Chapter III: Part 3

And yet, if the visitor is a sentimentalist, no Italian sun is going to rob him of his reverie: he will be hearing the cries of the Christian martyrs at a Colosseum matinée, and beholding the pride and beauty of ancient Rome loitering along the palace-lined streets on their way to the afternoon diversions at the Baths of Caracalla. And the Forum will bustle with the state business of the world, Cicero will mount the rostrum, and a train of Vestal Virgins pass demurely along the Sacra Via. He will attend the mournful wails of priests at worship in the temples of Jupiter and Saturn, and thrill to see a detachment of the Prætorian Guard dash into the Forum and acclaim some new military hero as emperor. But this should be sufficient to startle him back to the Rome of to-day, and as he looks anxiously over to the northwestern walls, beyond which once stood that infamous camp, he will doubtless rejoice devoutly that the sober and law-abiding soldiery that drills there now is something so very different from the uncontrollable “Frankenstein” that the Cæsars devised to their own undoing. It is, in consequence, with hearty complacence that he will turn his back on even the aristocratic treasure-heap of the lordly Palatine, conscious that if the cry were raised to-day, “Why is the Forum crowded, what means this stir in Rome?” the reply would be forthcoming, “Tourists and picture-card sellers and peddlers of cameo pins.”

Parenthetically, it may be observed that, although pathos and bathos rub elbows in the foregoing reflections, still incongruities come very near to being the rule in latter-day Rome. What is to be said of obelisks of the Pharaohs with Christian crosses on their tops? Of the column of Trajan with St. Peter at its summit, and at its base those twentieth-century cats that visitors feed with fish bought from stands at hand for the purpose? Of St. Paul on the column of Marcus Aurelius, and the sign of an American life insurance company across the street? Of a modern playhouse in the mausoleum of Augustus where the emperors were buried? Of the present use of King Tarquin’s great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, just as good as it was twenty-five hundred years ago? Of electric lights where Cincinnatus had his cabbage-farm? Of a Jewish cemetery above the circus of Tarquin? Of steam-heated flats in the gardens of Sallust? Of modern houses at the Tarpeian Rock, and the Baths of Agrippa? Of street cars with the name of Diocletian? Of automobiles on the Flaminian Way? Of tennis courts beside the burial-place of a Cæsar? Of motor-cycles around the tomb of the Scipios? Of an annual Derby down the Appian Way? Of railroad trains beside the old Servian Wall? Of telephone booths on the banks of Father Tiber? Modernism is, indeed, with us, as his Holiness laments!

The sultry, torrid hour that lies between three o’clock and four of a summer afternoon usually sees Rome rubbing her eyes, fresh from her siesta, that ancient midday nap that Varro declared he could not live without; and you may be sure the final rub would be one of vast amusement if she were to see you walking on the sunny side of the street, where, by the terms of her immemorial observation, only dogs and foreigners go. The heat is intense on these lava pavements; one keeps religiously to the shade. But Roman society is not rubbing its eyes,—at least, not in town,—for _tout le monde_ is passing the annual _villeggiatura_ at its villa in the hills or by the sea, economizing for the fashionable expenditure of the winter, and, incidentally, obliging the people who stay in town with that much more of elbow room on the Corso and other popular promenades. All of which helps a little in making the stroll from the Capitoline Hill to the Pincian Gardens rather more comfortable than moving around the hot-room of a Turkish bath.

