I.

The first view of the ruins in the Forum brought a keen sense of

disappointment. I knew that they could only be mere fragments and

rubbish, but I was not prepared to find them so. I learned that I

had all along secretly hoped for some dignity of neighborhood, some

affectionate solicitude on the part of Nature to redeem these works of

Art from the destruction that had befallen them. But in hollows below

the level of the dirty cowfield, wandered over by evil-eyed buffaloes,

and obscenely defiled by wild beasts of men, there stood here an

arch, there a pillar, yonder a cluster of columns crowned by a bit

of frieze; and yonder again, a fragment of temple, half-gorged by

the façade of a hideous Renaissance church; then a height of vaulted

brick-work, and, leading on to the Coliseum, another arch, and then

incoherent columns overthrown and mixed with dilapidated walls--mere

phonographic consonants, dumbly representing the past, out of which

all vocal glory had departed. The Coliseum itself does not much better

express a certain phase of Roman life than does the Arena at Verona;

it is larger only to the foot-rule, and it seemed not grander

otherwise, while it is vastly more ruinous. Even the Pantheon failed

to impress me at first sight, though I found myself disposed to return

to it again and again, and to be more and more affected by it.

Modern Rome appeared, first and last, hideous. It is the least

interesting town in Italy, and the architecture is hopelessly

ugly--especially the architecture of the churches. The Papal city

contrives at the beginning to hide the Imperial city from your

thought, as it hides it in such a great degree from your eye, and old

Rome only occurs to you in a sort of stupid wonder over the depth at

which it is buried. I confess that I was glad to get altogether away

from it after a first look at the ruins in the Forum, and to take

refuge in the Conservatorio delle Mendicanti, where we were charged

to see the little Virginia G. The Conservatorio, though a charitable

institution, is not so entirely meant for mendicants as its name would

imply, but none of the many young girls there were the children of

rich men. They were often enough of parentage actually hungry and

ragged, but they were often also the daughters of honest poor folk,

who paid a certain sum toward their maintenance and education in the

Conservatorio. Such was the case with little Virginia, whose father

was at Florence, doubly impeded from seeing her by the fact that he

had fought against the Pope for the Republic of 1848, and by the

other fact that he had since wrought the Pope a yet deadlier injury by

turning Protestant.

Ringing a garrulous bell that continued to jingle some time after we

were admitted, we found ourselves in a sort of reception-room, of the

general quality of a cellar, and in the presence of a portress who was

perceptibly preserved from mold only by the great pot of coals that

stood in the centre of the place. Some young girls, rather pretty than

not, attended the ancient woman, and kindly acted as the ear-trumpet

through which our wishes were conveyed to her mind. The Conservatorio

was not, so far, as conventual as we had imagined it; but as the

gentleman of the party was strongly guarded by female friends, and

asked at once to see the Superior, he concluded that there was,

perhaps, something so unusually reassuring to the recluses in his

appearance and manner that they had not thought it necessary to behave

very rigidly. It later occurred to this gentleman that the promptness

with which the pretty mendicants procured him an interview with the

Superior had a flavor of self-interest in; and that he who came to the

Conservatorio in the place of a father might have been for a moment

ignorantly viewed as a yet dearer and tenderer possibility. From

whatever danger there was in this error the Superior soon appeared to

rescue him, and we were invited into a more ceremonious apartment on

the first floor, and the little Virginia was sent for. The visit

of the strangers caused a tumult and interest in the quiet old

Conservatorio of which it is hard to conceive now, and the excitement

grew tremendous when it appeared that, the signori were Americani and

Protestanti. We imparted a savor of novelty and importance to Virginia

herself, and when she appeared, the Superior and her assistant looked

at her with no small curiosity and awe, of which the little maiden

instantly became conscious, and began to take advantage. Accompanying

us over the building and through the grounds, she cut her small

friends wherever she met them, and was not more than respectful to the

assistant.

