of the ascent. It is that from the interior
of the dome down into the body of the Church below. The Alps may present
grander, but I never expect to have another like this.