made me give up all my usual employments during this Roman winter of
1878-79. The chief event in my life disconnected with the Prince was my
being asked to open the session of the British and American
Archaeological Society. This I long refused, urging that many others
were more worthy and competent, but it was insisted upon, and, to my
great surprise, I found myself speaking to a crowded meeting words which
I had written down before, but which I never found any need of referring
to. Here they are (for I have preserved them nowhere else) from the
notes I made:--
* * * * *
“The Secretary of this Society conferred upon me a most unexpected
honour when he asked me to open this meeting. I could have wished that
he had selected some one more worthy of that honour, for not only am I
unaccustomed to public speaking, but I may truly say that I never made a
speech in my life. I will therefore hope that my many deficiencies--my
more than many deficiencies, may be either overlooked or pardoned.
“But, though the Secretary could have found many persons in Rome better
able to address you, with more power of doing justice to their subject
than myself, he could not have found one to whom Rome was dearer, about
whose heart all its sympathies were more tenderly and closely entwined.
Long and intimate family association, perhaps the very fact of having a
birthplace in the once beautiful Villa Strozzi, have added to that sense
which comes to so many, of looking upon Rome as a second home--a home as
familiar almost, quite as tenderly beloved, as the home in far-away
England. How truly Chateaubriand has said that those who have nothing
left in life should turn their footsteps to Rome: there the very stones
can waken into speech; there the very dust beneath our feet can kindle
into memories of a past ever fresh and ever sacred. To those who come
here first as strangers, the decay, the stagnation, the ruin of
everything may be oppressive; they may see only the bareness of the
stuccoed streets, they may grumble at the rough pavements, they may be
wearied with the petty discomforts and difficulties of daily and
practical life:--but no matter! If they only stay here long enough, the
love of Rome will insidiously creep upon them; they will feel it
difficult to tear themselves away from it; and, when they have left it,
it will ever come back to them--in silent hours, in visions of the
night--grand ruins lying in silent slumbrous solitude; desolate
vineyards flower-carpeted; beautiful villas, where the ancient ilex
avenues are peopled with marble statues, relics of a mythical past
which in Rome seems almost as real as the present; and above all, the
recollection of a mighty purple dome embossed upon a sky whose sunset
glory recalls the splendours of the New Jerusalem--first a sapphire,
then a chalcedony, then an emerald, then a chrysopraz, last an amethyst.
“In regard to how many Roman scenes do we echo such thoughts as Clough
has expressed in his beautiful lines to the Alban Mount:--
‘Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,
Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus’s arch,
Here where the large grassy spaces stretch from the Lateran portal,
Towering o’er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,
Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,
Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring.
Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o’ermaster,
Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still.’
“What Madame Swetchine says of life, that you find in it exactly what
you put into it, is also true of Rome, and those who come to it with
least mental preparation are those least fitted to enjoy it. That
preparation, however, is not so easy as it used to be. In the old days,
the happy old days of vetturíno travelling, there were so many quiet
hours, when the country was not too beautiful, and the towns not too
interesting, when Gibbon, and Merivale, and Milman were the pleasantest
of travelling companions, and when books of art and poetry served to
illustrate and illuminate the graver studies which were making Italy
not only a beautiful panorama, but a country filled with forms which
were daily growing into more familiar acquaintance. Perugia and Spoleto,
Terni and Civita Castellana, led fitly up then to the greater interests
of Rome, as courtiers to a king. But in the journeys of the present, the
hurried traveller has not these opportunities of preparation, and must
rest upon his home-knowledge, and such reading as he can find time for
in Rome itself. To such travellers--to those, I mean, who wish to take
away from Rome something more than a mere surface impression--I would
give one piece of advice gathered from long experience: Never see too
much; most of all, never see too much at once; never try to ‘do’ Rome.
Better far to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches
unseen, and to see well the rest, to see them not once, but again and
often again, to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love
them, till they become a part of your life and your life’s
recollections.
