people, donkeys--an almost indistinguishable mass--filled the narrow
streets; and thus on to Genzano and the Lago di Nemi, with its fabled
fleet at the bottom.
The Chigi woods, that fill the deep ravine under the great viaduct at
Ariccia, were in the most brilliant emerald green. Past these forests
lay the vast stretch of the Pontine Marshes; and turning toward Rome
again, the splendor of the sunset flamed in the sky. One could but
recall Mrs. Humphry Ward's vivid picture of a storm seen over this part
of the Campagna:--
"The sunset was rushing to its height through every possible phase
of violence and splendor. From the Mediterranean, storm clouds were
rising fast to the assault and conquest of the upper sky, which
still above the hills shone blue and tranquil. But the northwest
wind and the sea were leagued against it. They sent out threatening
fingers and long spinning veils of cloud across it--skirmishers
that foretold the black and serried lines, the torn and monstrous
masses behind. Below these wild tempest shapes again--in long
spaces resting on the sea--the heaven was at peace, shining in
delicate greens and yellows, infinitely translucent and serene,
above the dazzling lines of water. Over Rome itself there was a
strange massing and curving of the clouds. Between their blackness
and the deep purple of the Campagna rose the city--pale
phantom--upholding one great dome, and one only, to view of night
and the world. Round and above and behind, beneath the long flat
arch of the storm, glowed a furnace of scarlet light. The buildings
of the city were faint specks within its fierce intensity, dimly
visible through a sea of fire. St. Peter's alone, without visible
foundation or support, had consistence, form, identity; and between
the city and the hills, waves of blue and purple shade, forerunners
of the night, stole over the Campagna towards the higher ground.
But the hills themselves were still shining, still clad in rose and
amethyst, caught in gentler repetition from the wildness of the
west. Pale rose even the olive gardens; rose the rich brown
fallows, the emerging farms; while drawn across the Campagna from
north to south, as though some mighty brush had just laid it there
for sheer lust of color, sheer joy in the mating it with the
rose,--one long strip of sharpest, purest green."
The Villa Falconieri, in Frascati, which was built by Cardinal Ruffini,
with the old ilex tree preserved in the portals, has recently been
purchased by the Emperor of Germany, who proposes to transform it into
an Academy for the accommodation of German students in Rome. These
national academies draw their corresponding numbers of students from the
nations thus represented, and contribute to the cosmopolitan aspects of
Rome. The American Academy in Rome is now being transferred from the
Ludovisi quarter to a large and convenient building outside Porta Pia.
Perhaps the eminently social quality of Roman life may be indirectly due
to the lack of library privileges which is a conspicuous defect in Rome.
The Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele, under the courteous administration of
Commendatore Conte Guili, has, it is true, a collection of over half a
million volumes and thousands of very rare and valuable manuscripts. It
has a large public reading room, and books are loaned on the signature
of any embassy or consulate; yet this library, while offering peculiar
advantages to theological and other special students and readers, does
not afford any extended privileges to the general reader of modern
English and American publications. It is located in a grim and
forbidding old stone palace, approached by an obscure lane from the
Corso, where, as there is no sidewalk, the pedestrian shares the narrow,
dark, cold, stone-paved little street with carts, donkeys, peasants,
and beggars.
The great monument to King Victor Emmanuel, of mingled architecture and
sculpture, a colossal structure of white marble with arches and pillars
forming beautiful colonnades, the capital of each column heavily carved,
and the sculpture, which is being done by a number of artists, will be
of the most artistic and beautiful order. This memorial will occupy an
entire block, and it is located very near the Capitol. All the old
buildings in the vicinity will be torn down to give a fine vista for
this transcendently noble and sumptuous memorial.
The directors of this work aim to have it completed and ready to be
unveiled in 1911, the jubilee year of Italy's resurrection as a united
country.