As we pick our way down the Capitoline slope, pass Marcus Aurelius on his fat bronze steed, and “bend our steps,” as the old novels used to say, toward the tramway-haunted uproar of the Piazza di Venezia, the rabble rout of the slum district on the left affords a lively conception of the element that goes farthest to make Rome howl. Having been told that this old Ghetto had been swept and garnished, one is properly indignant at finding the air redolent of garlic and everybody under conviction that the chief end of man is to amass macaroni and enjoy it forever. You gaze askance on a universal costume of filth and rags, and hurry along through it, protesting that, while you would not invoke the precedent of Pope Paul IV’s sixteenth-century method of putting gates across the streets, and locking the people in and making the men wear yellow hats and the women yellow veils, as he did with the Jews, still some expedient ought to be hit upon for making the district look a little less like a camp of Falstaff recruits. “A frowzy-headed laborer,” say you, “shouldering a basket of charcoal, may seem attractive in Mr. Storey’s ‘Roba di Roma,’ but in real life one likes to think men can afford shirts, and not have to wear rags over their shoulders after the manner of a herald’s tabard.” You pause a moment to watch the disappearance of a yard of macaroni down some red gullet, and George Augustus Sala’s description of the banquet of the seven wagoners rushes to mind: “Upon this vast mess they fell tooth and nail. The simile is, perchance, not strictly correct. Teeth may be _de trop_. You should never bite or chew macaroni, but swallow each pipe whole, grease and all, as though it were so much flattery. But their nails they did use, seeing that they ate the macaroni with their fingers. What wondrous twistings and turnings-back of their heads, what play of the muscles of their throats, what straining of their eyeballs and vasty openings of their jaws, did I study as they swallowed their food.”

And now we begin to have the usual experience of Roman mendicancy. Truly, there is no beggar like your Roman beggar. He has raised his profession to both an art and a nuisance. Appeals to charity take every form and phase. Evidences of anatomical disaster are utilized to excite pity at so much per sigh. Tales of misery and misfortune ring all the changes of fervency and fancy. Their whines are both groveling and dramatic. “Niente!” they moan, as with woe-begone faces and pathetic twists of their necks they sidle up with stiff gestures of weary and hopeless expressiveness; “Illustrissimo! Eccellenza! Per amor di Dio!” You could not bluff them, though you were armored in all the calloused nonchalance of the average ambulance surgeon; and your doom is sealed if you undertake to bandy repartee, for their invective is as searching as a satire of Juvenal. Whether you give or not, their volubility and frankness continue unabated; for you are savagely cursed if you decline, and if you acquiesce are blessed strictly in proportion to the gratuity. Indubitably, in the social scheme of the beggar we be brethren all and should each aid the other—after the philosophy of the Italian, saying, “One hand washes the other, and both the face.” The Roman, understanding them, passes coolly by; but the foreigner, who is their special prey, gives up in desperation, on the principle of the local proverb, “We are in the ballroom and we must dance.”

Parenthetically, again, they say the authorities are helpless to curb this universal Roman nuisance. It is an institution. These beggars come of all classes—from the Capuchin and Franciscan lay brothers who go about in brown robes, rope girdles, and sandals and present a basket for food, to the dirty urchins of the Appian Way who stop your carriage with their acrobatic proficiency and then howl for _soldi_ in the name of all the saints. Many a beggar here is a bank depositor; and any of them who can retain the monopoly of the door of a popular church may confidently look forward to affluence. Very likely they are better business men, in their way, than many who drop coins into their pathetic, swindling hands. _À chacun son métier._

It would extend a Brooklynite to negotiate the crossing of the Piazza di Venezia. It is the grand gathering-place of tramcars, busses, cabs, carts, bicycles, and every other form of conveyance. You will certainly find a “Seeing Rome” automobile, with the lecturer pointing out the castellated old Palazzo di Venezia and telling his people that it was built of stone from the Colosseum, and has been the seat of the Austrian embassy to the Curia for over a hundred years. So far as traffic is concerned, this is the heart of Rome. Nothing less than a whirlpool could be expected in a spot that is the confluence of such full streams of life as the Corso and the Via Nazionale. One admires its broad, busy sweep, and the dignity of the solid old gray buildings that rim it. No mid-afternoon heat lessens the bustle and activity that rages here; even the experienced natives can be found in large numbers, jostling their way across it, and visitors pass through in droves to reach the Cenci Palace or to see the spot where Paul dwelt for two years “in his own hired house.”