“Thus, too, in the galleries. What can be carried away by those who
wander over all the Vatican at once but a hopeless chaos of marble
limbs, at best a nightmare of Venuses and Mercurys and Jupiters and
Junos? But if the traveller would benefit by the Vatican, let him make
friends with a few of the statues, and pay them visits, and grow into
greater intimacy:--then will the purity of their outlines, the majestic
serenity of their godlike grace, have power over him, raising his spirit
to a perception of creations of beauty of which he had no idea before,
and enabling him to discern the traces of that noblest gift of God which
men call ‘genius’ in the humblest works of those who, while they have
found the true and right path which leads to the great end, are still
very far off.
“I would urge those who are sight-seeing at Rome to read twice about
that which they see, before they see it, to prepare themselves for the
sight, and after they have seen it, to fix the sight in their
recollection. I would also urge all archaeologists to believe that it is
not in one class of Roman interests alone that much is to be learnt;
that those who devote themselves exclusively to the relics of the kings
and the Republic, to the walls, or to the vexed questions concerning the
Porta Capena, and who see no interest in the reminiscences of the Middle
Ages, and the memorials of the saints and of the popes, take only half
the blessing of Rome, and the half which has the least of human sympathy
in it. They are blind of one eye, because they see with the other: they
are like the foolish Athenians, who have lately pulled down the noble
Venetian towers on the Acropolis because they were not Greek.
“Besides this, one should recollect that important relics of Pagan Rome
are to be found elsewhere--at Nismes and Treves beyond the Alps, and at
many places in Northern Italy; but the memorials of Christian Rome, and
of its early bishops and martyrs, are to be found only in Rome and its
neighbourhood.
[Illustration: AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
1879]
“Those who wish to fix the scenes and events of Roman history securely
in their minds will do best to take them in groups. Suppose, for
instance, that people wish to study the story of St. Laurence. Let them
first visit the beautiful little chapel in the Vatican, where the whole
story of the saint’s life is portrayed in the lovely frescoes of
Angelico da Fiesole. Let them stand on the green sward by the Navicella,
where he distributed the treasures of the church in front of the house
of St. Ciriaca. Let them walk through the crypto-porticus of the
Palatine, up which he was dragged to his trial. Let them lean against
the still existing bar of the basilica, where he knelt to receive his
sentence. Let them visit S. Lorenzo in Fonte, where he was imprisoned,
and baptized his fellow-prisoners in the fountain which gives the church
its name. Let them go hence to S. Lorenzo Pane e Perna, built upon the
scene of his terrific martyrdom, which is there portrayed in fresco. Let
them see his traditional chains, and the supposed gridiron of his
suffering at S. Lorenzo in Lucina; and, lastly, at the great basilica of
S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura let them admire the mighty church which for
1200 years has marked the site of that little chapel which Constantine
built near the lowly catacomb grave in which the martyr was laid by his
deacon Hippolytus.
“Let us turn to a very different character. Let us turn to Rienzi. How
vivid will his story seem to those who go first to the old tower of the
Crescenzi near the Bocca della Verità, which belonged to his ancestors,
and then to the street behind S. Tommaso where he was born--the son of a
publican and a washerwoman, for to such humble offices were the
Crescenzi then reduced. They will find Rienzi again at the little church
of S. Angelo in Pescheria, whither he summoned the citizens at midnight
to hold a meeting for the re-establishment of ‘the Good Estate,’ and in
which he kept the Vigil of the Holy Ghost--and at the Portico of
Octavia, on whose ancient walls he painted his famous picture
allegorical of the sufferings of the Romans under the oppression of the
great patrician families, thus flaunting defiance in the eyes of the
Savelli, who could look down upon the picture from the windows of their
palace above the Theatre of Marcellus. At S. Giorgio in Velabro the
pediment still remains under the old terra-cotta cornice where an
inscription proclaimed that the reign of the Good Estate was begun. We
must follow Rienzi thence, bareheaded, but in full armour, to the
Capitol, and to the Lateran, where he took his mystic bath in the great
vase of green basalt in which Constantine is falsely said to have been
baptized. We must think of his flight, after his short-lived glories
were over, by the light of the burning palace, down the steps of the
Capitol, and of his wife looking out of the window to witness his murder
at the foot of the great basaltic lioness, which looks scarcely older
now than on the night on which it was sprinkled with his blood. Lastly,
we may remember that his body was hung, a target for the stones of those
by whom he was so lately adored, in the little piazza of S. Marcello in
the Corso, and that, in strange contradiction, it was eventually burnt
by the Jews in the desolate mausoleum of Augustus, surrounded by Roman
emperors, in a fire of dried thistles, till not a fibre of it remained.
