ROME

WE entered the Eternal City, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, on

the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Popolo, and came

immediately—it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been heavy rain—on

the skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then, know that we were only

looking at the fag end of the masks, who were driving slowly round and

round the Piazza until they could find a promising opportunity for

falling into the stream of carriages, and getting, in good time, into the

thick of the festivity; and coming among them so abruptly, all

travel-stained and weary, was not coming very well prepared to enjoy the

scene.

We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle two or three miles before.

It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, and hurrying on between its

worn-away and miry banks, had a promising aspect of desolation and ruin.

The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the Carnival, did great violence

to this promise. There were no great ruins, no solemn tokens of

antiquity, to be seen;—they all lie on the other side of the city. There

seemed to be long streets of commonplace shops and houses, such as are to

be found in any European town; there were busy people, equipages,

ordinary walkers to and fro; a multitude of chattering strangers. It was

no more _my_ Rome: the Rome of anybody’s fancy, man or boy; degraded and

fallen and lying asleep in the sun among a heap of ruins: than the Place

de la Concorde in Paris is. A cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and muddy

streets, I was prepared for, but not for this: and I confess to having

gone to bed, that night, in a very indifferent humour, and with a very

considerably quenched enthusiasm.

Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to St. Peter’s. It

looked immense in the distance, but distinctly and decidedly small, by

comparison, on a near approach. The beauty of the Piazza, on which it

stands, with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing

fountains—so fresh, so broad, and free, and beautiful—nothing can

exaggerate. The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive

majesty and glory: and, most of all, the looking up into the Dome: is a

sensation never to be forgotten. But, there were preparations for a

Festa; the pillars of stately marble were swathed in some impertinent

frippery of red and yellow; the altar, and entrance to the subterranean

chapel: which is before it: in the centre of the church: were like a

goldsmith’s shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very lavish

pantomime. And though I had as high a sense of the beauty of the

building (I hope) as it is possible to entertain, I felt no very strong

emotion. I have been infinitely more affected in many English cathedrals

when the organ has been playing, and in many English country churches

when the congregation have been singing. I had a much greater sense of

mystery and wonder, in the Cathedral of San Mark at Venice.

When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly an hour staring up

into the dome: and would not have ‘gone over’ the Cathedral then, for any

money), we said to the coachman, ‘Go to the Coliseum.’ In a quarter of

an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, and we went in.

It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say: so suggestive

and distinct is it at this hour: that, for a moment—actually in passing

in—they who will, may have the whole great pile before them, as it used

to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and

such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust going on there, as no

language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter

desolation, strike upon the stranger the next moment, like a softened

sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome

by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections and

afflictions.

To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and arches overgrown

with green; its corridors open to the day; the long grass growing in its

porches; young trees of yesterday, springing up on its ragged parapets,

and bearing fruit: chance produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds

who build their nests within its chinks and crannies; to see its Pit of

Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre;

to climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all

about it; the triumphal arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and

Titus; the Roman Forum; the Palace of the Cæsars; the temples of the old

religion, fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked,

wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod.

It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand,

majestic, mournful sight, conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime,

can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the

lustiest life, have moved one’s heart, as it must move all who look upon

it now, a ruin. GOD be thanked: a ruin!

As it tops the other ruins: standing there, a mountain among graves: so

do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants of the old mythology

and old butchery of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman

people. The Italian face changes as the visitor approaches the city; its

beauty becomes devilish; and there is scarcely one countenance in a

hundred, among the common people in the streets, that would not be at

home and happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow.

Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can imagine in

its full and awful grandeur! We wandered out upon the Appian Way, and

then went on, through miles of ruined tombs and broken walls, with here

and there a desolate and uninhabited house: past the Circus of Romulus,

where the course of the chariots, the stations of the judges,

competitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly to be seen as in old

time: past the tomb of Cecilia Metella: past all inclosure, hedge, or

stake, wall or fence: away upon the open Campagna, where on that side of

Rome, nothing is to be beheld but Ruin. Except where the distant

Apennines bound the view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one

field of ruin. Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque and

beautiful clusters of arches; broken temples; broken tombs. A desert of

decay, sombre and desolate beyond all expression; and with a history in

every stone that strews the ground.

* * * * *

On Sunday, the Pope assisted in the performance of High Mass at St.

Peter’s. The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, on that second visit,

was exactly what it was at first, and what it remains after many visits.

It is not religiously impressive or affecting. It is an immense edifice,

with no one point for the mind to rest upon; and it tires itself with

wandering round and round. The very purpose of the place, is not

expressed in anything you see there, unless you examine its details—and

all examination of details is incompatible with the place itself. It

might be a Pantheon, or a Senate House, or a great architectural trophy,

having no other object than an architectural triumph. There is a black

statue of St. Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy; which is larger than

life and which is constantly having its great toe kissed by good

Catholics. You cannot help seeing that: it is so very prominent and

popular. But it does not heighten the effect of the temple, as a work of

art; and it is not expressive—to me at least—of its high purpose.

A large space behind the altar, was fitted up with boxes, shaped like

those at the Italian Opera in England, but in their decoration much more

gaudy. In the centre of the kind of theatre thus railed off, was a

canopied dais with the Pope’s chair upon it. The pavement was covered

with a carpet of the brightest green; and what with this green, and the

intolerable reds and crimsons, and gold borders of the hangings, the

whole concern looked like a stupendous Bonbon. On either side of the

altar, was a large box for lady strangers. These were filled with ladies

in black dresses and black veils. The gentlemen of the Pope’s guard, in

red coats, leather breeches, and jack-boots, guarded all this reserved

space, with drawn swords that were very flashy in every sense; and from

the altar all down the nave, a broad lane was kept clear by the Pope’s

Swiss guard, who wear a quaint striped surcoat, and striped tight legs,

and carry halberds like those which are usually shouldered by those

theatrical supernumeraries, who never _can_ get off the stage fast

enough, and who may be generally observed to linger in the enemy’s camp

after the open country, held by the opposite forces, has been split up

the middle by a convulsion of Nature.

I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company with a great many

other gentlemen, attired in black (no other passport is necessary), and

stood there at my ease, during the performance of Mass. The singers were

in a crib of wirework (like a large meat-safe or bird-cage) in one

corner; and sang most atrociously. All about the green carpet, there was

a slowly moving crowd of people: talking to each other: staring at the

Pope through eye-glasses; defrauding one another, in moments of partial

curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of pillars: and grinning

hideously at the ladies. Dotted here and there, were little knots of

friars (Frances-cáni, or Cappuccíni, in their coarse brown dresses and

peaked hoods) making a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of

higher degree, and having their humility gratified to the utmost, by

being shouldered about, and elbowed right and left, on all sides. Some

of these had muddy sandals and umbrellas, and stained garments: having

trudged in from the country. The faces of the greater part were as

coarse and heavy as their dress; their dogged, stupid, monotonous stare

at all the glory and splendour, having something in it, half miserable,

and half ridiculous.

Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar, was a perfect

army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold, purple, violet, white, and

fine linen. Stragglers from these, went to and fro among the crowd,

conversing two and two, or giving and receiving introductions, and

exchanging salutations; other functionaries in black gowns, and other

functionaries in court-dresses, were similarly engaged. In the midst of

all these, and stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, and the extreme

restlessness of the Youth of England, who were perpetually wandering

about, some few steady persons in black cassocks, who had knelt down with

their faces to the wall, and were poring over their missals, became,

unintentionally, a sort of humane man-traps, and with their own devout

legs, tripped up other people’s by the dozen.

There was a great pile of candles lying down on the floor near me, which

a very old man in a rusty black gown with an open-work tippet, like a

summer ornament for a fireplace in tissue-paper, made himself very busy

in dispensing to all the ecclesiastics: one a-piece. They loitered about

with these for some time, under their arms like walking-sticks, or in

their hands like truncheons. At a certain period of the ceremony,

however, each carried his candle up to the Pope, laid it across his two

knees to be blessed, took it back again, and filed off. This was done in

a very attenuated procession, as you may suppose, and occupied a long

time. Not because it takes long to bless a candle through and through,

but because there were so many candles to be blessed. At last they were

all blessed: and then they were all lighted; and then the Pope was taken

up, chair and all, and carried round the church.

I must say, that I never saw anything, out of November, so like the

popular English commemoration of the fifth of that month. A bundle of

matches and a lantern, would have made it perfect. Nor did the Pope,

himself, at all mar the resemblance, though he has a pleasant and

venerable face; for, as this part of the ceremony makes him giddy and

sick, he shuts his eyes when it is performed: and having his eyes shut

and a great mitre on his head, and his head itself wagging to and fro as

they shook him in carrying, he looked as if his mask were going to tumble

off. The two immense fans which are always borne, one on either side of

him, accompanied him, of course, on this occasion. As they carried him

along, he blessed the people with the mystic sign; and as he passed them,

they kneeled down. When he had made the round of the church, he was

brought back again, and if I am not mistaken, this performance was

repeated, in the whole, three times. There was, certainly nothing solemn

or effective in it; and certainly very much that was droll and tawdry.

But this remark applies to the whole ceremony, except the raising of the

Host, when every man in the guard dropped on one knee instantly, and

dashed his naked sword on the ground; which had a fine effect.

The next time I saw the cathedral, was some two or three weeks

afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball; and then, the hangings being

taken down, and the carpet taken up, but all the framework left, the

remnants of these decorations looked like an exploded cracker.

* * * * *

The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa days, and Sunday being

always a _dies non_ in carnival proceedings, we had looked forward, with

some impatience and curiosity, to the beginning of the new week: Monday

and Tuesday being the two last and best days of the Carnival.

