THE INEXHAUSTIBLENESS OF ROME.
Rome is easily the most interesting city in the world. The subject is
simply inexhaustible. Ampere said that by diligence one could obtain
a superficial knowledge of it in ten years. Just what terms should
be used to characterize the seventy pages or so that I have written,
from the basis of the desultory reading and observation of only a few
months, I must leave to the decision of the reader. "Presumptuous
sciolism," perhaps. And, yet, though I have filled these seventy
pages with what I regarded as pertinent descriptions, salient facts
and suggestive quotations from the best authorities, all subjected to
as much compression as was consistent with a fair statement of the
particular points which I wished to make, I have restricted myself
almost exclusively to one phase of the subject, viz., Ecclesiastical
Rome, and have had almost nothing to say of Classical Rome and Artistic
Rome.
Even when confining myself to this one line, I have found no
opportunity to give you any description of the Appian Way, over the
paving-stones of which the Apostle Paul entered Rome in 56 A. D. (Acts
xxviii. 14-16); or of the Pyramid of Cestius, still standing beside
the road, just outside the gate which now bears the apostle's name--a
sepulchral monument upon which his eyes must have rested for a moment
as he passed out to his own execution--"Among the works of man, that
pyramid is the only surviving witness of the martyrdom of St. Paul";
or of the Catacombs, those vast labyrinths of subterranean galleries,
the aggregate length of which is estimated at nearly six hundred miles,
so that if placed end to end they would extend the whole length of
Italy--where the bodies of thousands of the early Christians were laid
in full hope of the resurrection; or of the bronze statue of St. Peter
in the great cathedral, the extended foot of which has been largely
worn away by the kisses of Roman Catholic devotees--the figure which,
on the occasion of Pope Leo's Jubilee, our party saw dressed up in a
mitre and pontifical robes; or of Houdon's marvellous statue of St.
Bruno in the Church of St. Maria degli Angeli, of which Clement XIV.,
the Pope who is supposed to have died of poison administered by the
Jesuits, in 1774, used to say, "He would speak, if the rule of his
order did not forbid it"; or of the statue of that other Bruno who now
stands in the Campo de' Fiori, on the spot where he was burnt as a
heretic in 1600 for his advocacy of the Copernican system.
I have been able to say nothing of the remains of Classical Rome, such
as the palaces of the Cæsars, the Arch of Titus--with its bas-reliefs
of the golden candle-stick and other treasures from the Temple at
Jerusalem, which were borne among the spoils of that Emperor's
triumph--the monuments of the Forum, the Column of Trajan, the tomb of
Hadrian, the much lauded equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the
Capitoline Hill, the immensely impressive Pantheon, and the majestic
statue of Pompey, at the foot of which Julius Cæsar was assassinated.
I have not been able even to mention such masterpieces of sculpture
as the Dancing Faun, the Dying Gaul--"butchered to make a Roman
holiday"--the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, the Young Augustus,
and scores of others, or such paintings as Guido's "Aurora,"
Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," and the scarcely less wonderful
creations of Botticelli, Titian and Domenichino.
I have had to pass unnoticed such tempting details as the Tarpeian
Rock, the site of the bridge which Horatius kept in the brave days of
old, the walls of the Paedagogium under the Palatine cliff, where a
school boy had drawn, for the encouragement of his successors, a sketch
of an ass turning a corn-mill, with the superscription in Latin, "Work,
little donkey, as I have worked, and it will profit thee"; the famous
Keyhole View of St. Peter's from the Aventine, and many others, for
which I must refer you to other books.
[Sidenote: The Best Books about Rome.]
Besides the books on Rome, such as Hare's _Walks_, and Hawthorne's
_Marble Faun_, to which I have tried to introduce my readers by
appetizing quotations from time to time in former letters, I must
mention also Dennie's _Pagan Rome_, Story's _Roba di Roma_, Mrs. Ward's
_Eleanor_ (which contains the best descriptions of the wonderful
scenery around Lake Nemi), and the standard works of Professor
Lanciani. These are much better for home reading, and even for reading
on the spot, than the guide books. In a sumptuously bound and profusely
illustrated copy of Lanciani's _New Tales of Old Rome_, which was
presented to me by a friend last Christmas, I find a criticism of the
well-known passage in which Lord Mahon refers to the fact that the
last of the Stuarts, the Old Pretender, his wife, and his two sons,
are buried in St. Peter's, and where, Lord Mahon says, "a stately
monument from the chisel of Canova has since risen to the memory of
James III., Charles III., and Henry IX., kings of England, names which
an Englishman can scarcely read without a smile or a sigh." Lanciani
says, "Lord Mahon could have saved both his smiles and his sighs if
he had simply read with care the epitaph engraved on the monument,
which says: 'To James III., son of James II., King of Great Britain,
to Charles Edward, and Henry, Dean of the Sacred College, Sons of
James III., the last of the Royal House of Stuart.'" This is the only
statement, so far as I have observed, in Professor Lanciani's writings
which is not scrupulously fair. That the criticism is not perfectly
fair is clear from the very inscription which he cites, where the Old
Pretender is twice called James III.; from the inscription on the
tomb of his wife, close at hand, where she is called "Queen of Great
Britain, France and Ireland"; from the fact that the canopy under which
the body of the Old Pretender lay in state at Rome for five days,
crowned, sceptred, and in royal robes, was inscribed, "Jacobus, Magnæ
Britanniæ Rex, Anno MDCCLXVI."; and from the fact, stated by Lanciani
himself in the same volume, that when Charles Edward, the Young
Pretender, died, Cardinal York, his brother, proclaimed himself the
legitimate sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland, under the name of
Henry IX. Lord Mahon was substantially correct.
St. Peter's is a peculiarly appropriate place of sepulture for the
line of tyrannical kings who tried so hard to fasten the yoke of
Romanism upon Great Britain. They went to their own place. England
and Scotland will do well to remember that the same forces which the
Stuarts represented, and which endangered their liberties then, still
constitute the gravest menace to the true freedom of their island
empire.
One other book I must mention before finishing what I have to say
about the literature of this vast subject: the volume entitled _Ave
Roma Immortalis_, by Francis Marion Crawford, son of the sculptor to
whom we are indebted for the superb equestrian statue of Washington
at Richmond, with its circle of illustrious Virginians in bronze. Let
no one be deterred by the Latin title. The book itself is written
in the most delightful English. It is not to be commended without
qualification, for this prolific author who bears the name of the
immortal Huguenot partisan of South Carolina, and ought by every
consideration, so far as we know, to be a sturdy Protestant, has
suffered somewhat in his religious faith by his Italian birth and
rearing. But his book is full of good things culled from wide and
discriminating reading, the feature that is really of most value in a
book of travel.
But I must not forget that, while there is no limit to such a subject
as Rome, there is a limit to the patience of my readers. So we will
now take leave of Rome abruptly, and pass at once to Naples and its
environs, where we spent the concluding days of our sojourn in Italy.