forward to justify a prolonged residence in Rome. Art, health, and
official duty, are among the valid reasons which bring our countrymen
abroad. Two of these admit of no argument. The sick have a right, other
things permitting, to go where they can be bettered; a duty perhaps, to
go where the sum of their waning years and wasting activities admits of
multiplication. Those who live abroad as ministers and consuls have a
twofold opportunity of benefiting their country. If honest and able,
they may benefit her by their presence in foreign lands; if unworthy and
incompetent, by their absence from home. But our artists are those whose
expatriation gives us most to think about. They take leave of us either
in the first bloom or in the full maturity of their powers. The ease of
living in Southern Europe, the abundance of models and of works of art,
the picturesque charms of nature and of scenery, detain them forever
from us, and, save for an abstract sentiment, which itself weakens with
every year, the sacred tie of country is severed. Its sensibilities play
no part in these lives devoted to painting and modelling.
Now, an eminent gift for art is an exceptional circumstance. He who has
it weds his profession, leaves father and mother, and goes where his
slowly-unfolding destiny seems to call him. Against such a course we
have no word to say. It presents itself as a necessary conclusion to
earnest and noble men, who love not their native country less, but their
votive country more. Of the first and its customs they would still
say,--
"I cannot but remember such things were
That were most precious to me."
Yet of this career, so often coveted by those to whom its attainment
does not open, I cannot speak in terms of supreme recognition. The
office of art is always as precious as its true ministers are rare. But
the relative importance of sculptural and pictorial art is not to-day
what it was in days of less thought, of smaller culture. Every one who
likes the Bible to-day, likes it best without illustrations. Were Christ
here to speak anew, he would speak without parables. In ruder times,
heavenly fancies could only be illustrated on the one hand, received on
the other, through the mediation of a personal embodiment. Only through
human sympathy was the assent to divine truth obtained. The necessity
which added a feminine personality to the worship of Christ, and
completed the divided Godhead by making it female as well as male, was a
philosophical one, but not recognized as such. The device of the Virgin
was its practical result, counterbalancing the partiality of the
one-sided personal _culte_ of the Savior. Modern religious thought gets
far beyond this, makes in spiritual things no distinction of male and
female, and does not apply sex to the Divine, save in the most vague and
poetic sense. The inner convictions of heart and conscience may now be
spoken in plain prose, or sung in ringing verse. The _vates_, prophet
or reformer, may proclaim his system and publish his belief; and his
audience will best apprehend it in its simplest and most direct form.
The wide spaces of the new continent allow room for the most precious
practical experimentation; and speculative and theoretical liberty keep
pace with liberty of action. The only absolute restraint, the best one,
is a moral one. "Thou shalt not" applies only to what is intrinsically
inhuman and profane. And now, there is no need to puzzle simple souls
with a marble gospel. Faith needs not to digest whole side-walls of
saints and madonnas, who once stood for something, no one now knows
what. The Italian school was to art what the Greek school was to
literature--an original creation and beginning. But life has surpassed
Plato and Aristotle. We are forced to piece their short experiences, and
to say to both, "You are matchless, but insufficient." And so, though
Raphael's art remains immortal and unsurpassed, we are forced to say of
his thought, "It is too small." No one can settle, govern, or moralize a
country by it. It will not even suffice to reform Italy. The golden
transfigurations hang quiet on the walls, and let pope and cardinal do
their worst. We want a world peopled with faithful and intelligent men
and women. The Prometheus of the present day is needed rather to animate
statues than to make them.
PIAZZA NAVONA--THE TOMBOLA.
When, O, when does the bee make his honey? Not while he is sipping from
flower to flower, levying his dainty tribute as lightly as
love--enriching the world with what the flower does not miss, and
cannot.
This question suggests itself in the course of these busy days in Rome,
where pleasures are offered oftener than sensibilities can ripen, and
the edge of appetite is blunted with sweets, instead of rusting with
disuse. In these scarce three weeks how much have we seen, how little
recorded and described! So sweet has been the fable, that the intended
moral has passed like an act in a dream--a thing of illusion and
intention, not of fact. Impotent am I, indeed, to describe the riches of
this Roman world,--its treasures, its pleasures, its flatteries, its
lessons. Of so much that one receives, one can give again but the
smallest shred,--a leaf of each flower, a scrap of each garment, a
proverb for a sermon, a stave for a song. So be it; so, perhaps, is it
best.