Encircled by the old Aurelian wall and near the great pyramid that marks
the tomb of Caius Cestius, who died 12 B.C., lies the Protestant
cemetery of Rome, full of bloom and fragrance and beauty, under the
dark, solemn cypress trees that stand like ever-watchful sentinels. When
Keats was buried here (in 1820), Shelley wrote of "the romantic and
lovely cemetery ... under the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the mossy
walls and towers now mouldering and desolate which formed the circuit of
ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered
even in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with
death," he added, "to think of being buried in so sweet a place."
[Illustration: PORTA SAN PAOLA, PYRAMID OF CAIUS CESTIUS, ROME
_Page 216_]
In the old cemetery (immediately adjoining the pyramid and separated
from the new one by a wall) is the grave of Keats (who died in 1821)
with its unique inscription, "Here lies one whose name was writ in
water." Beside it is that of his friend, Joseph Severn, who died in
1829, and near these the grave of John Bell, the famous writer on
surgery and anatomy. In the new or more modern cemetery the visitor
lingers by the graves of Shelley and his friend, Trelawney; August
Goethe (the son of the poet); of William and Mary Howitt, who died in
1879 and 1888. Not merely, however, do the names of Keats and Shelley
allure the visitor to poetic meditations; but here lie the earthly forms
of many a poet, painter, and sculptor of our own country, with their
wives and children, who have sought in the Eternal City the
atmosphere for art and who, enamoured by the loveliness of Rome,
continued there for all their remaining years. These graves, these
sculptured memorials, are eloquent with the joys, the sorrows, the
achievements and the failures, the success and the defeat, of the
artistic life in a foreign land. Many of these memorial sculptures are
the work of the husband or the father, into which is inseparably joined
the personal tenderness to the artist's skill. Especially noticeable are
the graves of the wives of three American sculptors,--William Wetmore
Story, Richard S. Greenough, and Franklin Simmons. Each of these is
marked by a memorial sculpture created by the husband, and the three
different conceptions of these sculptors are interesting to contrast.
That of Mr. Story is of an angel with outspread wings, kneeling, her
head bowed in the utter despair and desolation of hopeless sorrow. The
figure has the greatest delicacy of beauty and refinement and
tenderness; but it is the grief that has no support of faith, the grief
that has no vision of divine consolation. On the memorial monument is
simply the name, Emelyn Story, born in Boston, 1820, died in Rome in
1898, and the note that it is the last work of W. W. Story, in memory of
his beloved wife. Here, also, is Mr. Story buried, his name and dates of
birth and death (1819-1901) alone being inscribed.
At the tomb of Sarah B. Greenough, the wife of Richard S. Greenough, the
monument is designed to represent Psyche escaping from the bondage of
mortality. This Psyche is emerging from her garments and she holds in
her hand a lamp. On this is the inscription: "Her loss was that as of a
keystone to an arch."
Mrs. Greenough was a very accomplished musician, and she had the unique
honor of having been made a member of the "Arcadians."
The memorial sculpture over the grave of Mrs. Franklin Simmons is, as
elsewhere noted, the work of her husband, a figure called "The Angel of
the Resurrection." The angel is represented as a male figure (Gabriel)
holding in the left hand a golden trumpet while the right is
outstretched. His wings are spread, his face partly turned to the right.
The form is partially draped and in every detail is instinct with a
complete harmony; every fold of the drapery, every curve of the body,
and the lofty and triumphant expression of the face in its ineffable
glory of achievement proclaim the triumph of immortality. It stands on a
pedestal that gives it, from the base of the pedestal to the tip of the
outstretched wings, a height of some twenty-one feet. This monument,
seen against a background of dark cypress trees, speaks the word of
positive and complete faith in the divine promise of eternal life.
"Then life is--to wake, not sleep,
Rise and not rest, but press
From earth's level where blindly creep
Things perfected, more or less,
In the heaven's height--far and steep."
The visitor lingers over the grave of that interesting painter, J.
Rollin Tilton, whose landscapes from Egypt and Italian scenes were so
vivid and picturesque.