“Let us take one more character from a much later time. Let us take
Beatrice Cenci. In the depths of the Ghetto, ghastly and grim, still
stands the old palace of Francesco Cenci, whose colossal rooms and dark
passages were the scene of her long misery. Hard by is the little
church which one of that wretched family built in the hope of expiating
its crimes. As we walk through the wearisome Tor di Nona on our way to
S. Peter’s, we may think of the old tower which gave the street its
name, in which the beautiful young girl is said to have undergone for
forty hours the torture of the ‘vigilia,’ followed by the still more
terrific agony called ‘tortura capillorum.’ At Sta. Maria Maggiore we
may look upon the stern face of Clement VIII., the cruel judge who knew
no mercy, and who, in answer to all pleadings in their behalf, bade that
the whole Cenci family should be dragged by wild horses through the
streets of Rome. The ancient Santa Croce palace still stands, in which
the Marchesa Santa Croce was murdered by her two sons on the night in
which a last effort was being made for the pardon of Beatrice--an event
which sealed her fate. In the Corte Savelli we may think of her terrible
execution. Before the high altar of S. Pietro in Montorio she reposes
from her long agony. And finally, we must go to the Palazzo Barberini,
where, in the picture which Guido Reni is said to have painted in her
prison, we may gaze upon the pale composure of her transcendent
loveliness.
“It is by thus entwining one sight with another, till they become the
continuous links of a story, that they are best fixed in the mind. They
should also be read about, not merely in guide-books, but in the works
of those who, from long residence in Italy and the deep love which they
bear to it, have become impressed with the true Italian spirit. Amongst
such books none are more delightful than the many volumes of
Gregorovius, from his ‘History of the City of Rome’ to his enchanting
‘Lateinische Sommer,’ and his graphic little sketches of the
burial-places of the Popes. I have often been laughed at for constantly
recommending and quoting novels in speaking of Rome and its interests;
yet in few graver works are such glimpses of Rome, of Roman scenery,
Roman character, Roman manners to be obtained as in Hawthorne’s ‘Marble
Faun,’ which English publishers so foolishly call ‘Transformation;’ in
‘Mademoiselle Mori;’ in the ‘Improvisatore’ of Hans Christian Andersen;
in the ‘Daniella’ of George Sand; and, will my audience be unutterably
shocked if I add, in the Pagan-spirited ‘Ariadne’ of Ouida. The writers
of these books have really known Rome and loved it, and yet several of
them have only spent one or two winters here. The same knowledge, the
same inspiration, is open to all of us, and the reason why English and
American visitors so seldom carry away from Rome more than they bring to
it is because they have never seen it at all; because the life in a
hotel, with its English and French dinners, its English or
French-speaking waiters, its newspapers and reading-rooms, is not a
Roman life; because the shop-keepers in the Via Condotti, their
washerwomen, or their masters of music and languages, are the only
Italians these visitors have come in contact with; because their sights
are doled out to them by conceited couriers or ignorant ciceroni;
because they have no ideas of the peasants and their costumes beyond the
models of the Via Felice and the Trinità de’ Monti.
“And all this might be so different! Can one look at the amethystine
mountains which girdle in the Campagna around Rome without wishing to
penetrate their recesses? In the mountain towns which hang like eagles’
nests to their rocks there are not only costumes, but every one wears a
costume: there the true Italian life may be seen. By the railway which
leads to Naples it is very easy now to reach many of these beautiful
places and to have glimpses of a true Italy. The grand temples of Cori,
the rock-perched Norba, and mysterious beautiful flower-peopled Ninfa
may now be visited in one day from the station of Velletri, returning to
Rome in the evening. At Sora near Arpino, the gloriously situated home
of Cicero and of Marius, and at San Germano, close to Monte Cassino and
to Aquino with its beautiful Roman arches of triumph, there are now very
tolerable hotels; and oh! believe me, there is no enjoyment more intense
than that of spring days on these lonely mountain heights carpeted with
sweet basil and thyme, or in these old desolate cities where the women
come up from the fountains with great brazen _conche_ poised upon their
black locks, like animated caryatides.