Last Sunday I attended a Tombola at Piazza Navona--not a state lottery,
but a private enterprise brought to issue in the most public manner. I
know the Piazza of old. Sixteen years since I made many a pilgrimage
thither, in search of Roman trash. I was not then past the poor
amusement of spending money for the sake of spending it. The foolish
things I brought home moved the laughter of my little Roman public. I
appeared in public with some forlorn brooch or dilapidated earring; the
giddy laughed outright, and the polite gazed quietly. My rooms were the
refuge of all broken-down vases and halting candelabra. I lived on the
third floor of a modest lodging, and all the wrecks of art that neither
first, second, nor fourth would buy, found their way into my parlor, and
staid there at my expense. I recall some of these adornments to-day. Two
heroes, in painted wood, stood in my dark little entry. A gouty Cupid in
bas-relief encumbered my mantel-piece. Two forlorn figures in black and
white glass recalled the auction whose unlucky prize they had been. And
Horace Wallace, coming to talk of art and poetry, on my red sofa,
sometimes saluted me with a paroxysm of merriment, provoked by the sight
of my last purchase. Those days are not now. Of their accumulations I
retain but a fragment or two. Of their delights remain a tender memory,
a childish wonder at my own childishness. To-day, in heathen Rome, I can
find better amusements than those shards and rags were ever able to
represent.
Going now to Piazza Navona with a sober and reasonable companion, I
scarcely recognize it. At the Braschi Palace, which borders it, we
pause, and enter to observe the square hall and the fine staircase of
polished marble. This palace is now offered in a lottery, at five francs
the ticket; and all orders in Rome, no doubt, participate in the venture
it presents. The immense piazza is so filled and thronged with people
that its distinctive features are quite lost. Its numerous balconies are
crowded with that doubtful community comprehended in the title of the
"better class." From many of its windows hang the red cotton draperies,
edged with gilt lace, which supply so much of the color in Roman
_festas_. Soldiers are everywhere mingled with the crowd, so skilfully
as to present no contrast with them, but so effectually that any popular
disorder would be instantly suppressed. The dragoons, mounted and
bearing sabres, are seen here and there in the streets leading to the
piazza. These constitute the police of Rome; and where with us a civil
man with a badge interposes himself and says, "No entrance here, sir,"
in Rome an arbitrary, ignorant beast, mounted upon a lesser brute, waves
his sabre at you, shrieks unintelligible threats and orders, and has the
pleasure of bringing your common sense to a fault, and of making all
understanding of what is or is not to be done impossible. Their greatest
glory, however, culminates on public _festas_, when there are foreigners
as well as Romans to be intimidated. At the Tombola they are only an _en
cas_.
Well, the office of the Tombola is solemnized upon a raised stage,
whereon stand divers officials, two seedy trumpeters, and a small boy in
fancy costume, whose duty soon becomes apparent. Before him rests a
rotatory machine, composed of two disks of glass, bound together by a
band of brass: this urn of fate revolves upon a pivot, and is provided
with an opening, through which the papers bearing the numbers are put
in, to be drawn out, one by one, after certain revolutions of the
machine. Not quite so fast, however, with your drawing. The numbers are
not all in yet. A grave man, in a black coat, holds up each number to
the public view, calls it in his loudest tones, and then hands it to
another, who folds and slips it into the receptacle. When all of the
numbers have been verified and deposited, the opening is closed up, the
trumpeters sound a bar or two, the wheel revolves, the fancy boy paws
the air with his right hand, puts the hand into the opening, and draws
forth a number, which the second black coat presents to the first, who
unfolds it, and announces it to the multitude. At the same moment, a
huge card, some two feet square in dimensions, is placed in a frame, and
upon this we read the number just drawn out. The number is also shown
upon several large wooden frames in other parts of the square. Upon
these it remains, so that the whole count of the drawing may be apparent
to the eager public. This course of action is repeated until a stir in
one part of the piazza announces a candidate for one of the smaller
prizes. A white flag, repeated at all the counting frames, arrests the
public attention. The candidate brings forward his ticket and is
examined. Finally, a _quaterna_ is announced, formed by the agreement of
four numbers on a ticket with four in the order of the drawing. The
crowd applaud, the trumpets sound again, and the drawing proceeds.