Richard Henry Dana, the elder, born in Boston in 1815, came to Rome to
die in 1882.
Very near the tomb of William Wetmore and Emelyn Story is that of
Constance Fenimore Woolson. Over the graves of William and Mary Howitt
is the inscription: "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God,
believe also in me."
On the wall just back of the new tomb erected over the ashes of Shelley
by Onslow Ford in 1891 is a memorial tablet placed to Frederick W. H.
Myers, bearing this inscription:--
"This tablet is placed to the memory of Frederick William Henry
Myers, born at Keswick, Cumberland, Feb. 6, 1843; died in Rome,
Jan. 17, 1901. 'He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him long
life ever and forever.'"
Over the grave of John Addington Symonds, whose best monument is in his
admirable History of the Renaissance in Italy, is a Latin inscription
written by Professor Jowett of Oxford, and a stanza from the Greek of
Cleanthes, translated by Mr. Symonds as follows:--
"Lead thou, our God, law, reason, motion, life;
All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow;
Lead me, for I will follow without strife,
Or, if I strive, still more I blindly follow."
John Addington Symonds, who certainly ranks as the most gifted
interpreter of Italy, in her art, her legends and associations, and her
landscape loveliness, died in the Rome he so loved in 1893. His wife was
ill in Venice, but his daughter, Margaret,--his inseparable companion
and his helper in his work,--was with him. It is Miss Symonds who
prefaced a memorial volume to her father with the exquisite lines:--
"O Love; we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer beyond the sea."
Near the graves of Keats and of his friend, Joseph Severn, are those of
Augustus William Hare and John Gibson, the sculptor, who died in 1868.
Some ten years before Hawthorne, meeting Gibson at a dinner given by T.
Buchanan Read, wrote of him that it was whispered about the table that
he had been in Rome for forty-two years and that he had a quiet,
self-contained aspect as of one who had spent a calm life among his clay
and marble.
Dwight Benton, an American painter and writer, who was for some time in
the diplomatic service and whose home had been in Rome for more than a
quarter of a century, lies buried here. For many years he was the
editor of _The Roman World_, which still sustains the interesting
character that marked it during his editorship. Of his work in art a
friend wrote:--
"In painting, as in literature, Dwight Benton took his inspiration
from nature. His paintings of Italian scenery are true and faithful
representations of its character and atmospheric effects. His
tramps on the Roman Campagna were long and often tiring, but he
worked with all an artist's enthusiasm, unmindful of cold, rain,
and even hunger. He would delight, as all true artists, in an old
convent, a tree, a tower, a cross, which he would reproduce with a
peculiar and striking perfection of tone and color. In his
paintings of Keats's and Shelley's tombs, not only are the slabs
and marble there, but there, also, in all their naturalness, are
the stately pines and cypresses above, with the sunshine and
shadows alternating between them, and in the background the
turreted top of St. Paul's Gateway, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius,
all lending effect and picturesqueness to the whole."
The present King of Italy purchased one of Mr. Benton's paintings,
called "Giornata di tristezza."
While art abounds in Rome, less can be said for literature. There is a
large and admirable selected Italian library in connection with the
Collegio Romano; but while these books circulate, under certain
conditions, to visitors, and the courtesy of the librarian and his staff
is generously kind, the location and the Italian methods render it a
matter of some difficulty to avail one's self of its resources. In the
Piazza di Spagna there are two circulating libraries, but although one
of these claims twenty-five thousand volumes, the majority are of
mediocre fiction and almost none, if any, of the important modern works
are to be found here. The visitor who is a subscriber to this library
passes into a small, dark room, where one window looking on the street
hardly does more than make the darkness visible, and he must take the
catalogue to the window and stand in order to decipher the list, which
is hardly, indeed, worth the trouble, as there are very few volumes of
any pretension to importance in the collection, and of late years no
additions, apparently, have ever been made. The other circulating
library, while far preferable, is still in crowded rooms and the
assortment is limited. The visitor in Rome who cares for reading matter
looks forward with delight to Florence, with its noble circulating
library, to which access is so easy and whose conduct in all ways is so
convenient and grateful to the guest.
