“What come ye for to see?” It is a wider question than was intended
on its first ironical utterance, and many answers are always ready. A
medical ignoramus of ability was asked if there was any danger. His
answer was, “That depends on the event.” So it is in museum life; the
majority know nothing of what they go to see, and what they do see
depends on the event. But the specialists know exactly what go they for
to see; and I am one of these. Relying on presumptive evidence, if a “Sir
Leighton,” as the French would say, goes to Rome, it may be for to make
a study of painted eyes, in some ten or a dozen galleries, to determine
whether black, brown, or blue predominates. If a “Sir Boehm” goes to
Rome, it may be for to inspect the lost head and legs of a Farnesian
Hercules. If a “Sir Barry” goes to Rome, it is for to examine which of
the stones in the Palazzo di Venezia were stolen by a pope from the
Coliseum, and which were honestly got. However, we have no “Sir Barry”
nowadays; premiers do not build houses, so that they do not baronetize
architecture in lieu of fees. They take physic; they stand in need of
bulletins when, on the eve of an unpleasant debate, a strong voice is
weak. Being ourselves of physic and a little deaf, a clergyman once
bawled into our best ear, in a voice so thunderous yet so piercing that
had it been a prayer it might almost have been heard in heaven, “Doctor!
can you give me something to strengthen my voice?”
Premiers are perfect artists in the baronetizing line; nay, they can
even chisel a peer in invisible gold. A president of a royal academy, of
a royal society, of a royal college of surgeons or physicians, fills a
genteel trade; rank fits him well.
An oculist, if a premier has bad eyes and is going blind, may, like
other professionals, be ennobled; but an aurist and a dentist, there is
something in these—it is hard to say what—that does not ennoble well,
which shows how greater are eyes than ears or teeth.
If a premier is not a teetotaler, he makes lords out of brewers, and yet
not out of distillers, whose images are quite as golden. He does not mind
it being thought that he takes a glass of pale ale, but whisky—that would
not do.
All these industries, like myself, go to Rome chiefly on their own
business. But what a wonderful crowd there is flocking there to see all
that is left—the fragments of Cæsar’s lost compositions.
We business men, when we have found all we want, go the round; it is like
walking through the street, looking at everybody, sometimes stopping to
speak.
We meet a picture, a statue, a vase, an arch, a column, a palace, as
we might do a friend; but those who undertake to see all might as well
undertake to read the two or three billion letters that pass through the
post-office in a year.
I set myself to visit the grave of poor Keats. He was sick of many
griefs, but the greatest of these was that he could not make the vulgar
howl their applause. He had all the enjoyment of a Divine gift; it could
only be the bodily sickness affecting the mind when his heart was bitter,
and he exclaimed his name was writ in water. Yet they have graved those
feeble words on his tombstone!
Were I dying for praise, I should show my insight into man, and say, “My
name is writ in brandy and water.” How that would be swallowed down!
I visited Keats’s grave from very mixed motives; life is sad enough
without being sentimental. To stand before the grave is a little
dangerous; if one walked backwards for a short distance in an absent
fit, he would precipitate himself over a sunk wall into the adjoining
cemetery, and lie there for good, like Shelley.
As in duty bound, I visited the tomb of Shelley also.
I was on my way to the church of St. Paolo _fuori_, a sight not to be
neglected by any species of pilgrim whatever.
On one’s way one can leave a card on the Scipios; their tomb is handy,
but they are always out, those wonderful people called the “authorities”
having removed the sarcophagi and busts. But you will be asked in; and
you can go down the windings by torchlight, and say you did it. Then, _en
route_, one can pay one’s respects to the early Christians who owned some
uncomfortable catacombs hereabout, in which they resided.
For an account of these and of how they shelved their dead, _vide_ some
more gushing writer.
St. Paolo is too magnificent for a church. It has a fine architectural
pedigree up to Constantine, having endured all the horrors for
generations of decay and fire, to be only rebuilt at greater cost than
before.
I did not go on purpose to behold the church, but to almost adore the
ancient cloisters at the back. The delicately twisted columns of the
arches are so winning, they actually awake one’s affections; and if
thinking of a thing ever after is love, they fill you with this fondest
of recollections.
A good many of us rise in life. Wolsey, he rose; the Bonapartes rose;
Coke rose (upon Littleton); the Gladstones rose; Lazarus rose; but no
man, priest, soldier, lawyer, M.P., or resurrect, ever rose in death,
as did St. Peter. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; writers as eminently
inspired as Isaiah; Paul, the most gifted of apostles, whose ideas on
charity lifted Christianity miles over the heads of all other religious
or moral founders, had no such rise in death as Peter; but it was the
keys that did it.
Peter has a palace, and a church, and a museum, such as monarchs envy in
vain. Let us hope, pray, and entreat that it may never be demolished,
like the palace of the Cæsars; that no republican Guiscard may arise; but
that the President of the Future may take up his residence there, should
the popes vacate it.
My friend, Theodore Watts, was at Rome with me a part of the time. I
forget what he thought of it all; it is so long ago. I know we visited
the poets’ tombs together, and St. Paolo _fuori_.
Pio Nino must have had a temper, because he studied the inconvenience
of strangers by making them take tickets of admission in front of the
Vatican, while he vaticinated that the back entrance not being handy, but
involving a long walk, would excite irritation, so he admitted visitors
only at his back door. The elliptical columns forming the portico in the
Piazza S. Pietro, look like out-bent arms for receiving and hugging the
flock.
I was with Watts, one day in December, on this little round. We stood
with our backs against a wall, for shelter against a bitter wind, the
sun shining through snow, and the warmth, so long as we remained there,
delicious.
We went the usual round of the loggie, Raphaelizing, and of the indoor
statuary squares and streets; and got into the Sixtine, on the roof of
which Michael Angelo re-created the world.