Unhappily, at one moment the persons on duty forget to close the valve
through which the numbers are taken out. The omission is not perceived
until several rotations have shaken out many of the precious papers. A
roar of indignation is heard from the populace; the wheel is arrested,
the numbers eagerly sought, counted, and replaced, under the jealous
scrutiny of the public eye. Meanwhile, one of two copious brass bands,
provided with five ophicleides each, and cornets, etc., to match,
discoursed tarantellas and polkas. And we see the _quinquina_ (formed by
five numbers) drawn, and then the first Tombola, and the second. And lo!
there are four tombolas: but we await them not. But in all this crowd,
busy with emotion and reeking with tobacco and Roman filth in all its
varieties, who shall interest us like the _limonaro_ with his basket of
fruit, his bottles of water, his lemon squeezer, and his eager thrifty
countenance? A father of family, surely, he loves no plays as thou dost,
Anthony. Pale, in shirt sleeves, he keeps the sharpest lookout for a
customer, and in voice whose measure is not to be given, hammers out his
endless sentence, "_Chi vuol bere? Ecco, il limonaro._" To the most
doubtful order he responds, carrying his glasses into the thickest of
the throng, and thundering, "_Chi ha comandato questo limone?_" For half
a _bajoco_ he gives a quarter of a lemon, wrung out in a glass of tepid
water, which his customers absorb with relish. Sometimes he varies this
procedure by the sale of an _orzata_, produced by pouring a few drops of
a milky fluid into a glass of water. On our way from the piazza we
encounter other _limonari_,--dark, sleepy, Italian, not trenchant nor
incisive in their offers. But our man, a blond, yet remains a picture to
us, with his business zeal and economy of time. A thread of good blood
he possibly has. We adopt and pity him as a misplaced Yankee.
SUNDAYS IN ROME.
Our first Sunday in Rome was Easter, in St. Peter's, of which we have
elsewhere given a sufficient description. Our second was divided between
the Tombola just described, in the afternoon, and the quiet of the
American Chapel in the morning. We found this an upper chamber, quietly
and appropriately furnished, with a pleasant and well-dressed attendance
of friends and fellow country-people. The prayers of the Episcopal
service were simply read, with no extra formality or aping of more
traditional forms. It was pleasant to find ourselves called upon once
more to pray for the President of the United States, although in our own
country he is considered as past praying for. Still, we remembered the
old adage, "while there is life there is hope," and were able, with a
good conscience, to beseech that he might be plenteously endowed with
heavenly grace, although the reception of such a gift might seriously
compromise him with his own party. The sermon, like others we have heard
of late, shows a certain progress and liberalization even in the holding
of the absolute tenets which constitute what has been hitherto held as
orthodoxy. In our youth, the Episcopal church, like the orthodox
dissenters, preached atonement, atonement, atonement, wrath of God,
birth in sin,--position of sentimental reprobation towards the one fact,
of unavailing repentance concerning the other. The doctrine of atonement
in those days was as literal in the Protestant church as in the
Catholic, while the possibility of profiting by it was hedged about and
encumbered by frightful perils and intangible difficulties. But to-day,
while these doctrines are not repudiated by the denominations which then
held them, they are comparatively set out of sight. The charity and
diligence of Paul are preached, and even the sublime theistic simplicity
of Jesus is not altogether contraband; though he, alas! is as little
understood in doctrine as followed in example. For he has hitherto been
like a beautiful figure set to point out a certain way, and people at
large have been so entranced with worshipping the figure, that they have
neglected to follow the direction it indicates.