It was from an instinct of hospitality that we were shown the

Conservatorio, and instructed in regard to all its purposes. We saw

the neat dormitories with their battalions of little white beds; the

kitchen with its gigantic coppers for boiling broth, and the refectory

with the smell of the frugal dinners of generations of mendicants in

it. The assistant was very proud of the neatness of every thing, and

was glad to talk of that, or, indeed, any thing else. It appeared that

the girls were taught reading, writing, and plain sewing when they

were young, and that the Conservatorio was chiefly sustained by pious

contributions and bequests. Any lingering notion of the conventual

character of the place was dispelled by the assistant's hurrying to

say, "And when we can get the poor things well married, we are glad to

do so."

"But how does any one ever see them?"

"Eh! well, that is easily managed. Once a month we dress the

marriageable girls in their best, and take them for a walk in the

street. If an honest young man falls in love with one of them going

by, he comes to the Superior, and describes her as well as he can,

and demands to see her. She is called, and if both are pleased, the

marriage is arranged. You see it is a very simple affair."

And there was, to the assistant's mind, nothing odd in the whole

business, insomuch that I felt almost ashamed of marveling at it.

Issuing from the backdoor of the convent, we ascended by stairs and

gateways into garden spaces, chiefly planted with turnips and the like

poor but respectable vegetables, and curiously adorned with fragments

of antique statuary, and here and there a fountain in a corner,

trickling from moss-grown rocks, and falling into a trough of

travertine, about the feet of some poor old goddess or Virtue who had

forgotten what her name was.

Once, the assistant said, speaking as if the thing had been within

her recollection, though it must have been centuries before, the

antiquities of the Conservatorio were much more numerous and striking;

but they were now removed to the different museums. Nevertheless they

had still a beautiful prospect left, which we were welcome to enjoy if

we would follow her; and presently, to our surprise, we stepped from

the garden upon the roof of the Temple of Peace. The assistant had not

boasted without reason: away before us stretched the Campagna, a level

waste, and empty, but for the umbrella-palms that here and there

waved like black plumes upon it, and for the arched lengths of

the acqueducts that seemed to stalk down from the ages across the

melancholy expanse like files of giants, with now and then a ruinous

gap in the line, as if one had fallen out weary by the way. The city

all around us glittered asleep in the dim December sunshine, and

far below us,--on the length of the Forum over which the Appian Way

stretched from the Capitoline Hill under the Arch of Septimius Severus

and the Arch of Titus to the Arch of Constantine, leaving the Coliseum

on the left, and losing itself in the foliage of the suburbs,--the

Past seemed struggling to emerge from the ruins, and to reshape and

animate itself anew. The effort was more successful than that which we

had helped the Past to make when standing on the level of the Forum;

but Antiquity must have been painfully conscious of the incongruity of

the red-legged Zouaves wandering over the grass, and of the bewildered

tourists trying to make her out with their Murrays.

In a day or two after this we returned again to our Conservatorio,

where we found that the excitement created by our first visit had been

kept fully alive by the events attending the photographing of Virginia

for her father. Not only Virginia was there to receive us, but her

grandmother also--an old, old woman, dumb through some infirmity of

age, who could only weep and smile in token of her content. I think

she had but a dim idea, after all, of what went on beyond the visible

fact of Virginia's photograph, and that she did not quite understand

how we could cause it to be taken for her son. She was deeply

compassionated by the Superior, who rendered her pity with a great

deal of gesticulation, casting up her eyes, shrugging her shoulders,

and sighing grievously. But the assistant's cheerfulness could not be

abated even by the spectacle of extreme age; and she made the most of

the whole occasion, recounting with great minuteness all the incidents

of the visit to the photographer's, and running to get the dress

Virginia sat in, that we might see how exactly it was given in the

picture. Then she gave us much discourse concerning the Conservatorio

and its usages, and seemed not to wish us to think that life there

was altogether eventless. "Here we have a little amusement also," she

said. "The girls have their relatives to visit them sometimes, and

then in the evening they dance. Oh, they enjoy themselves! I am half

old (_mezzo-vecchia_). I am done with these things. But for youth,

always kept down, something lively is wanted."

When we took leave of these simple folks, we took leave of almost the

only natural and unprepared aspect of Italian life which we were to

see in Rome; but we did not know this at the time.