“But I would also urge those who cannot make these excursions to do at
least something which will give them an individual interest, a personal
property in Rome itself. Let them collect marbles or plants, or even
photographs, or let them make sketches, choosing perhaps some special
line of interest, either the ancient Roman remains, or the memorials of
the saints, or the mediaeval tombs, thus appropriating and having their
own little personal share in the great field of archaeology. I remember
that two English ladies,[301] long valued members of the society here,
made a perfect collection of drawings of all the mediaeval towers in
Rome, whether campanile of the churches, or old brick fortresses of the
Anicii and Frangipani. I have known another lady, a much honoured
American resident in this place,[302] who spent much of her time in
making a perfect collection of drawings and photographs of all Italian
subjects connected with Dante. And, depend upon it, that the very fact
that these persons thus created for themselves a private centre around
which all other interests should circle, gave them a wider grasp and an
easier remembrance for all that came across them.
“Archaeology is generally regarded as a dead and dry study, though it
need not be so. But its animating power is history, and to bring it into
life it must be combined with history, not in its narrowest, but in its
widest sense. To a life-long student of classical details, it may be a
matter of vital importance whether a stone on the Palatine is of the
time of the kings or the Republic; but to the casual visitor to Rome, to
the ladies who form so great a portion of my present audience, this can
scarcely be a question of thrilling excitement. To the unlearned, I
believe it to be of more interest to reflect upon the gladiatorial
combats and the Christian martyrdoms in the Coliseum than to discuss the
exact manner in which its sheltering velarium was sustained.
“Let our Roman archaeology, then, be unlimited as to ages, let it grasp
as much as it can of the myriad human sympathies which Rome has to
offer or awaken; for thus, and only thus, can it do a great work, in
arousing highest thoughts and aims, as it opens the ancient
treasure-house and teaches the vast experience of more than two thousand
years. Then, as John Addington Symonds says:--
‘Then from the very soil of ancient Rome
You shall grow wise, and walking, live again
The lives of buried peoples, and become
A child by right of that eternal home,
Cradle and grave of empires, on whose walls,
The sun himself subdued to reverence falls.’
“Let archaeology help the beauties of Rome in leaving their noblest
impress--in arousing feelings which are worthy of the greatest of Pagan
heroes, of the sweetest of Latin poets, of the most inspired of
sculptors and painters, as well as of Paul of Tarsus, who passed into
Rome under the arch of Drusus, upon whom the shadow of the pyramid of
Caius Cestius fell as he passed out of Rome to his martyrdom, in that
procession of which it is the sole surviving witness, and who here in
Rome is sleeping now, with thousand other saints, till, as St. Ambrose
reminds us, he shall awaken _here_, in Rome, at the great resurrection.
“Rome, as Winckelmann says, is the high-art school which is open to all
the world. It can supply every mental requirement, if people will only
apply at the right corner of the fountain. This is what an
archaeological society ought to help us to find: this is what I trust
the British and American Archaeological Society may help us to find.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_April 29, 1879, London._--I have heard again the curious story of Sir
T. Watson from Mrs. T., to whom he told it himself, so will write it
down.
“Sir Thomas Watson, better known as Dr. Watson, was a well-known
physician. During the last years of his life he was in failing health,
and only saw patients at his own house, but till then he went about in
England wherever he was sent for. One day he was summoned to attend an
urgent case at Oxenholme in Cumberland. There was only one carriage in
the train which went through to Oxenholme, and in a compartment of that
carriage he took his seat. He tipped the guard, and said he should be
glad to be alone if he could.