Well, our American sermon was dry, but sensible and conscientious. It
did not congratulate those who had accepted the mysterious atonement,
nor threaten those who had neglected to do so. But it exhorted all men
towards a reasonable, religious, and diligent life, and thus afforded
the commonplace man a basis for effort, and a possible gradual
amelioration of his moral condition. One little old-fashioned phrase,
however, the preacher let slip. He cast a slight slur upon the moral, as
distinguished from the religious man. Now, modern ethics do not
recognize this distinction. For it, true morals are religion. He who
exemplifies the standard does it more honor than he who praises, and
pursues it not. And he who prays and plunders is less a saint than he
who does neither. We passed this, however, and went away in peace.
Our third Sunday morning was passed in _S. Andrea delta Valle_, a large
and sumptuous church, where we had been promised a fine _messa-cantata_,
i.e., a mass performed principally in music. Mustafa, of the pope's
choir, was there, with some ten other vocalists, who put into their
_Kyrie_, _Miserere_, and so on, as much operatic emphasis and cadence as
the bars could hold. The organ was harsh, loud, and overpowering, the
music utterly uninteresting. Mustafa's renowned voice, which has
suffered by time and use, has something nasal and _criard_ in it, with
all its power. He still takes and holds A and B with firmness and
persistence, but his middle notes are unequal and husky. Although the
sopranos of to-day are merely falsetto tenors, and their unsexed voices
a fiction, they yet acquire in process of time a tone of old-woman
quality, which contrasts strangely with their usually robust appearance.
On this occasion we did not conjecture whose might be the music to which
we listened. It had a mongrel paternity, and hailed from no noble race
of compositions. Having, however, our comfortable chairs, and being out
of the murderous direct reverberation of the organ, we sat and saw as
outsiders the flux and reflux of life which passed through the church.
It was obviously, this morning, a place of fashionable resort; and many
were the good dresses and comfortable family groups that first appeared,
and then were absorbed among its crowded chairs and their occupants. The
well-dressed people were mostly, I thought, of _medio ceto_,--middling
class,--which in Rome is a term of strict reprobation, and answers to
what we used to call Bowery in New York. Their devotion had mostly a
business-like aspect. They hired their chair, brought it, sat down, made
their crosses and courtesies, accompanied the priest with their books,
went down on their knees at the elevation of the host, had benediction,
and went. Mass was taking place at various side altars, and people were
coming and going, as their devotions were past or future. Dirty and
shabby figures mingled with the others; a group of little children from
the street, holding each other by the hand; a crippled old woman,
hobbling on two crutches, who, wonderfully, did not beg, of us at least;
an elderly dwarf, of composed aspect, some thirty-eight inches high, who
took a chair, but could not get into it, so squatted down beside it, and
stared at us. A loud bell was rung, and one in yellow satin bore an
object under yellow satin across the church. This was the sacrament,
going to one of the altars for the beginning of the mass. Having mused
sufficiently on the music and on the crowd, we desired to hear a Puritan
sermon, and, there being none to be had, we went away.
Away to the Farnesina Palace, lovely with Raphael's frescos of Galatea
and the story of Psyche, with Michael Angelo's grim charcoal head
looming in the distance. The Psyche series has suffered much by
restorations; and though the gracious outline and designs remain, the
coloring, one thinks, is far other than that of the master. The Galatea
has faded less, and has been less restored. The lovely Sodoma fresco up
stairs--the family of Darius--was undergoing repairs, and could not be
seen. The palace belongs to the ex-king of Naples. It was formerly
visible at all times, but may now be seen only on Sunday. He himself now
lives in Rome, and perhaps chooses to tread its banquet halls deserted,
which possibly accounts for the present restriction. In the afternoon we
were bidden to see the embalmed remains of an ancient pontiff,--Pius
V.,--who should be happy to make himself useful to Catholic institutions
at a period so remote from the intentions of Nature. The old body is
shown in a glass case, upon an altar of Santa Maria Maggiore. He lies on
his side, his darkened face adorned by a new white beard composed of
lamb's wool. His hands are concealed by muslin gloves; his garments are
white, and he wears a brilliant mitre. And the devout crowd the church
to touch and kiss the glass case in which he resides. There is,
moreover, a procession of the crucifix, and vespers are sung in pleasing
style by a tolerable choir; and many _pauls_ and _bajocs_ are dropped
hither and thither in pious receptacles by the pious in heart. So, I
repeat it, the mummied pope, sainted also, is of use.