On the Monday afternoon at one or two o’clock, there began to be a great

rattling of carriages into the court-yard of the hotel; a hurrying to and

fro of all the servants in it; and, now and then, a swift shooting across

some doorway or balcony, of a straggling stranger in a fancy dress: not

yet sufficiently well used to the same, to wear it with confidence, and

defy public opinion. All the carriages were open, and had the linings

carefully covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent their proper

decorations from being spoiled by the incessant pelting of sugar-plums;

and people were packing and cramming into every vehicle as it waited for

its occupants, enormous sacks and baskets full of these confétti,

together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that

some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally running

over: scattering, at every shake and jerk of the springs, some of their

abundance on the ground. Not to be behindhand in these essential

particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks of sugar-plums (each

about three feet high) and a large clothes-basket full of flowers to be

conveyed into our hired barouche, with all speed. And from our place of

observation, in one of the upper balconies of the hotel, we contemplated

these arrangements with the liveliest satisfaction. The carriages now

beginning to take up their company, and move away, we got into ours, and

drove off too, armed with little wire masks for our faces; the

sugar-plums, like Falstaff’s adulterated sack, having lime in their

composition.

The Corso is a street a mile long; a street of shops, and palaces, and

private houses, sometimes opening into a broad piazza. There are

verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every

house—not on one story alone, but often to one room or another on every

story—put there in general with so little order or regularity, that if,

year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed

balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have

come into existence in a more disorderly manner.

This is the great fountain-head and focus of the Carnival. But all the

streets in which the Carnival is held, being vigilantly kept by dragoons,

it is necessary for carriages, in the first instance, to pass, in line,

down another thoroughfare, and so come into the Corso at the end remote

from the Piázza del Popolo; which is one of its terminations.

Accordingly, we fell into the string of coaches, and, for some time,

jogged on quietly enough; now crawling on at a very slow walk; now

trotting half-a-dozen yards; now backing fifty; and now stopping

altogether: as the pressure in front obliged us. If any impetuous

carriage dashed out of the rank and clattered forward, with the wild idea

of getting on faster, it was suddenly met, or overtaken, by a trooper on

horseback, who, deaf as his own drawn sword to all remonstrances,

immediately escorted it back to the very end of the row, and made it a

dim speck in the remotest perspective. Occasionally, we interchanged a

volley of confétti with the carriage next in front, or the carriage next

behind; but as yet, this capturing of stray and errant coaches by the

military, was the chief amusement.

Presently, we came into a narrow street, where, besides one line of

carriages going, there was another line of carriages returning. Here the

sugar-plums and the nosegays began to fly about, pretty smartly; and I

was fortunate enough to observe one gentleman attired as a Greek warrior,

catch a light-whiskered brigand on the nose (he was in the very act of

tossing up a bouquet to a young lady in a first-floor window) with a

precision that was much applauded by the bystanders. As this victorious

Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with a stout gentleman in a

doorway—one-half black and one-half white, as if he had been peeled up

the middle—who had offered him his congratulations on this achievement,

he received an orange from a housetop, full on his left ear, and was much

surprised, not to say discomfited. Especially, as he was standing up at

the time; and in consequence of the carriage moving on suddenly, at the

same moment, staggered ignominiously, and buried himself among his

flowers.

Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, brought us to the

Corso; and anything so gay, so bright, and lively as the whole scene

there, it would be difficult to imagine. From all the innumerable

balconies: from the remotest and highest, no less than from the lowest

and nearest: hangings of bright red, bright green, bright blue, white and

gold, were fluttering in the brilliant sunlight. From windows, and from

parapets, and tops of houses, streamers of the richest colours, and

draperies of the gaudiest and most sparkling hues, were floating out upon

the street. The buildings seemed to have been literally turned inside

out, and to have all their gaiety towards the highway. Shop-fronts were

taken down, and the windows filled with company, like boxes at a shining

theatre; doors were carried off their hinges, and long tapestried groves,

hung with garlands of flowers and evergreens, displayed within; builders’

scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant in silver, gold, and crimson;

and in every nook and corner, from the pavement to the chimney-tops,

where women’s eyes could glisten, there they danced, and laughed, and

sparkled, like the light in water. Every sort of bewitching madness of

dress was there. Little preposterous scarlet jackets; quaint old

stomachers, more wicked than the smartest bodices; Polish pelisses,

strained and tight as ripe gooseberries; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and

clinging to the dark hair, Heaven knows how; every wild, quaint, bold,

shy, pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress; and every

fancy was as dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as

if the three old aqueducts that still remain entire had brought Lethe

into Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that morning.

The carriages were now three abreast; in broader places four; often

stationary for a long time together, always one close mass of variegated

brightness; showing, the whole street-full, through the storm of flowers,

like flowers of a larger growth themselves. In some, the horses were

richly caparisoned in magnificent trappings; in others they were decked

from head to tail, with flowing ribbons. Some were driven by coachmen

with enormous double faces: one face leering at the horses: the other

cocking its extraordinary eyes into the carriage: and both rattling

again, under the hail of sugar-plums. Other drivers were attired as

women, wearing long ringlets and no bonnets, and looking more ridiculous

in any real difficulty with the horses (of which, in such a concourse,

there were a great many) than tongue can tell, or pen describe. Instead

of sitting _in_ the carriages, upon the seats, the handsome Roman women,

to see and to be seen the better, sit in the heads of the barouches, at

this time of general licence, with their feet upon the cushions—and oh,

the flowing skirts and dainty waists, the blessed shapes and laughing

faces, the free, good-humoured, gallant figures that they make! There

were great vans, too, full of handsome girls—thirty, or more together,

perhaps—and the broadsides that were poured into, and poured out of,

these fairy fire-shops, splashed the air with flowers and bon-bons for

ten minutes at a time. Carriages, delayed long in one place, would begin

a deliberate engagement with other carriages, or with people at the lower

windows; and the spectators at some upper balcony or window, joining in

the fray, and attacking both parties, would empty down great bags of

confétti, that descended like a cloud, and in an instant made them white

as millers. Still, carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours

on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Men and boys clinging to

the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind, and following in their

wake, and diving in among the horses’ feet to pick up scattered flowers

to sell again; maskers on foot (the drollest generally) in fantastic

exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying the throng through enormous

eye-glasses, and always transported with an ecstasy of love, on the

discovery of any particularly old lady at a window; long strings of

Policinelli, laying about them with blown bladders at the ends of sticks;

a waggon-full of madmen, screaming and tearing to the life; a coach-full

of grave mamelukes, with their horse-tail standard set up in the midst; a

party of gipsy-women engaged in terrific conflict with a shipful of

sailors; a man-monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs’

faces, and lions’ tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully

over their shoulders; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours

on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Not many actual characters

sustained, or represented, perhaps, considering the number dressed, but

the main pleasure of the scene consisting in its perfect good temper; in

its bright, and infinite, and flashing variety; and in its entire

abandonment to the mad humour of the time—an abandonment so perfect, so

contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to

his middle in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of them

all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past four o’clock, when he is

suddenly reminded (to his great regret) that this is not the whole

business of his existence, by hearing the trumpets sound, and seeing the

dragoons begin to clear the street.

How it ever _is_ cleared for the race that takes place at five, or how

the horses ever go through the race, without going over the people, is

more than I can say. But the carriages get out into the by-streets, or

up into the Piázza del Popolo, and some people sit in temporary galleries

in the latter place, and tens of thousands line the Corso on both sides,

when the horses are brought out into the Piázza—to the foot of that same

column which, for centuries, looked down upon the games and chariot-races

in the Circus Maximus.

At a given signal they are started off. Down the live lane, the whole

length of the Corso, they fly like the wind: riderless, as all the world

knows: with shining ornaments upon their backs, and twisted in their

plaited manes: and with heavy little balls stuck full of spikes, dangling

at their sides, to goad them on. The jingling of these trappings, and

the rattling of their hoofs upon the hard stones; the dash and fury of

their speed along the echoing street; nay, the very cannon that are

fired—these noises are nothing to the roaring of the multitude: their

shouts: the clapping of their hands. But it is soon over—almost

instantaneously. More cannon shake the town. The horses have plunged

into the carpets put across the street to stop them; the goal is reached;

the prizes are won (they are given, in part, by the poor Jews, as a

compromise for not running foot-races themselves); and there is an end to

that day’s sport.

But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on the last day but

one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a height of glittering

colour, swarming life, and frolicsome uproar, that the bare recollection

of it makes me giddy at this moment. The same diversions, greatly

heightened and intensified in the ardour with which they are pursued, go

on until the same hour. The race is repeated; the cannon are fired; the

shouting and clapping of hands are renewed; the cannon are fired again;

the race is over; and the prizes are won. But the carriages: ankle-deep

with sugar-plums within, and so be-flowered and dusty without, as to be

hardly recognisable for the same vehicles that they were, three hours

ago: instead of scampering off in all directions, throng into the Corso,

where they are soon wedged together in a scarcely moving mass. For the

diversion of the Moccoletti, the last gay madness of the Carnival, is now

at hand; and sellers of little tapers like what are called Christmas

candles in England, are shouting lustily on every side, ‘Moccoli,

Moccoli! Ecco Moccoli!’—a new item in the tumult; quite abolishing that

other item of ‘Ecco Fióri! Ecco Fior-r-r!’ which has been making itself

audible over all the rest, at intervals, the whole day through.

As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one dull, heavy,

uniform colour in the decline of the day, lights begin flashing, here and

there: in the windows, on the housetops, in the balconies, in the

carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers: little by little:

gradually, gradually: more and more: until the whole long street is one

great glare and blaze of fire. Then, everybody present has but one

engrossing object; that is, to extinguish other people’s candles, and to

keep his own alight; and everybody: man, woman, or child, gentleman or

lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner: yells and screams, and

roars incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, ‘Senza Moccolo, Senza

Moccolo!’ (Without a light! Without a light!) until nothing is heard

but a gigantic chorus of those two words, mingled with peals of laughter.