In Rome, however, one finds his romance embodied in life and his history
written in the streets and in the marvellous structures. His poetry is
in her art, her ruins, her magical loveliness of hillside vistas, her
infinite views over the Campagna, her sapphire skies, and her luminous,
golden atmosphere.
"_Here Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles,
And yonder, bluest of the isles,
Calm Capri waits
Her sapphire gates,
Beguiling to her bright estates._"
"_Oh, Signor! thine the amber hand,
And mine the distant sea
Obedient to the least command
Thine eyes impose on me._"
III
DAY-DREAMS IN NAPLES, AMALFI, AND CAPRI
"With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Where summer sings but never dies."
Naples is the paradise of excursions. It is set in the heart of
incomparable loveliness. Over its sapphire sea one sails away--to the
Fortunate Isles, or some others equally alluring. Its heights and
adjacent mountains offer views that one might well cross the ocean to
enjoy. Its atmosphere is full of classic interest; of song, and story,
and legend, and romance; of history, too, which in its tragic and
exciting episodes is not less vivid in color and in strange studies of
human life than is any romance. Naples is the city of fascination. Rome
is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment;
Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is
simply--fascinating. There is the common life of the streets and the
populace continually _en scene_; the people who are at home on the sunny
side in winter, or the shady side in summer; there is the social life of
the nobility, which is brilliant and vivacious. The excursions, of which
Naples is the centre, are the chief interest to travellers, and these,
while possible in winter, are far more enjoyable in the early spring.
Still even in midwinter the days are sunny, and while the air is crisp
and cool, it is not cold. The grass is as green as in June; but the
foliage and flowers are more or less withered. Naples has the high and
the lower town, the former the more desirable, and the fine hotels
perched on the terraces, with the view all over the Bay of Naples,
Capri, Sorrento, and Vesuvius, offer a vista hardly to be duplicated in
the entire world. The lower town has its fine hotels on the water's
edge, with a beautiful view over the bay, less enchanting than when seen
from above. The Bay of Naples is enclosed in two semicircular arms that
extend far out at sea, the southern reaching nearly to Capri, while near
the termination of the northern,
"Fair Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles."
Far out at sea the sun shines dazzlingly on the blue Mediterranean. The
landscape is full of those curious formations that are always inherent
in volcanic regions. The region surrounding Naples is abrupt,
picturesque, with the same irregular outline of hills that characterizes
the elevations in the Tonto basin in Arizona. The vegetation is of the
tropical type. The cactus is common, although it grows to no such
monstrous heights as in Arizona. Orange and lemon groves prevail as far
as the eye can see. On every height towns and villages crown the crests
and sweep in winding terraces around the hillsides. Olive orchards
abound. Castles and ruins gleam white in the sunshine on the ledge of
rocky precipices. The curved shores shine like broken lines of silver,
with deep indentations at Naples and at Castellammare. Between these two
points rises Vesuvius, the thin blue smoke constantly curling from the
summit that, since the eruption of 1906, has lost much of its elevation.
In many places there is hardly the width of a roadway between the low
mountains and the coast, but the cliffs are tropically luxurious in
vegetation. Everywhere the habitations of the people crowd the space.
From the monasteries and the castles that crown the heights, both
distant and near to the clustered villages of the plain and those
clinging to the hillsides, the scene is one unending panorama of human
life. For Naples is only the focussing point of these densely populated
regions of Southern Italy. The city stretches along the coast on both
sides her semicircular bay; but the terraced hills, the stretches of
land beyond, and every peak and valley are thickly sown with human
habitations. Its commanding heights, two of which rise in the middle of
the town, and its beautiful mirrored expanse of water give to it the
most unparalleled variety and beauty of landscape loveliness.