CATACOMBS.
Of all that befell us in the catacombs we may not tell. We betook
ourselves to the neighborhood of St. Calixtus one afternoon. A noted
ecclesiastic of the Romish church soon joined our party, with various of
our countrymen and countrywomen. He wore a white woollen gown and a
black hat. Before descending, he ranged us in a circle, and harangued us
much as follows:--
"You will ask me the meaning of the word 'catacomb,' and I shall tell
you that it is derived from two Greek words--_cata_, hidden, and
_cumba_, tomb. You have doubtless heard that the whole city of Rome is
undermined with catacombs; but this is not true. The American
Encyclopaedia says this. I have read the article. But intramural burials
were not allowed in Rome; therefore the catacombs commence outside the
walls. They are, moreover, limited to an irregular extent of some three
miles. Why is this? It is because they were possible only in the tufa
formation. Why only in the tufa? Because it cuts easily and crumbles
easily, hardening afterwards. And as the burials of the Christians were
necessarily concealed, it was important for them to deal with a material
easily worked and easily disposed of. The solid contents of the
catacombs of Rome could be included within a square mile; their series,
if arranged at full length, would not measure less than five hundred
miles. In some places there are no less than seven strata of tombs, one
below the other." All of this, with more repetitions than I can possibly
signify, was delivered under the cogent stimulus of a roasting afternoon
sun of the full Roman power. Being quite calcined as to the head and
shoulders, we somewhat thankfully undertook the descent. The extreme
contrast, however, between the outer heat and the inner chill and damp,
proved an unwelcome alternative to most of us. Had we been allowed a
somewhat brisk motion, we should have dreaded less its effects. But
Father ---- fought his ground inch by inch, and continued to carry on a
stringent controversy with imaginary antagonists. We will not endeavor
to transcribe the catechism, at once tedious and amusing, with which he
held captive a dozen of Yankees prepared to sell their lives dearly, but
uncertain how to deal with his mode of warfare. He kept us long in the
crypt of the pontiffs, where are found two fragments of marble tablets
bearing names in mingled Latin and Greek character. One inscription
records, "_Anteros episcopus_." The other is of another
name--"_episcopus et martyr_." The father now led us into a narrow
crypt, where his stout form wedged us all as closely as possible
together. He showed us on the walls two time-worn frescos, one of
which--Jonah and the whale--represented the resurrection, while the
other depicted that farewell banquet at Emmaus in which Peter received
the thrice-repeated charge, "Feed my sheep." To this symbolical
expression the father added one later and more puzzling. The fish which
appeared in one of the dishes represented, he told us, the anagram of
Christ in the Greek language--_icthus_, the fish, _Jesus Christos
theos_--I forget the rest. The fish was the only hint of the presence of
Christ on this occasion, and its significance could be apprehended only
with this explanation. These pictures, he insisted, sufficiently showed
us that the early Christians had religious images--a point of great
authority and significance in the Catholic church, for us how easily
disposed of! The pictures and the symbolism of the primitive church are
both alike features of its time. In periods when culture is rare and
limited, the picture and the parable have their indispensable office.
The one preserves and presents to the eye much that would otherwise be
overlooked and forgotten; the other presents to the mind that which
could not otherwise be apprehended. The painted Christs, Madonnas, and
so on, were in their time a gospel to the common people. Even in
Raphael's period, even in the Italy of to-day, how few of the populace
at large are able to save their souls by reading the New Testament! The
paintings undoubtedly answered a useful purpose, as all men must
acknowledge; but the Catholic system, carried out in its completeness,
would give a melancholy perpetuity to the class of people who cannot
read otherwise than in pictures. Even where it teaches to read, it
withholds the power of interpretation. Protestantism means direct and
general instruction. It gives to the symbolism of the Bible its plainest
and most practical interpretation, without building upon it a labyrinth
of types whose threading asks the study of a lifetime.