The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraordinary that can be

imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with everybody standing on the

seats or on the box, holding up their lights at arms’ length, for greater

safety; some in paper shades; some with a bunch of undefended little

tapers, kindled altogether; some with blazing torches; some with feeble

little candles; men on foot, creeping along, among the wheels, watching

their opportunity, to make a spring at some particular light, and dash it

out; other people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main

force; others, chasing some unlucky wanderer, round and round his own

coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere, before he

can ascend to his own company, and enable them to light their

extinguished tapers; others, with their hats off, at a carriage-door,

humbly beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige them with a light for

a cigar, and when she is in the fulness of doubt whether to comply or no,

blowing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly with her little hand;

other people at the windows, fishing for candles with lines and hooks, or

letting down long willow-wands with handkerchiefs at the end, and

flapping them out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of his

triumph, others, biding their time in corners, with immense extinguishers

like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches; others,

gathered round one coach, and sticking to it; others, raining oranges and

nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or regularly storming a pyramid

of men, holding up one man among them, who carries one feeble little wick

above his head, with which he defies them all! Senza Moccolo! Senza

Moccolo! Beautiful women, standing up in coaches, pointing in derision

at extinguished lights, and clapping their hands, as they pass on,

crying, ‘Senza Moccolo! Senza Moccolo!’; low balconies full of lovely

faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some

repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over,

some shrinking back—delicate arms and bosoms—graceful figures—glowing

lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccoli, Senza

Moc-co-lo-o-o-o!—when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest

ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and

the Carnival is over in an instant—put out like a taper, with a breath!

There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as dull and senseless as

a London one, and only remarkable for the summary way in which the house

was cleared at eleven o’clock: which was done by a line of soldiers

forming along the wall, at the back of the stage, and sweeping the whole

company out before them, like a broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti

(the word, in the singular, Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moccolo, and

means a little lamp or candlesnuff) is supposed by some to be a ceremony

of burlesque mourning for the death of the Carnival: candles being

indispensable to Catholic grief. But whether it be so, or be a remnant

of the ancient Saturnalia, or an incorporation of both, or have its

origin in anything else, I shall always remember it, and the frolic, as a

brilliant and most captivating sight: no less remarkable for the unbroken

good-humour of all concerned, down to the very lowest (and among those

who scaled the carriages, were many of the commonest men and boys), than

for its innocent vivacity. For, odd as it may seem to say so, of a sport

so full of thoughtlessness and personal display, it is as free from any

taint of immodesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can possibly

be; and there seems to prevail, during its progress, a feeling of

general, almost childish, simplicity and confidence, which one thinks of

with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung it away, for a whole year.

* * * * *

Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval between the

termination of the Carnival and the beginning of the Holy Week: when

everybody had run away from the one, and few people had yet begun to run

back again for the other: we went conscientiously to work, to see Rome.

And, by dint of going out early every morning, and coming back late every

evening, and labouring hard all day, I believe we made acquaintance with

every post and pillar in the city, and the country round; and, in

particular, explored so many churches, that I abandoned that part of the

enterprise at last, before it was half finished, lest I should never, of

my own accord, go to church again, as long as I lived. But, I managed,

almost every day, at one time or other, to get back to the Coliseum, and

out upon the open Campagna, beyond the Tomb of Cecilia Metella.

We often encountered, in these expeditions, a company of English

Tourists, with whom I had an ardent, but ungratified longing, to

establish a speaking acquaintance. They were one Mr. Davis, and a small

circle of friends. It was impossible not to know Mrs. Davis’s name, from

her being always in great request among her party, and her party being

everywhere. During the Holy Week, they were in every part of every scene

of every ceremony. For a fortnight or three weeks before it, they were

in every tomb, and every church, and every ruin, and every Picture

Gallery; and I hardly ever observed Mrs. Davis to be silent for a moment.

Deep underground, high up in St. Peter’s, out on the Campagna, and

stifling in the Jews’ quarter, Mrs. Davis turned up, all the same. I

don’t think she ever saw anything, or ever looked at anything; and she

had always lost something out of a straw hand-basket, and was trying to

find it, with all her might and main, among an immense quantity of

English halfpence, which lay, like sands upon the sea-shore, at the

bottom of it. There was a professional Cicerone always attached to the

party (which had been brought over from London, fifteen or twenty strong,

by contract), and if he so much as looked at Mrs. Davis, she invariably

cut him short by saying, ‘There, God bless the man, don’t worrit me! I

don’t understand a word you say, and shouldn’t if you was to talk till

you was black in the face!’ Mr. Davis always had a snuff-coloured

great-coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in his hand, and had a

slow curiosity constantly devouring him, which prompted him to do

extraordinary things, such as taking the covers off urns in tombs, and

looking in at the ashes as if they were pickles—and tracing out

inscriptions with the ferrule of his umbrella, and saying, with intense

thoughtfulness, ‘Here’s a B you see, and there’s a R, and this is the way

we goes on in; is it!’ His antiquarian habits occasioned his being

frequently in the rear of the rest; and one of the agonies of Mrs. Davis,

and the party in general, was an ever-present fear that Davis would be

lost. This caused them to scream for him, in the strangest places, and

at the most improper seasons. And when he came, slowly emerging out of

some sepulchre or other, like a peaceful Ghoule, saying ‘Here I am!’ Mrs.

Davis invariably replied, ‘You’ll be buried alive in a foreign country,

Davis, and it’s no use trying to prevent you!’

Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, been brought from

London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen hundred years ago, the Roman

legions under Claudius, protested against being led into Mr. and Mrs.

Davis’s country, urging that it lay beyond the limits of the world.

Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of Rome, there was one

that amused me mightily. It is always to be found there; and its den is

on the great flight of steps that lead from the Piazza di Spágna, to the

church of Trínita del Monte. In plainer words, these steps are the great

place of resort for the artists’ ‘Models,’ and there they are constantly

waiting to be hired. The first time I went up there, I could not

conceive why the faces seemed familiar to me; why they appeared to have

beset me, for years, in every possible variety of action and costume; and

how it came to pass that they started up before me, in Rome, in the broad

day, like so many saddled and bridled nightmares. I soon found that we

had made acquaintance, and improved it, for several years, on the walls

of various Exhibition Galleries. There is one old gentleman, with long

white hair and an immense beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone half

through the catalogue of the Royal Academy. This is the venerable, or

patriarchal model. He carries a long staff; and every knot and twist in

that staff I have seen, faithfully delineated, innumerable times. There

is another man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the

sun (when there is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide

awake, and very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This is the

_dolce far’ niente_ model. There is another man in a brown cloak, who

leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and looks out

of the corners of his eyes: which are just visible beneath his broad

slouched hat. This is the assassin model. There is another man, who

constantly looks over his own shoulder, and is always going away, but

never does. This is the haughty, or scornful model. As to Domestic

Happiness, and Holy Families, they should come very cheap, for there are

lumps of them, all up the steps; and the cream of the thing is, that they

are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, especially made up for the

purpose, and having no counterparts in Rome or any other part of the

habitable globe.

My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its being said to be a

mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it closes), for the gaieties

and merry-makings before Lent; and this again reminds me of the real

funerals and mourning processions of Rome, which, like those in most

other parts of Italy, are rendered chiefly remarkable to a Foreigner, by

the indifference with which the mere clay is universally regarded, after

life has left it. And this is not from the survivors having had time to

dissociate the memory of the dead from their well-remembered appearance

and form on earth; for the interment follows too speedily after death,

for that: almost always taking place within four-and-twenty hours, and,

sometimes, within twelve.

At Rome, there is the same arrangement of Pits in a great, bleak, open,

dreary space, that I have already described as existing in Genoa. When I

visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of plain deal: uncovered

by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that the hoof of any

wandering mule would have crushed it in: carelessly tumbled down, all on

one side, on the door of one of the pits—and there left, by itself, in

the wind and sunshine. ‘How does it come to be left here?’ I asked the

man who showed me the place. ‘It was brought here half an hour ago,

Signore,’ he said. I remembered to have met the procession, on its

return: straggling away at a good round pace. ‘When will it be put in

the pit?’ I asked him. ‘When the cart comes, and it is opened to-night,’

he said. ‘How much does it cost to be brought here in this way, instead

of coming in the cart?’ I asked him. ‘Ten scudi,’ he said (about two

pounds, two-and-sixpence, English). ‘The other bodies, for whom nothing

is paid, are taken to the church of the Santa Maria della Consolázione,’

he continued, ‘and brought here altogether, in the cart at night.’ I

stood, a moment, looking at the coffin, which had two initial letters

scrawled upon the top; and turned away, with an expression in my face, I

suppose, of not much liking its exposure in that manner: for he said,

shrugging his shoulders with great vivacity, and giving a pleasant smile,

‘But he’s dead, Signore, he’s dead. Why not?’

* * * * *

Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must select for separate

mention. It is the church of the Ara Coeli, supposed to be built on the

site of the old Temple of Jupiter Feretrius; and approached, on one side,

by a long steep flight of steps, which seem incomplete without some group

of bearded soothsayers on the top. It is remarkable for the possession

of a miraculous Bambíno, or wooden doll, representing the Infant Saviour;

and I first saw this miraculous Bambíno, in legal phrase, in manner

following, that is to say:

We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were looking down its

long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these ancient churches built upon

the ruins of old temples, are dark and sad), when the Brave came running

in, with a grin upon his face that stretched it from ear to ear, and

implored us to follow him, without a moment’s delay, as they were going

to show the Bambíno to a select party. We accordingly hurried off to a

sort of chapel, or sacristy, hard by the chief altar, but not in the

church itself, where the select party, consisting of two or three

Catholic gentlemen and ladies (not Italians), were already assembled: and

where one hollow-cheeked young monk was lighting up divers candles, while

another was putting on some clerical robes over his coarse brown habit.

