In Rome one's fellow-tourists are a constant source of gratification
and surprise. I thought that American travellers were by no means the
most absurd among those we saw, nor even the loudest in their approval
of the Eternal City. A certain order of German greenness affords,
perhaps, the pleasantest pasturage for the ruminating mind. For
example, at the Villa Ludovisi there was, beside numerous Englishry
in detached bodies, a troop of Germans, chiefly young men, frugally
pursuing the Sehenswürdigkeiten in the social manner of their nation.
They took their enjoyment very noisily, and wrangled together with
furious amiability as they looked at Guercino's "Aurora." Then two of
them parted from the rest, and went to a little summer-house in the
gardens, while the others followed us to the top of the Casino. There
they caught sight of their friends in the arbor, and the spectacle
appeared to overwhelm them. They bowed, they took off their hats, they
waved their handkerchiefs. It was not enough: one young fellow mounted
on the balustrade of the roof at his neck's risk, lifted his hat on
his cane and flourished it in greeting to the heart's-friends in the
arbor, from whom he had parted two minutes before.
In strange contrast to the producer of this enthusiasm, so pumped and
so unmistakably mixed with beer, a fat and pallid Englishwoman sat
in a chair upon the roof and coldly, coldly sketched the lovely
landscape. And she and the blonde young English girl beside her
pronounced a little dialogue together, which I give, because I saw
that they meant it for the public:
_The Young Girl_.--I wonder, you knoa, you don't draw-ow St. Petuh's!
_The Artist_.--O ah, you knoa, I can draw-ow St. Petuh's from so
mennee powints.
I am afraid that the worst form of American greenness appears abroad
in a desire to be perfectly up in critical appreciation of the arts,
and to approach the great works in the spirit of the connoisseur. The
ambition is not altogether a bad one. Still I could not help laughing
at a fellow-countryman when he told me that he had not yet seen
Raphael's "Transfiguration," because he wished to prepare his mind for
understanding the original by first looking at all the copies he could
find.