Indeed, it seems to me that all moisture of romance and adventure has
been wellnigh sucked out of travel in Italy, and that compared with
the old time, when the happy wayfarer journeyed by vettura through the
innumerable little states of the Peninsula,--halted every other mile
to show his passport, and robbed by customs officers in every color of
shabby uniform and every variety of cocked hat,--the present railroad
period is one of but stale and insipid flavor. Much of local life and
color remains, of course; but the hurried traveller sees little of it,
and, passed from one grand hotel to another, without material change
in the cooking or the methods of extortion, he might nearly as well
remain at Paris. The Italians, who live to so great extent by the
travel through their country, learn our abominable languages and
minister to our detestable comfort and propriety, till we have slight
chance to know them as we once could,--musical, picturesque, and full
of sweet, natural knaveries, graceful falsehood, and all uncleanness.
Rome really belongs to the Anglo-Saxon nations, and the Pope and the
past seem to be carried on entirely for our diversion. Every thing is
systematized as thoroughly as in a museum where the objects are all
ticketed; and our prejudices are consulted even down to alms-giving,
Honest Beppo is gone from the steps in the Piazza di Spagna, and now
the beggars are labeled like policemen, with an immense plate bearing
the image of St. Peter, so that you may know you give to a worthy
person when you bestow charity on one of them, and not, alas! to some
abandoned impostor, as in former days. One of these highly recommended
mendicants gave the last finish to the system, and begged of us in
English! No custodian will answer you, if he can help it, in the
Italian which he speaks so exquisitely, preferring to speak bad French
instead, and in all the shops on the Corso the English tongue is _de
rigueur_.
After our dear friends at the Conservatorio, I think we found one of
the most simple and interesting of Romans in the monk who showed us
the Catacombs of St. Sebastian. These catacombs, he assured us, were
not restored like those of St. Calixtus, but were just as the martyrs
left them; and, as I do not remember to have read anywhere that
they are formed merely of long, low, narrow, wandering underground
passages, lined on either side with tombs in tiers like berths on
a steamer, and expanding here and there into small square chambers,
bearing the traces of ancient frescos, and evidently used as
chapels,--I venture to offer the information here. The reader is to
keep in his mind a darkness broken by the light of wax tapers, a
close smell, and crookedness and narrowness, or he cannot realize the
catacombs as they are in fact. Our monkish guide, before entering the
passage leading from the floor of the church to the tombs, in which
there was still some "fine small dust" of the martyrs, warned us that
to touch it was to incur the penalty of excommunication, and then
gently craved pardon for having mentioned the fact. But, indeed, it
was only to persons who showed a certain degree of reverence that
these places were now exhibited; for some Protestants who had been
permitted there had stolen handfuls of the precious ashes, merely to
throw away. I assured him that I thought them beasts to do it; and I
was afterwards puzzled to know what should attract their wantonness in
the remnants of mortality, hardly to be distinguished from the common
earth out of which the catacombs were dug.