The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it were two delectable

figures, such as you would see at any English fair, representing the Holy

Virgin, and Saint Joseph, as I suppose, bending in devotion over a wooden

box, or coffer; which was shut.

The hollow-cheeked monk, number One, having finished lighting the

candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, before this set-piece; and

the monk number Two, having put on a pair of highly ornamented and

gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer, with great reverence,

and set it on the altar. Then, with many genuflexions, and muttering

certain prayers, he opened it, and let down the front, and took off

sundry coverings of satin and lace from the inside. The ladies had been

on their knees from the commencement; and the gentlemen now dropped down

devoutly, as he exposed to view a little wooden doll, in face very like

General Tom Thumb, the American Dwarf: gorgeously dressed in satin and

gold lace, and actually blazing with rich jewels. There was scarcely a

spot upon its little breast, or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling with

the costly offerings of the Faithful. Presently, he lifted it out of the

box, and carrying it round among the kneelers, set its face against the

forehead of every one, and tendered its clumsy foot to them to kiss—a

ceremony which they all performed down to a dirty little ragamuffin of a

boy who had walked in from the street. When this was done, he laid it in

the box again: and the company, rising, drew near, and commended the

jewels in whispers. In good time, he replaced the coverings, shut up the

box, put it back in its place, locked up the whole concern (Holy Family

and all) behind a pair of folding-doors; took off his priestly vestments;

and received the customary ‘small charge,’ while his companion, by means

of an extinguisher fastened to the end of a long stick, put out the

lights, one after another. The candles being all extinguished, and the

money all collected, they retired, and so did the spectators.

I met this same Bambíno, in the street a short time afterwards, going, in

great state, to the house of some sick person. It is taken to all parts

of Rome for this purpose, constantly; but, I understand that it is not

always as successful as could be wished; for, making its appearance at

the bedside of weak and nervous people in extremity, accompanied by a

numerous escort, it not unfrequently frightens them to death. It is most

popular in cases of child-birth, where it has done such wonders, that if

a lady be longer than usual in getting through her difficulties, a

messenger is despatched, with all speed, to solicit the immediate

attendance of the Bambíno. It is a very valuable property, and much

confided in—especially by the religious body to whom it belongs.

I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate, by some who are

good Catholics, and who are behind the scenes, from what was told me by

the near relation of a Priest, himself a Catholic, and a gentleman of

learning and intelligence. This Priest made my informant promise that he

would, on no account, allow the Bambíno to be borne into the bedroom of a

sick lady, in whom they were both interested. ‘For,’ said he, ‘if they

(the monks) trouble her with it, and intrude themselves into her room, it

will certainly kill her.’ My informant accordingly looked out of the

window when it came; and, with many thanks, declined to open the door.

He endeavoured, in another case of which he had no other knowledge than

such as he gained as a passer-by at the moment, to prevent its being

carried into a small unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl was dying.

But, he strove against it unsuccessfully, and she expired while the crowd

were pressing round her bed.

Among the people who drop into St. Peter’s at their leisure, to kneel on

the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are certain schools and

seminaries, priestly and otherwise, that come in, twenty or thirty

strong. These boys always kneel down in single file, one behind the

other, with a tall grim master in a black gown, bringing up the rear:

like a pack of cards arranged to be tumbled down at a touch, with a

disproportionately large Knave of clubs at the end. When they have had a

minute or so at the chief altar, they scramble up, and filing off to the

chapel of the Madonna, or the sacrament, flop down again in the same

order; so that if anybody did stumble against the master, a general and

sudden overthrow of the whole line must inevitably ensue.

The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible. The same

monotonous, heartless, drowsy chaunting, always going on; the same dark

building, darker from the brightness of the street without; the same

lamps dimly burning; the selfsame people kneeling here and there; turned

towards you, from one altar or other, the same priest’s back, with the

same large cross embroidered on it; however different in size, in shape,

in wealth, in architecture, this church is from that, it is the same

thing still. There are the same dirty beggars stopping in their muttered

prayers to beg; the same miserable cripples exhibiting their deformity at

the doors; the same blind men, rattling little pots like kitchen

pepper-castors: their depositories for alms; the same preposterous crowns

of silver stuck upon the painted heads of single saints and Virgins in

crowded pictures, so that a little figure on a mountain has a head-dress

bigger than the temple in the foreground, or adjacent miles of landscape;

the same favourite shrine or figure, smothered with little silver hearts

and crosses, and the like: the staple trade and show of all the

jewellers; the same odd mixture of respect and indecorum, faith and

phlegm: kneeling on the stones, and spitting on them, loudly; getting up

from prayers to beg a little, or to pursue some other worldly matter: and

then kneeling down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the

point where it was interrupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up

from her prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of

Music; and in another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick

walking-staff, arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was

growling at another dog: and whose yelps and howls resounded through the

church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train of

meditation—keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time, nevertheless.

Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contributions of the

Faithful, in some form or other. Sometimes, it is a money-box, set up

between the worshipper, and the wooden life-size figure of the Redeemer;

sometimes, it is a little chest for the maintenance of the Virgin;

sometimes, an appeal on behalf of a popular Bambíno; sometimes, a bag at

the end of a long stick, thrust among the people here and there, and

vigilantly jingled by an active Sacristan; but there it always is, and,

very often, in many shapes in the same church, and doing pretty well in

all. Nor, is it wanting in the open air—the streets and roads—for, often

as you are walking along, thinking about anything rather than a tin

canister, that object pounces out upon you from a little house by the

wayside; and on its top is painted, ‘For the Souls in Purgatory;’ an

appeal which the bearer repeats a great many times, as he rattles it

before you, much as Punch rattles the cracked bell which his sanguine

disposition makes an organ of.

And this reminds me that some Roman altars of peculiar sanctity, bear the

inscription, ‘Every Mass performed at this altar frees a soul from

Purgatory.’ I have never been able to find out the charge for one of

these services, but they should needs be expensive. There are several

Crosses in Rome too, the kissing of which, confers indulgences for

varying terms. That in the centre of the Coliseum, is worth a hundred

days; and people may be seen kissing it from morning to night. It is

curious that some of these crosses seem to acquire an arbitrary

popularity: this very one among them. In another part of the Coliseum

there is a cross upon a marble slab, with the inscription, ‘Who kisses

this cross shall be entitled to Two hundred and forty days’ indulgence.’

But I saw no one person kiss it, though, day after day, I sat in the

arena, and saw scores upon scores of peasants pass it, on their way to

kiss the other.

To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, would be

the wildest occupation in the world. But St. Stefano Rotondo, a damp,

mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome, will always

struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous paintings with

which its walls are covered. These represent the martyrdoms of saints

and early Christians; and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man

could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for

supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed,

eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by

horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn

with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their

jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the

stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are among the mildest

subjects. So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that every sufferer

gives you the same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady

Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so much blood in him.

There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over what is said to

have been—and very possibly may have been—the dungeon of St. Peter. This

chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint; and it

lives, as a distinct and separate place, in my recollection, too. It is

very small and low-roofed; and the dread and gloom of the ponderous,

obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist

through the floor. Hanging on the walls, among the clustered votive

offerings, are objects, at once strangely in keeping, and strangely at

variance, with the place—rusty daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers

instruments of violence and murder, brought here, fresh from use, and

hung up to propitiate offended Heaven: as if the blood upon them would

drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry with. It is all

so silent and so close, and tomb-like; and the dungeons below are so

black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked; that this little dark spot

becomes a dream within a dream: and in the vision of great churches which

come rolling past me like a sea, it is a small wave by itself, that melts

into no other wave, and does not flow on with the rest.

It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are entered

from some Roman churches, and undermine the city. Many churches have

crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which, in the ancient

time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples, and what not: but I do

not speak of them. Beneath the church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo,

there are the jaws of a terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock,

and said to have another outlet underneath the Coliseum—tremendous

darknesses of vast extent, half-buried in the earth and unexplorable,

where the dull torches, flashed by the attendants, glimmer down long

ranges of distant vaults branching to the right and left, like streets in

a city of the dead; and show the cold damp stealing down the walls,

drip-drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water that lie here and there,

and never saw, or never will see, one ray of the sun. Some accounts make

these the prisons of the wild beasts destined for the amphitheatre; some

the prisons of the condemned gladiators; some, both. But the legend most

appalling to the fancy is, that in the upper range (for there are two

stories of these caves) the Early Christians destined to be eaten at the

Coliseum Shows, heard the wild beasts, hungry for them, roaring down

below; until, upon the night and solitude of their captivity, there burst

the sudden noon and life of the vast theatre crowded to the parapet, and

of these, their dreaded neighbours, bounding in!

Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the gate of San

Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to the catacombs of

Rome—quarries in the old time, but afterwards the hiding-places of the

Christians. These ghastly passages have been explored for twenty miles;

and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in circumference.

A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only guide,

down into this profound and dreadful place. The narrow ways and openings

hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, soon blotted

out, in all of us, any recollection of the track by which we had come:

and I could not help thinking ‘Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of

madness, he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a

fit, what would become of us!’ On we wandered, among martyrs’ graves:

passing great subterranean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions,

and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not

take refuge there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than that

which lives between it and the sun. Graves, graves, graves; Graves of

men, of women, of their little children, who ran crying to the

persecutors, ‘We are Christians! We are Christians!’ that they might be

murdered with their parents; Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly

cut into their stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel

of the martyrs’ blood; Graves of some who lived down here, for years

together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and

comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at

this hour; more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds,

being surprised, were hemmed in and walled up: buried before Death, and

killed by slow starvation.