"What words can analyze," says George S. Hillard, "the parts and details
of this matchless panorama, or unravel that magic web of beauty into
which palaces, villas, forests, gardens, vineyards, the mountains, and
the sea are woven? What pen can paint the soft curves, the gentle
undulations, the flowing outlines, the craggy steeps, and the far-seen
heights, which, in their combination, are so full of grace and, at the
same time, expression? Words here are imperfect instruments, and must
yield their place to the pencil and the graver. But no canvas can
reproduce the light and color which play round this enchanting region.
No skill can catch the changing hues of the distant mountains, the
star-points of the playing waves, the films of purple and green which
spread themselves over the calm waters, the sunsets of gold and orange,
and the aerial veils of rose and amethyst which drop upon the hills from
the skies of morning and evening. The author of the book of
Ecclesiasticus seems to have described Naples, when he speaks of 'the
pride of the height, the clear firmament, the beauty of heaven, with his
glorious show.' 'See Naples and then die,' is a well-known Italian
saying; but it should read, 'See Naples and then live.' One glance at
such a scene stamps upon the memory an image which, forever after, gives
a new value to life."
[Illustration: CASTEL SANT'ELMO, NAPLES
_Page 231_]
Naples gives to the visitor the impression of being a city without a
past. If she has a history, it is not written in her streets. She is
poetic and picturesque, not historic. The heights of Capodimonte and
Sant'Elmo divide her into unequal parts, and there is the old Naples
which only the antiquarian or the political economist would wish to
see, and the new and modern city which is such a miracle of beauty that
one longs to stay forever, and fails to wonder that the siren sought
these shores. Naples has either been very much misrepresented as to its
prevailing manners and customs, or else it has changed within the past
decade, for, as a rule, the gentle courtesy and kindness of the people
are especially appealing. Augustus often sojourned in Naples, and it was
an especially poetic haunt of Virgil, whose tomb is here. Although the
poverty and the primitive life of the great masses of the people have
been widely discussed, it is yet true that Naples has a very charming
social life, and that the University is a centre of learning and
culture. One of the oldest universities in Europe, it has a faculty of
over one hundred and twenty professors and more than five thousand
students. A large and valuable library, and a mineralogical collection
which specialists from all over the world come to study, are among the
treasures of this University, which was founded in the early part of the
thirteenth century by Emperor Frederick William II. There is now in
process of erection a new group of buildings which will embody the
latest laboratory and library and other privileges. Archaeology is,
naturally, a special feature of the University of Naples, and the
proximity to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and to the wonderful Pompeian
collection in the Museum of Naples affords peculiar and unrivalled
advantages to students. A bust of Thomas Aquinas, during his life a
lecturer at this University, is one of the interesting treasures. The
Archives of the Kingdom of Naples attract many a scholar and savant to
this city. There are in this collection (which is kept in the monastery
adjoining the Church of San Severino) over forty thousand Greek
manuscripts, some of which date back to the year 700. The Naples Museum
is the great repository of all Pompeian art, and it is rich in
sculpture; but it is badly arranged and the vast series of galleries and
the long flights of stairs make any study of its work so fatiguing that
a visit to it might rank as one of the seven labors of Hercules.
In the royal museum of the Palazzo di Capodimonte, which is located on
the beautiful height bearing that name, there are some pictures that are
well worth visiting, not because they are particularly good art, but
because of the interest attaching to the subjects. This gallery is
largely the work of modern Neapolitan artists. Here is the celebrated
picture of Michael Angelo bending over the dead body of Vittoria
Colonna, kissing only her hand, and haunted by the after-regret that he
did not kiss her forehead. Virginia Lebrun has here portraits of Maria
Theresa and of the Duchess of Parma; there is one canvas (by Celentano)
showing Benvenuto Cellini at the Castel Sant'Angelo; a scene depicting
the death of Caesar and a few others of some degree of interest.