If you stopped, as I did, at one of the hotels near the Baths of Diocletian, the Via Nazionale will have a friendly suggestion of the nearest way home. With thoughts of that temporary home the recollection often comes to me of the mildly stimulating delight I once found in getting lost by night in this city of superior chance encounters. It seemed, on the first occasion, as though I had scarcely turned the corner into the Via Cavour before a delicious conviction of unfamiliarity with my surroundings assured me I was pursuing a course that was certain, sooner or later, to lead to artistic discovery or adventure. Nothing was easier than getting lost, for I was newly arrived; and yet localities and objects of consequence were not without significance, for, like every one else, I had a vivid idea of the landmarks of the famous city. And first of all, I discovered I was passing the infamous spot where “the impious Tullia” drove her chariot across the bleeding body of her royal father; whence I hastened on, with furtive glances. Next, after some speculation I identified an enormous church to be none other than the famous Santa Maria Maggiore, whose ceilings, I had read, were crusted with the first gold brought from the New World, and to whose high altar the popes used to come by torchlight for New Year’s mass. I thrilled at the incredible reflection that the street cars crossing that corner would be passing, a moment later, the site of the gardens of Mæcenas where Horace and Virgil had mused and read their verses. A few blocks farther on I came to a halt before the house of Lucrezia Borgia; and I tried to fancy the circumstances of the night of their quiet family supper there, before the children took leave of their mother with false words of affection and Cæsar hurried to gather his bravos and overtook Francesco, and, muffled in a cloak, sat his horse in easy unconcern while his brother was done to death and thrown into the Tiber. For relief I turned across the street to the church of St. Peter-in-Chains, and imagined how Michael Angelo’s vigorous Moses might be appearing in the dark of the side aisle, and thought of the master striking the completed work with his mallet and crying out, “Now, speak!” On I rambled, through a block or two of darkened shops and gloomy houses, and suddenly a great open space yawned before me and I was staring at rows of column stumps, mellowed and battered, and among them a tall, ghostly shaft of marble with a spiral band of half-mutilated reliefs winding away up to the summit, where was the dusky outline of a sculptured form. It was the old school-geography picture come to life! There was I in the heart of an unfamiliar city, alone, by night, with this vast relic of the ancients. It was like Stanley finding Livingstone in Africa. I felt I had honestly discovered it and that it ought to be mine. It was the Forum of Trajan!

It will seem a violent transition to jump from midnight to mid-afternoon, but the plunge must be taken. The normal state of the Corso at three-thirty of a summer afternoon is one of leisurely activity. The crowds are lethargic, slow-moving, inclined to curiosity. An interesting social comedy is proceeding, with foreign ladies playing sight-seeing rôles, clutching their red Baedekers and Hare’s “Walks in Rome.” Jostling groups of them gather before the beguiling shop windows, and occasionally one enters and possesses herself of a Roman pearl or cameo, or perhaps a mosaic or copy of an antique bronze. Business people pass along in their habitually distrait manner, and priests beyond number brighten the scene with habits of every hue. There is little enough of room in the middle of the street and scarcely any on the sidewalks. Like all Roman thoroughfares, the Corso is clean and distinguished. Long perspectives of gayly awninged shops extend toward the Piazza del Popolo, agreeably broken here and there by the interposition of mellow old palace fronts and richly sculptured baroque façades; and there is frequent opportunity for passing glimpses into cool courtyards attractive with foliage and fountains.

Visitors keep forsaking the Corso at every turning to make inspiring discoveries in the tangled mesh of side streets. We are at liberty to suspect those who go to the west, of sentimental designs on the star under the dome of a neighboring church that marks the spot where Julius Cæsar was assassinated in Pompey’s Senate House; or, perhaps, of an intention to visit the sombre statue of Giordano Bruno in the Field of Flowers, and reflect upon what a constant rebuke it must be to the church that burned him there, three centuries ago, for persisting in his “modernism” to the outrageous extremity of defending the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and like heresies of the hour.