‘The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our splendid

churches,’ said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest

in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every

side. ‘They are here! Among the Martyrs’ Graves!’ He was a gentle,

earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I thought how Christian

men have dealt with one another; how, perverting our most merciful

religion, they have hunted down and tortured, burnt and beheaded,

strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other; I pictured to myself an

agony surpassing any that this Dust had suffered with the breath of life

yet lingering in it, and how these great and constant hearts would have

been shaken—how they would have quailed and drooped—if a foreknowledge of

the deeds that professing Christians would commit in the Great Name for

which they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable anguish,

on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire.

[Picture: In the Catacombs]

Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches, that remain

apart, and keep their separate identity. I have a fainter recollection,

sometimes of the relics; of the fragments of the pillar of the Temple

that was rent in twain; of the portion of the table that was spread for

the Last Supper; of the well at which the woman of Samaria gave water to

Our Saviour; of two columns from the house of Pontius Pilate; of the

stone to which the Sacred hands were bound, when the scourging was

performed; of the grid-iron of Saint Lawrence, and the stone below it,

marked with the frying of his fat and blood; these set a shadowy mark on

some cathedrals, as an old story, or a fable might, and stop them for an

instant, as they flit before me. The rest is a vast wilderness of

consecrated buildings of all shapes and fancies, blending one with

another; of battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the

ground, and forced, like giant captives, to support the roofs of

Christian churches; of pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and

ridiculous; of kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells, and

sometimes (but not often) of a swelling organ: of Madonne, with their

breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle like a modern

fan; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously attired in gaudy

satins, silks, and velvets trimmed with gold: their withered crust of

skull adorned with precious jewels, or with chaplets of crushed flowers;

sometimes of people gathered round the pulpit, and a monk within it

stretching out the crucifix, and preaching fiercely: the sun just

streaming down through some high window on the sail-cloth stretched above

him and across the church, to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost

among the echoes of the roof. Then my tired memory comes out upon a

flight of steps, where knots of people are asleep, or basking in the

light; and strolls away, among the rags, and smells, and palaces, and

hovels, of an old Italian street.

* * * * *

On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a man was beheaded here.

Nine or ten months before, he had waylaid a Bavarian countess, travelling

as a pilgrim to Rome—alone and on foot, of course—and performing, it is

said, that act of piety for the fourth time. He saw her change a piece

of gold at Viterbo, where he lived; followed her; bore her company on her

journey for some forty miles or more, on the treacherous pretext of

protecting her; attacked her, in the fulfilment of his unrelenting

purpose, on the Campagna, within a very short distance of Rome, near to

what is called (but what is not) the Tomb of Nero; robbed her; and beat

her to death with her own pilgrim’s staff. He was newly married, and

gave some of her apparel to his wife: saying that he had bought it at a

fair. She, however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing through

their town, recognised some trifle as having belonged to her. Her

husband then told her what he had done. She, in confession, told a

priest; and the man was taken, within four days after the commission of

the murder.

There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or its

execution, in this unaccountable country; and he had been in prison ever

since. On the Friday, as he was dining with the other prisoners, they

came and told him he was to be beheaded next morning, and took him away.

It is very unusual to execute in Lent; but his crime being a very bad

one, it was deemed advisable to make an example of him at that time, when

great numbers of pilgrims were coming towards Rome, from all parts, for

the Holy Week. I heard of this on the Friday evening, and saw the bills

up at the churches, calling on the people to pray for the criminal’s

soul. So, I determined to go, and see him executed.

The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half o’clock, Roman time:

or a quarter before nine in the forenoon. I had two friends with me; and

as we did not know but that the crowd might be very great, we were on the

spot by half-past seven. The place of execution was near the church of

San Giovanni decolláto (a doubtful compliment to Saint John the Baptist)

in one of the impassable back streets without any footway, of which a

great part of Rome is composed—a street of rotten houses, which do not

seem to belong to anybody, and do not seem to have ever been inhabited,

and certainly were never built on any plan, or for any particular

purpose, and have no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted

breweries, and might be warehouses but for having nothing in them.

Opposite to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built. An

untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course: some seven

feet high, perhaps: with a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising above it, in

which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all ready to

descend, and glittering brightly in the morning sun, whenever it looked

out, now and then, from behind a cloud.

There were not many people lingering about; and these were kept at a

considerable distance from the scaffold, by parties of the Pope’s

dragoons. Two or three hundred foot-soldiers were under arms, standing

at ease in clusters here and there; and the officers were walking up and

down in twos and threes, chatting together, and smoking cigars.

At the end of the street, was an open space, where there would be a

dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds of vegetable refuse,

but for such things being thrown anywhere and everywhere in Rome, and

favouring no particular sort of locality. We got into a kind of

wash-house, belonging to a dwelling-house on this spot; and standing

there in an old cart, and on a heap of cartwheels piled against the wall,

looked, through a large grated window, at the scaffold, and straight down

the street beyond it until, in consequence of its turning off abruptly to

the left, our perspective was brought to a sudden termination, and had a

corpulent officer, in a cocked hat, for its crowning feature.

Nine o’clock struck, and ten o’clock struck, and nothing happened. All

the bells of all the churches rang as usual. A little parliament of dogs

assembled in the open space, and chased each other, in and out among the

soldiers. Fierce-looking Romans of the lowest class, in blue cloaks,

russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked, came and went, and talked together.

Women and children fluttered, on the skirts of the scanty crowd. One

large muddy spot was left quite bare, like a bald place on a man’s head.

A cigar-merchant, with an earthen pot of charcoal ashes in one hand, went

up and down, crying his wares. A pastry-merchant divided his attention

between the scaffold and his customers. Boys tried to climb up walls,

and tumbled down again. Priests and monks elbowed a passage for

themselves among the people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of the

knife: then went away. Artists, in inconceivable hats of the

middle-ages, and beards (thank Heaven!) of no age at all, flashed

picturesque scowls about them from their stations in the throng. One

gentleman (connected with the fine arts, I presume) went up and down in a

pair of Hessian-boots, with a red beard hanging down on his breast, and

his long and bright red hair, plaited into two tails, one on either side

of his head, which fell over his shoulders in front of him, very nearly

to his waist, and were carefully entwined and braided!

Eleven o’clock struck and still nothing happened. A rumour got about,

among the crowd, that the criminal would not confess; in which case, the

priests would keep him until the Ave Maria (sunset); for it is their

merciful custom never finally to turn the crucifix away from a man at

that pass, as one refusing to be shriven, and consequently a sinner

abandoned of the Saviour, until then. People began to drop off. The

officers shrugged their shoulders and looked doubtful. The dragoons, who

came riding up below our window, every now and then, to order an unlucky

hackney-coach or cart away, as soon as it had comfortably established

itself, and was covered with exulting people (but never before), became

imperious, and quick-tempered. The bald place hadn’t a straggling hair

upon it; and the corpulent officer, crowning the perspective, took a

world of snuff.

Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. ‘Attention!’ was among the

foot-soldiers instantly. They were marched up to the scaffold and formed

round it. The dragoons galloped to their nearer stations too. The

guillotine became the centre of a wood of bristling bayonets and shining

sabres. The people closed round nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A

long straggling stream of men and boys, who had accompanied the

procession from the prison, came pouring into the open space. The bald

spot was scarcely distinguishable from the rest. The cigar and

pastry-merchants resigned all thoughts of business, for the moment, and

abandoning themselves wholly to pleasure, got good situations in the

crowd. The perspective ended, now, in a troop of dragoons. And the

corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close to him,

which he could see, but we, the crowd, could not.

After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to the scaffold

from this church; and above their heads, coming on slowly and gloomily,

the effigy of Christ upon the cross, canopied with black. This was

carried round the foot of the scaffold, to the front, and turned towards

the criminal, that he might see it to the last. It was hardly in its

place, when he appeared on the platform, bare-footed; his hands bound;

and with the collar and neck of his shirt cut away, almost to the

shoulder. A young man—six-and-twenty—vigorously made, and well-shaped.

Face pale; small dark moustache; and dark brown hair.

He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first having his wife

brought to see him; and they had sent an escort for her, which had

occasioned the delay.

He immediately kneeled down, below the knife. His neck fitting into a

hole, made for the purpose, in a cross plank, was shut down, by another

plank above; exactly like the pillory. Immediately below him was a

leathern bag. And into it his head rolled instantly.

The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walking with it round the

scaffold, showing it to the people, before one quite knew that the knife

had fallen heavily, and with a rattling sound.

When it had travelled round the four sides of the scaffold, it was set

upon a pole in front—a little patch of black and white, for the long

street to stare at, and the flies to settle on. The eyes were turned

upward, as if he had avoided the sight of the leathern bag, and looked to

the crucifix. Every tinge and hue of life had left it in that instant.

It was dull, cold, livid, wax. The body also.

There was a great deal of blood. When we left the window, and went close

up to the scaffold, it was very dirty; one of the two men who were

throwing water over it, turning to help the other lift the body into a

shell, picked his way as through mire. A strange appearance was the

apparent annihilation of the neck. The head was taken off so close, that

it seemed as if the knife had narrowly escaped crushing the jaw, or

shaving off the ear; and the body looked as if there were nothing left

above the shoulder.

Nobody cared, or was at all affected. There was no manifestation of

disgust, or pity, or indignation, or sorrow. My empty pockets were

tried, several times, in the crowd immediately below the scaffold, as the

corpse was being put into its coffin. It was an ugly, filthy, careless,

sickening spectacle; meaning nothing but butchery beyond the momentary

interest, to the one wretched actor. Yes! Such a sight has one meaning

and one warning. Let me not forget it. The speculators in the lottery,

station themselves at favourable points for counting the gouts of blood

that spirt out, here or there; and buy that number. It is pretty sure to

have a run upon it.

The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansed, the scaffold

taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed. The executioner: an

outlaw _ex officio_ (what a satire on the Punishment!) who dare not, for

his life, cross the Bridge of St. Angelo but to do his work: retreated to

his lair, and the show was over.