“The train at Euston was already in motion, when a young lady came
running down the platform, with a porter laden with her hand-bags and
cloaks. The man just contrived to open the carriage door, push the young
lady in, throw in her things after her, and the train was off. The young
lady, a very pretty, pleasing young lady, took the seat opposite Dr.
Watson. Being a polite, gallant old gentleman, very soon Dr. Watson
began to make himself agreeable: ‘What beautiful effects of cloud there
were. How picturesque Harrow church steeple looked through the morning
haze,’ &c. &c., and the young lady responded pleasantly. At last, as
their acquaintance advanced, Dr. Watson said, ‘And are you travelling
far?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said the young lady, ‘very far, I am going to Oxenholme
in Cumberland.’ ‘How singular,’ said Dr. Watson, ‘for that is just where
I am going myself. I wonder if you happen to know Lady D. who lives
near Oxenholme.’ ‘Yes,’ said the young lady, ‘I know Lady D. very well.’
‘And Mrs. P. and her daughters?’ said Dr. W. ‘Oh yes, I know them too.’
‘And Mr. Y.?’ There was a moment’s pause, and then the young lady very
naïvely and ingenuously said, ‘Yes, I do know Mr. Y. very well; and
perhaps I had better tell you something. I am going to be _married_ to
him to-morrow. My own parents are in India, and I am going to be married
from his father’s house. Since I have been engaged to him, I have made
the acquaintance of many of his friends and neighbours, and that is how
I know so many people near Oxenholme, though I have never been there
before.’
“Dr. Watson was charmed with the simple candour of the young lady. They
went on talking, and they became quite friends. The train arrived at
Rugby, and they both got out and had their bun in the refreshment-room.
They were in the carriage again, and the train was already moving, when,
in great excitement, the young lady called out: ‘Oh stop, stop the
train, don’t you see how he’s urging me to get out. There! that young
man in the brown ulster, that’s the young man I’m going to be married
to.’ Of course it was impossible to get out, and the young lady was
greatly distressed, and though Dr. Watson assured her most positively
that there was no one standing where she described, she would not and
could not believe him.
“Then Dr. Watson said, ‘Now, my dear young lady, you’re very young and
I’m very old. I am a doctor. I am very well known, and from what you
have been seeing I am quite sure, as a physician, that you are not at
all well. Now, I have my medicine chest with me, and you had better let
me give you a little dose.’ And he did give her a little dose.
“The train arrived at Stafford, and exactly the same thing occurred.
‘There, there! don’t you see him! _that_ young man with the light beard,
in the brown ulster, don’t you see how he’s urging me to get out.’ And
again Dr. Watson assured her there was no one there, and said, ‘I think
you had better let me give you another little dose;’ and he gave her
another little dose.
“But Dr. Watson naturally felt that he could not go on giving her a dose
at every station all the way to Oxenholme, so he decided within himself
that if the same thing happened at Crewe, the young lady’s state
indicated one of two things: either that there was some intentional
vision from Providence, with which he ought not to interfere; or that
the young lady was certainly not in a state of health or brain which
should allow of her being married next day. So he determined to act
accordingly.
“And at Crewe just the same thing happened. ‘There, there! don’t you see
him! he’s urging me more than ever to get out,’ cried the young lady.
‘Very well,’ said Dr. Watson, ‘we will get out and go after him,’ and,
with the young lady, he pursued the imaginary figure, and of course did
not find him. But Dr. Watson had often been at Crewe station before, and
he went to the hotel, which opens on the platform, and said to the
matron, ‘Here is this young lady, who is not at all well, and should
have a very quiet room; unfortunately I am not able to remain now to
look after her, but I will leave her in your care, and to-morrow I shall
be returning this way and will come to see how she is.’ And he slipped a
five-pound note into the woman’s hand to guarantee expenses.
“Dr. Watson returned to the railway carriage. There was another young
lady there, sitting in the place which the first young lady had
occupied--a passenger who had arrived by one of the many lines which
converge at Crewe. With the new young lady he did not make acquaintance,
he moved his things to the other side of the carriage and devoted
himself to his book.