Afternoon walks in Rome should be frequently interrupted, not only to escape the floods of sunshine, but to find out occasionally what is behind the mellow garden walls over whose tops glistening, green foliage droops enticingly down with hints of cool and restful retreats. Such an opportunity presents itself here in the rare Colonna Gardens, just around the corner of the great Colonna Palace where earlier in the day the Titians and Tintorettos ravish the artistic. Spacious, elegant Rome has nothing more charming and exquisite than such gardens as these. Art and antiquity are everywhere in restful profusion—“storied urn and animated bust.” It is even said that sculptures are to be found almost anywhere underground for the mere pains of exhuming. One rests with infinite satisfaction in the deep shade of eucalyptus, cypress, ilex, and laurel, to the sweet singing of multitudes of birds. There are roses and oranges in bloom, and tall hedges of clipped box, and musical little cascades tumble down from terrace to terrace and drip over mossy marble steps. In this particular garden come thoughts of Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, who so often strolled along these very paths and communed in their serene and beautiful friendship. Theirs was a faith that brought its own reward.

And what, pray, without its amazing faith, would this Catholic Rome be, anyway? _À chaque saint sa chandelle._ Otherwise, what would become of that marble block from the floor of the Appian Way—which the stubborn archæologists will insist was really paved with silex—that is preserved with so much reverence in the church of Domine Quo Vadis, as showing the impressions of the feet of Our Lord and St. Peter when they faced each other there on the occasion of the memorable rebuke of the latter for his proposed flight from Rome? And how about the _scala santa_—the worn and venerated marble steps in the shrine near the church of St. John Lateran, which were brought from Jerusalem and up which we are told Christ passed on his way to the judgment seat of Pilate? The faithful thank God for the privilege of ascending them on their knees, praying, and receiving the indulgence of a thousand years of purgatory; and they were worn thin with kisses long before the day when Martin Luther got halfway up and suddenly quit and came tramping down with a voice crying in his ears, “The just shall live by faith.” And without faith, where would be the use of the miraculous Bambino, the adored and bejeweled little wooden image that a Franciscan pilgrim carved from a tree of the Mount of Olives and which is imposingly domiciled in a glass case in the church of Ara Cœli? They say there is no disease that the Bambino cannot cure; and when his keepers accompany him through the streets on his errands of mercy, conveyed in his magnificent buff coach, people kneel by hundreds and beseech a blessing. Such blessing may be secured, though possibly of a diminished efficacy, by buying one of his legended cards at the church and having the priest rub it across the glass top of the case. Who would eschew faith and forfeit such advantages? Would we not still have Life’s puzzle, and without this key? Might we not even be reduced to a plane as confused and desperate as that of the famous Sultan of Turkey, who knew so little of music that, when his new Italian band had finished tuning-up, he shouted in delight to the leader, “Marshallah! Let the dogs play that tune again!”

At this languorous hour of the afternoon the broad, sunny piazzas with their many fountains afford incomparably lovely loitering-places on the way to the Pincio. The one of the Quirinal is a near neighbor to the Colonna Gardens, and there you may shelter under eucalyptus trees and dream over the brown old obelisk and the vigorous fountain sculptures of the “horse-tamers” that once graced the Baths of Constantine, and philosophize over the irony of fate that converted a papal summer residence into a royal palace. Or you can thread your way through narrow streets of the Middle Ages that are lined by ochre-colored houses with sun-shades, where artists have their studios and transients their _hôtels garnis_, and down which a belated wine-cart may jangle or a gayly painted Campagna wagon creak, with its oxen festive in bells and crimson tassels and its rugged driver clad in blue. Were you to follow these typical byways of mediæval Rome until you came to the embankment of the Sant’ Angelo Bridge, you would pass by where Benvenuto Cellini lived among his goldsmiths, and could identify the Gothic window of the old Inn of the Bear where Montaigne stopped, centuries ago.