* * * * *

At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, the Vatican, of

course, with its treasures of art, its enormous galleries, and

staircases, and suites upon suites of immense chambers, ranks highest and

stands foremost. Many most noble statues, and wonderful pictures, are

there; nor is it heresy to say that there is a considerable amount of

rubbish there, too. When any old piece of sculpture dug out of the

ground, finds a place in a gallery because it is old, and without any

reference to its intrinsic merits: and finds admirers by the hundred,

because it is there, and for no other reason on earth: there will be no

lack of objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who

employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles of Cant for

less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of taste for the mere

trouble of putting them on.

I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave my natural

perception of what is natural and true, at a palace-door, in Italy or

elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were travelling in the East.

I cannot forget that there are certain expressions of face, natural to

certain passions, and as unchangeable in their nature as the gait of a

lion, or the flight of an eagle. I cannot dismiss from my certain

knowledge, such commonplace facts as the ordinary proportion of men’s

arms, and legs, and heads; and when I meet with performances that do

violence to these experiences and recollections, no matter where they may

be, I cannot honestly admire them, and think it best to say so; in spite

of high critical advice that we should sometimes feign an admiration,

though we have it not.

Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a jolly young Waterman

representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and Perkins’s Drayman depicted as

an Evangelist, I see nothing to commend or admire in the performance,

however great its reputed Painter. Neither am I partial to libellous

Angels, who play on fiddles and bassoons, for the edification of

sprawling monks apparently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons of

galleries, Saint Francis and Saint Sebastian; both of whom I submit

should have very uncommon and rare merits, as works of art, to justify

their compound multiplication by Italian Painters.

It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and determined raptures in

which some critics indulge, is incompatible with the true appreciation of

the really great and transcendent works. I cannot imagine, for example,

how the resolute champion of undeserving pictures can soar to the amazing

beauty of Titian’s great picture of the Assumption of the Virgin at

Venice; or how the man who is truly affected by the sublimity of that

exquisite production, or who is truly sensible of the beauty of

Tintoretto’s great picture of the Assembly of the Blessed in the same

place, can discern in Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment, in the Sistine

chapel, any general idea, or one pervading thought, in harmony with the

stupendous subject. He who will contemplate Raphael’s masterpiece, the

Transfiguration, and will go away into another chamber of that same

Vatican, and contemplate another design of Raphael, representing (in

incredible caricature) the miraculous stopping of a great fire by Leo the

Fourth—and who will say that he admires them both, as works of

extraordinary genius—must, as I think, be wanting in his powers of

perception in one of the two instances, and, probably, in the high and

lofty one.

It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt whether,

sometimes, the rules of art are not too strictly observed, and whether it

is quite well or agreeable that we should know beforehand, where this

figure will be turning round, and where that figure will be lying down,

and where there will be drapery in folds, and so forth. When I observe

heads inferior to the subject, in pictures of merit, in Italian

galleries, I do not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I have a

suspicion that these great men, who were, of necessity, very much in the

hands of monks and priests, painted monks and priests a great deal too

often. I frequently see, in pictures of real power, heads quite below

the story and the painter: and I invariably observe that those heads are

of the Convent stamp, and have their counterparts among the Convent

inmates of this hour; so, I have settled with myself that, in such cases,

the lameness was not with the painter, but with the vanity and ignorance

of certain of his employers, who would be apostles—on canvas, at all

events.

The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova’s statues; the wonderful gravity

and repose of many of the ancient works in sculpture, both in the Capitol

and the Vatican; and the strength and fire of many others; are, in their

different ways, beyond all reach of words. They are especially

impressive and delightful, after the works of Bernini and his disciples,

in which the churches of Rome, from St. Peter’s downward, abound; and

which are, I verily believe, the most detestable class of productions in

the wide world. I would infinitely rather (as mere works of art) look

upon the three deities of the Past, the Present, and the Future, in the

Chinese Collection, than upon the best of these breezy maniacs; whose

every fold of drapery is blown inside-out; whose smallest vein, or

artery, is as big as an ordinary forefinger; whose hair is like a nest of

lively snakes; and whose attitudes put all other extravagance to shame.

Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no place in the world,

where such intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor’s chisel, are

to be found in such profusion, as in Rome.

There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities, in the Vatican; and

the ceilings of the rooms in which they are arranged, are painted to

represent a starlight sky in the Desert. It may seem an odd idea, but it

is very effective. The grim, half-human monsters from the temples, look

more grim and monstrous underneath the deep dark blue; it sheds a strange

uncertain gloomy air on everything—a mystery adapted to the objects; and

you leave them, as you find them, shrouded in a solemn night.

In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best advantage. There

are seldom so many in one place that the attention need become

distracted, or the eye confused. You see them very leisurely; and are

rarely interrupted by a crowd of people. There are portraits

innumerable, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Vandyke; heads by Guido, and

Domenichino, and Carlo Dolci; various subjects by Correggio, and Murillo,

and Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and Spagnoletto—many of which it would be

difficult, indeed, to praise too highly, or to praise enough; such is

their tenderness and grace; their noble elevation, purity, and beauty.

The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo Berberini, is a picture

almost impossible to be forgotten. Through the transcendent sweetness

and beauty of the face, there is a something shining out, that haunts me.

I see it now, as I see this paper, or my pen. The head is loosely draped

in white; the light hair falling down below the linen folds. She has

turned suddenly towards you; and there is an expression in the

eyes—although they are very tender and gentle—as if the wildness of a

momentary terror, or distraction, had been struggled with and overcome,

that instant; and nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful sorrow,

and a desolate earthly helplessness remained. Some stories say that

Guido painted it, the night before her execution; some other stories,

that he painted it from memory, after having seen her, on her way to the

scaffold. I am willing to believe that, as you see her on his canvas, so

she turned towards him, in the crowd, from the first sight of the axe,

and stamped upon his mind a look which he has stamped on mine as though I

had stood beside him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci:

blighting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by

grains: had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its

black, blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and

growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries. The History is

written in the Painting; written, in the dying girl’s face, by Nature’s

own hand. And oh! how in that one touch she puts to flight (instead of

making kin) the puny world that claim to be related to her, in right of

poor conventional forgeries!

I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey; the statue at whose

base Cæsar fell. A stern, tremendous figure! I imagined one of greater

finish: of the last refinement: full of delicate touches: losing its

distinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose blood was ebbing before it,

and settling into some such rigid majesty as this, as Death came creeping

over the upturned face.

The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are charming, and would be

full of interest were it only for the changing views they afford, of the

wild Campagna. But, every inch of ground, in every direction, is rich in

associations, and in natural beauties. There is Albano, with its lovely

lake and wooded shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not improved

since the days of Horace, and in these times hardly justifies his

panegyric. There is squalid Tivoli, with the river Anio, diverted from

its course, and plunging down, headlong, some eighty feet in search of

it. With its picturesque Temple of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag;

its minor waterfalls glancing and sparkling in the sun; and one good

cavern yawning darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots

on, low down under beetling rocks. There, too, is the Villa d’Este,

deserted and decaying among groves of melancholy pine and cypress trees,

where it seems to lie in state. Then, there is Frascati, and, on the

steep above it, the ruins of Tusculum, where Cicero lived, and wrote, and

adorned his favourite house (some fragments of it may yet be seen there),

and where Cato was born. We saw its ruined amphitheatre on a grey, dull

day, when a shrill March wind was blowing, and when the scattered stones

of the old city lay strewn about the lonely eminence, as desolate and

dead as the ashes of a long extinguished fire.

One day we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano, fourteen miles

distant; possessed by a great desire to go there by the ancient Appian

way, long since ruined and overgrown. We started at half-past seven in

the morning, and within an hour or so were out upon the open Campagna.

For twelve miles we went climbing on, over an unbroken succession of

mounds, and heaps, and hills, of ruin. Tombs and temples, overthrown and

prostrate; small fragments of columns, friezes, pediments; great blocks

of granite and marble; mouldering arches, grass-grown and decayed; ruin

enough to build a spacious city from; lay strewn about us. Sometimes,

loose walls, built up from these fragments by the shepherds, came across

our path; sometimes, a ditch between two mounds of broken stones,

obstructed our progress; sometimes, the fragments themselves, rolling

from beneath our feet, made it a toilsome matter to advance; but it was

always ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of the old road, above the ground;

now traced it, underneath a grassy covering, as if that were its grave;

but all the way was ruin. In the distance, ruined aqueducts went

stalking on their giant course along the plain; and every breath of wind

that swept towards us, stirred early flowers and grasses, springing up,

spontaneously, on miles of ruin. The unseen larks above us, who alone

disturbed the awful silence, had their nests in ruin; and the fierce

herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and then scowled out upon us from

their sleeping nooks, were housed in ruin. The aspect of the desolate

Campagna in one direction, where it was most level, reminded me of an

American prairie; but what is the solitude of a region where men have

never dwelt, to that of a Desert, where a mighty race have left their

footprints in the earth from which they have vanished; where the

resting-places of their Dead, have fallen like their Dead; and the broken

hour-glass of Time is but a heap of idle dust! Returning, by the road,

at sunset! and looking, from the distance, on the course we had taken in

the morning, I almost feel (as I had felt when I first saw it, at that

hour) as if the sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that

night, upon a ruined world.

To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an expedition, is a

fitting close to such a day. The narrow streets, devoid of footways, and

choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of dunghill-rubbish, contrast

so strongly, in their cramped dimensions, and their filth, and darkness,

with the broad square before some haughty church: in the centre of which,

a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the

Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps an

ancient pillar, with its honoured statue overthrown, supports a Christian

saint: Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter.

Then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from the spoliation of the

Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains: while here and there,

are broken arches and rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the

life comes pouring from a wound. The little town of miserable houses,

walled, and shut in by barred gates, is the quarter where the Jews are

locked up nightly, when the clock strikes eight—a miserable place,

densely populated, and reeking with bad odours, but where the people are

industrious and money-getting. In the day-time, as you make your way

along the narrow streets, you see them all at work: upon the pavement,

oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops: furbishing old clothes, and

driving bargains.

Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the moon once

more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and rolling

over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. In the narrow little

throat of street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with flaring lamps, and

boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky Romans round its smoky coppers

of hot broth, and cauliflower stew; its trays of fried fish, and its

flasks of wine. As you rattle round the sharply-twisting corner, a

lumbering sound is heard. The coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as

a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a large cross; by a

torch-bearer; and a priest: the latter chaunting as he goes. It is the

Dead Cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the

Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit

that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a year.

But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns ancient

temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or forums: it is strange to see,

how every fragment, whenever it is possible, has been blended into some

modern structure, and made to serve some modern purpose—a wall, a

dwelling-place, a granary, a stable—some use for which it never was

designed, and associated with which it cannot otherwise than lamely

assort. It is stranger still, to see how many ruins of the old

mythology: how many fragments of obsolete legend and observance: have

been incorporated into the worship of Christian altars here; and how, in

numberless respects, the false faith and the true are fused into a

monstrous union.

From one part of the city, looking out beyond the walls, a squat and

stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius) makes an opaque

triangle in the moonlight. But, to an English traveller, it serves to

mark the grave of Shelley too, whose ashes lie beneath a little garden

near it. Nearer still, almost within its shadow, lie the bones of Keats,

‘whose name is writ in water,’ that shines brightly in the landscape of a

calm Italian night.

The Holy Week in Rome is supposed to offer great attractions to all

visitors; but, saving for the sights of Easter Sunday, I would counsel

those who go to Rome for its own interest, to avoid it at that time. The

ceremonies, in general, are of the most tedious and wearisome kind; the

heat and crowd at every one of them, painfully oppressive; the noise,

hubbub, and confusion, quite distracting. We abandoned the pursuit of

these shows, very early in the proceedings, and betook ourselves to the

Ruins again. But, we plunged into the crowd for a share of the best of

the sights; and what we saw, I will describe to you.

At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very little, for by the

time we reached it (though we were early) the besieging crowd had filled

it to the door, and overflowed into the adjoining hall, where they were

struggling, and squeezing, and mutually expostulating, and making great

rushes every time a lady was brought out faint, as if at least fifty

people could be accommodated in her vacant standing-room. Hanging in the

doorway of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this curtain, some twenty

people nearest to it, in their anxiety to hear the chaunting of the

Miserere, were continually plucking at, in opposition to each other, that

it might not fall down and stifle the sound of the voices. The

consequence was, that it occasioned the most extraordinary confusion, and

seemed to wind itself about the unwary, like a Serpent. Now, a lady was

wrapped up in it, and couldn’t be unwound. Now, the voice of a stifling

gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching to be let out. Now, two

muffled arms, no man could say of which sex, struggled in it as in a

sack. Now, it was carried by a rush, bodily overhead into the chapel,

like an awning. Now, it came out the other way, and blinded one of the

Pope’s Swiss Guard, who had arrived, that moment, to set things to

rights.

Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of the Pope’s

gentlemen, who were very weary and counting the minutes—as perhaps his

Holiness was too—we had better opportunities of observing this eccentric

entertainment, than of hearing the Miserere. Sometimes, there was a

swell of mournful voices that sounded very pathetic and sad, and died

away, into a low strain again; but that was all we heard.

At another time, there was the Exhibition of Relics in St. Peter’s, which

took place at between six and seven o’clock in the evening, and was

striking from the cathedral being dark and gloomy, and having a great

many people in it. The place into which the relics were brought, one by

one, by a party of three priests, was a high balcony near the chief

altar. This was the only lighted part of the church. There are always a

hundred and twelve lamps burning near the altar, and there were two tall

tapers, besides, near the black statue of St. Peter; but these were

nothing in such an immense edifice. The gloom, and the general upturning

of faces to the balcony, and the prostration of true believers on the

pavement, as shining objects, like pictures or looking-glasses, were

brought out and shown, had something effective in it, despite the very

preposterous manner in which they were held up for the general

edification, and the great elevation at which they were displayed; which

one would think rather calculated to diminish the comfort derivable from

a full conviction of their being genuine.

On the Thursday, we went to see the Pope convey the Sacrament from the

Sistine chapel, to deposit it in the Capella Paolina, another chapel in

the Vatican;—a ceremony emblematical of the entombment of the Saviour

before His Resurrection. We waited in a great gallery with a great crowd

of people (three-fourths of them English) for an hour or so, while they

were chaunting the Miserere, in the Sistine chapel again. Both chapels

opened out of the gallery; and the general attention was concentrated on

the occasional opening and shutting of the door of the one for which the

Pope was ultimately bound. None of these openings disclosed anything

more tremendous than a man on a ladder, lighting a great quantity of

candles; but at each and every opening, there was a terrific rush made at

this ladder and this man, something like (I should think) a charge of the

heavy British cavalry at Waterloo. The man was never brought down,

however, nor the ladder; for it performed the strangest antics in the

world among the crowd—where it was carried by the man, when the candles

were all lighted; and finally it was stuck up against the gallery wall,

in a very disorderly manner, just before the opening of the other chapel,

and the commencement of a new chaunt, announced the approach of his

Holiness. At this crisis, the soldiers of the guard, who had been poking

the crowd into all sorts of shapes, formed down the gallery: and the

procession came up, between the two lines they made.

There were a few choristers, and then a great many priests, walking two

and two, and carrying—the good-looking priests at least—their lighted

tapers, so as to throw the light with a good effect upon their faces: for

the room was darkened. Those who were not handsome, or who had not long

beards, carried _their_ tapers anyhow, and abandoned themselves to

spiritual contemplation. Meanwhile, the chaunting was very monotonous

and dreary. The procession passed on, slowly, into the chapel, and the

drone of voices went on, and came on, with it, until the Pope himself

appeared, walking under a white satin canopy, and bearing the covered

Sacrament in both hands; cardinals and canons clustered round him, making

a brilliant show. The soldiers of the guard knelt down as he passed; all

the bystanders bowed; and so he passed on into the chapel: the white

satin canopy being removed from over him at the door, and a white satin

parasol hoisted over his poor old head, in place of it. A few more

couples brought up the rear, and passed into the chapel also. Then, the

chapel door was shut; and it was all over; and everybody hurried off

headlong, as for life or death, to see something else, and say it wasn’t

worth the trouble.

I think the most popular and most crowded sight (excepting those of

Easter Sunday and Monday, which are open to all classes of people) was

the Pope washing the feet of Thirteen men, representing the twelve

apostles, and Judas Iscariot. The place in which this pious office is

performed, is one of the chapels of St. Peter’s, which is gaily decorated

for the occasion; the thirteen sitting, ‘all of a row,’ on a very high

bench, and looking particularly uncomfortable, with the eyes of Heaven

knows how many English, French, Americans, Swiss, Germans, Russians,

Swedes, Norwegians, and other foreigners, nailed to their faces all the

time. They are robed in white; and on their heads they wear a stiff

white cap, like a large English porter-pot, without a handle. Each

carries in his hand, a nosegay, of the size of a fine cauliflower; and

two of them, on this occasion, wore spectacles; which, remembering the

characters they sustained, I thought a droll appendage to the costume.

There was a great eye to character. St. John was represented by a

good-looking young man. St. Peter, by a grave-looking old gentleman,

with a flowing brown beard; and Judas Iscariot by such an enormous

hypocrite (I could not make out, though, whether the expression of his

face was real or assumed) that if he had acted the part to the death and

had gone away and hanged himself, he would have left nothing to be

desired.

As the two large boxes, appropriated to ladies at this sight, were full

to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, we posted off, along with a

great crowd, to be in time at the Table, where the Pope, in person, waits

on these Thirteen; and after a prodigious struggle at the Vatican

staircase, and several personal conflicts with the Swiss guard, the whole

crowd swept into the room. It was a long gallery hung with drapery of

white and red, with another great box for ladies (who are obliged to

dress in black at these ceremonies, and to wear black veils), a royal box

for the King of Naples and his party; and the table itself, which, set

out like a ball supper, and ornamented with golden figures of the real

apostles, was arranged on an elevated platform on one side of the

gallery. The counterfeit apostles’ knives and forks were laid out on

that side of the table which was nearest to the wall, so that they might

be stared at again, without let or hindrance.

The body of the room was full of male strangers; the crowd immense; the

heat very great; and the pressure sometimes frightful. It was at its

height, when the stream came pouring in, from the feet-washing; and then

there were such shrieks and outcries, that a party of Piedmontese

dragoons went to the rescue of the Swiss guard, and helped them to calm

the tumult.

The ladies were particularly ferocious, in their struggles for places.

One lady of my acquaintance was seized round the waist, in the ladies’

box, by a strong matron, and hoisted out of her place; and there was

another lady (in a back row in the same box) who improved her position by

sticking a large pin into the ladies before her.

The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to see what was on the

table; and one Englishman seemed to have embarked the whole energy of his

nature in the determination to discover whether there was any mustard.

‘By Jupiter there’s vinegar!’ I heard him say to his friend, after he had

stood on tiptoe an immense time, and had been crushed and beaten on all

sides. ‘And there’s oil! I saw them distinctly, in cruets! Can any

gentleman, in front there, see mustard on the table? Sir, will you

oblige me! _Do_ you see a Mustard-Pot?’

The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform, after much expectation,

were marshalled, in line, in front of the table, with Peter at the top;

and a good long stare was taken at them by the company, while twelve of

them took a long smell at their nosegays, and Judas—moving his lips very

obtrusively—engaged in inward prayer. Then, the Pope, clad in a scarlet

robe, and wearing on his head a skull-cap of white satin, appeared in the

midst of a crowd of Cardinals and other dignitaries, and took in his hand

a little golden ewer, from which he poured a little water over one of

Peter’s hands, while one attendant held a golden basin; a second, a fine

cloth; a third, Peter’s nosegay, which was taken from him during the

operation. This his Holiness performed, with considerable expedition, on

every man in the line (Judas, I observed, to be particularly overcome by

his condescension); and then the whole Thirteen sat down to dinner.

Grace said by the Pope. Peter in the chair.

There was white wine, and red wine: and the dinner looked very good. The

courses appeared in portions, one for each apostle: and these being

presented to the Pope, by Cardinals upon their knees, were by him handed

to the Thirteen. The manner in which Judas grew more white-livered over

his victuals, and languished, with his head on one side, as if he had no

appetite, defies all description. Peter was a good, sound, old man, and

went in, as the saying is, ‘to win;’ eating everything that was given him

(he got the best: being first in the row) and saying nothing to anybody.

The dishes appeared to be chiefly composed of fish and vegetables. The

Pope helped the Thirteen to wine also; and, during the whole dinner,

somebody read something aloud, out of a large book—the Bible, I

presume—which nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the least

attention. The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled to each other,

from time to time, as if the thing were a great farce; and if they

thought so, there is little doubt they were perfectly right. His

Holiness did what he had to do, as a sensible man gets through a

troublesome ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was all over.

The Pilgrims’ Suppers: where lords and ladies waited on the Pilgrims, in

token of humility, and dried their feet when they had been well washed by

deputy: were very attractive. But, of all the many spectacles of

dangerous reliance on outward observances, in themselves mere empty

forms, none struck me half so much as the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase,

which I saw several times, but to the greatest advantage, or

disadvantage, on Good Friday.

This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps, said to have

belonged to Pontius Pilate’s house and to be the identical stair on which

Our Saviour trod, in coming down from the judgment-seat. Pilgrims ascend

it, only on their knees. It is steep; and, at the summit, is a chapel,

reported to be full of relics; into which they peep through some iron

bars, and then come down again, by one of two side staircases, which are

not sacred, and may be walked on.

On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computation, a hundred people,

slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, at one time; while

others, who were going up, or had come down—and a few who had done both,

and were going up again for the second time—stood loitering in the porch

below, where an old gentleman in a sort of watch-box, rattled a tin

canister, with a slit in the top, incessantly, to remind them that he

took the money. The majority were country-people, male and female.

There were four or five Jesuit priests, however, and some half-dozen

well-dressed women. A whole school of boys, twenty at least, were about

half-way up—evidently enjoying it very much. They were all wedged

together, pretty closely; but the rest of the company gave the boys as

wide a berth as possible, in consequence of their betraying some

recklessness in the management of their boots.

I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and so

unpleasant, as this sight—ridiculous in the absurd incidents inseparable

from it; and unpleasant in its senseless and unmeaning degradation.

There are two steps to begin with, and then a rather broad landing. The

more rigid climbers went along this landing on their knees, as well as up

the stairs; and the figures they cut, in their shuffling progress over

the level surface, no description can paint. Then, to see them watch

their opportunity from the porch, and cut in where there was a place next

the wall! And to see one man with an umbrella (brought on purpose, for

it was a fine day) hoisting himself, unlawfully, from stair to stair!

And to observe a demure lady of fifty-five or so, looking back, every now

and then, to assure herself that her legs were properly disposed!

There were such odd differences in the speed of different people, too.

Some got on as if they were doing a match against time; others stopped to

say a prayer on every step. This man touched every stair with his

forehead, and kissed it; that man scratched his head all the way. The

boys got on brilliantly, and were up and down again before the old lady

had accomplished her half-dozen stairs. But most of the penitents came

down, very sprightly and fresh, as having done a real good substantial

deed which it would take a good deal of sin to counterbalance; and the

old gentleman in the watch-box was down upon them with his canister while

they were in this humour, I promise you.

As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably droll enough,

there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure on a crucifix,

resting on a sort of great iron saucer: so rickety and unsteady, that

whenever an enthusiastic person kissed the figure, with more than usual

devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer, with more than common

readiness (for it served in this respect as a second or supplementary

canister), it gave a great leap and rattle, and nearly shook the

attendant lamp out: horribly frightening the people further down, and

throwing the guilty party into unspeakable embarrassment.

On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, the Pope bestows

his benediction on the people, from the balcony in front of St. Peter’s.

This Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue: so cloudless, balmy,

wonderfully bright: that all the previous bad weather vanished from the

recollection in a moment. I had seen the Thursday’s Benediction dropping

damply on some hundreds of umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then,

in all the hundred fountains of Rome—such fountains as they are!—and on

this Sunday morning they were running diamonds. The miles of miserable

streets through which we drove (compelled to a certain course by the

Pope’s dragoons: the Roman police on such occasions) were so full of

colour, that nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded aspect. The

common people came out in their gayest dresses; the richer people in

their smartest vehicles; Cardinals rattled to the church of the Poor

Fishermen in their state carriages; shabby magnificence flaunted its

thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked hats, in the sun; and every

coach in Rome was put in requisition for the Great Piazza of St. Peter’s.

One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at least! Yet there was

ample room. How many carriages were there, I don’t know; yet there was

room for them too, and to spare. The great steps of the church were

densely crowded. There were many of the Contadini, from Albano (who

delight in red), in that part of the square, and the mingling of bright

colours in the crowd was beautiful. Below the steps the troops were

ranged. In the magnificent proportions of the place they looked like a

bed of flowers. Sulky Romans, lively peasants from the neighbouring

country, groups of pilgrims from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing

foreigners of all nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many

insects; and high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and making

rainbow colours in the light, the two delicious fountains welled and

tumbled bountifully.

A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the balcony; and the

sides of the great window were bedecked with crimson drapery. An awning

was stretched, too, over the top, to screen the old man from the hot rays

of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were turned up to this window.

In due time, the chair was seen approaching to the front, with the

gigantic fans of peacock’s feathers, close behind. The doll within it

(for the balcony is very high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny

arms, while all the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some,

but not by any means the greater part, kneeled down. The guns upon the

ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that the

benediction was given; drums beat; trumpets sounded; arms clashed; and

the great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, and

scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like parti-coloured sand.

What a bright noon it was, as we rode away! The Tiber was no longer

yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the old bridges, that made them

fresh and hale again. The Pantheon, with its majestic front, all seamed

and furrowed like an old face, had summer light upon its battered walls.

Every squalid and desolate hut in the Eternal City (bear witness every

grim old palace, to the filth and misery of the plebeian neighbour that

elbows it, as certain as Time has laid its grip on its patrician head!)

was fresh and new with some ray of the sun. The very prison in the

crowded street, a whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense of

the day, dropping through its chinks and crevices: and dismal prisoners

who could not wind their faces round the barricading of the blocked-up

windows, stretched out their hands, and clinging to the rusty bars,

turned _them_ towards the overflowing street: as if it were a cheerful

fire, and could be shared in, that way.

But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full moon, what a

sight it was to see the Great Square full once more, and the whole

church, from the cross to the ground, lighted with innumerable lanterns,

tracing out the architecture, and winking and shining all round the

colonnade of the piazza! And what a sense of exultation, joy, delight,

it was, when the great bell struck half-past seven—on the instant—to

behold one bright red mass of fire, soar gallantly from the top of the

cupola to the extremest summit of the cross, and the moment it leaped

into its place, become the signal of a bursting out of countless lights,

as great, and red, and blazing as itself, from every part of the gigantic

church; so that every cornice, capital, and smallest ornament of stone,

expressed itself in fire: and the black, solid groundwork of the enormous

dome seemed to grow transparent as an egg-shell!

A train of gunpowder, an electric chain—nothing could be fired, more

suddenly and swiftly, than this second illumination; and when we had got

away, and gone upon a distant height, and looked towards it two hours

afterwards, there it still stood, shining and glittering in the calm

night like a jewel! Not a line of its proportions wanting; not an angle

blunted; not an atom of its radiance lost.

The next night—Easter Monday—there was a great display of fireworks from

the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an opposite house, and made

our way, to our places, in good time, through a dense mob of people

choking up the square in front, and all the avenues leading to it; and so

loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, that it seemed

ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on this

bridge (execrable works), and, among them, great vessels full of burning

tow were placed: glaring strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not

less strangely on the stone counterfeits above them.

The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and then, for

twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet

of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colour, size, and

speed: while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, or

scores, but hundreds at a time. The concluding burst—the Girandola—was

like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive castle, without

smoke or dust.

In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed; the moon

was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the river; and

half-a-dozen men and boys, with bits of lighted candle in their hands:

moving here and there, in search of anything worth having, that might

have been dropped in the press: had the whole scene to themselves.

By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined Rome, after all this

firing and booming, to take our leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it by

moonlight before (I could never get through a day without going back to

it), but its tremendous solitude that night is past all telling. The

ghostly pillars in the Forum; the Triumphal Arches of Old Emperors; those

enormous masses of ruins which were once their palaces; the grass-grown

mounds that mark the graves of ruined temples; the stones of the Via

Sacra, smooth with the tread of feet in ancient Rome; even these were

dimmed, in their transcendent melancholy, by the dark ghost of its bloody

holidays, erect and grim; haunting the old scene; despoiled by pillaging

Popes and fighting Princes, but not laid; wringing wild hands of weed,

and grass, and bramble; and lamenting to the night in every gap and

broken arch—the shadow of its awful self, immovable!

As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next day, on our way to

Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that a little wooden cross had

been erected on the spot where the poor Pilgrim Countess was murdered.

So, we piled some loose stones about it, as the beginning of a mound to

her memory, and wondered if we should ever rest there again, and look

back at Rome.