At this hour the Trevi Fountain is doubly appealing and refreshing, rejoicing the whole side of its roomy square with sparkling waters that dash merrily about Neptune and his allies in the wall niches. Devoted as one may be to the venerable tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Appian Way, he will fervently commend Pope Clement for having pillaged some of its stone to supply this cheery fountain with its dramatic setting. Were this our last day in the city we should certainly toss a copper coin over our left shoulder into these boiling waters, to insure a return to Rome. Of course, one is pretty sure to come again anyhow; but that makes it a certainty. Besides, it is much less trouble than going away out to Tivoli to ask the same thing of the Sibyl in the Grotto.

Were you to yield to the fountain habit, you would go bird-hopping all over town, for no city has so many or such beautiful ones as Rome, thanks to its huge aqueducts. It is a never-failing delight to turn a corner and come across one of these sun-deluged pleasaunces with its crowds of picturesque loungers; its tritons, “rivers,” and sea gods disporting themselves in attitudes of aqueous grace and gayety; its flower-girls banked behind fragrant barriers of roses and violets; and the slender columns of water streaming sideways like tattered flags in a breeze.

Mid-afternoon is an admirable time to drop in at the most popular of all the piazzas, the Spanish Square. One wonders how the jewelers of the Via Condotti manage to make both ends meet, with such a superior attraction at hand. It is certainly one of the most charming nooks in Rome. A heavy golden sunshine glorifies, at this hour, the broad reach of the Spanish Steps, themselves quite as wide as the square, that sweep between picturesque parapets like a yellow cascade from the terraces of the church at S. Trinità de’ Monte to the boat-shaped fountain in the piazza below. About them, drowsy, dusty, Old-World houses supply a pleasant background of soft color, and the crystal-clear Italian sky spreads above like a cathedral dome. The flower market is the crowning touch, with a flood of fragrant blooms welling over the lower steps and rimming the fountain edge in brilliant hues of purple Roman anemones, orange wallflowers, white narcissus, golden daffodils, snowy gardenias, violets, camelias, hyacinths, mignonettes, and every fair and odorous blossom. A lovely, sunny, fragrant spot—this Piazza di Spagna; a place to dream whole days away in; a well-beloved corner of fascinating Rome, where one may realize to its fullness the beautiful, consoling reflection of Don Quixote, “But still there’s sunshine on the wall.”

Literature has had its chosen seat in the Piazza di Spagna. Half the traveled world of letters has lived or visited there. It invests the spot with a fresh and human interest to know that it has been the musing-place of such rare spirits as Byron, Smollett, Madame de Staël, Cooper, Andersen, Thorwaldsen, Hawthorne, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Dickens, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Lowell, and Longfellow. One thinks of the Brownings entertaining Thackeray, Lockhart, and Fanny Kemble. But, of course, the closest memories are of Keats and Shelley, who lived in either corner house—those radiant friends whose ashes repose under myrtles and violets in the cypress-shaded cemetery beyond the Aurelian Wall. The works of all these authors, as also of the others who may or may not have seen the Piazza di Spagna,—along with the idealism of Fogazzaro, the sensuality of D’ Annunzio, the realism of Verga, and the grace of De Amicis,—are to be had at the celebrated shops of Piale or Spithöver, in the square; where, also, you may at little expense become a momentary part of Rome’s bohemia over toast and muffins in the adjoining tea-rooms.

_Chacun à son goût._ If you are cold to tea there may be something else to interest in the numerous cafés of the neighborhood that begin to hum with activity as the hour approaches four. And, indeed, they may be angels in disguise for such as have tried _pension_ life and grown sadly familiar with puddings as mysterious as Scotch haggis, meat that suggested _travertine_, and pies constructed of something like _silex_ and _tufa_. Besides, in the cafés you can regale yourself with vermouth, syrups, or ices, and at the same time observe the Roman at his afternoon ease—thus realizing in yourself the acuteness of the Italian proverb, “One blow at the hoop and one at the cask.” It is quite worth the cost to see how quickly the chairs and little marble-topped tables, out on the sidewalk, are taken by leisurely _habitués_ bent on gossip; by precise old gentlemen in lavender gloves who drop in for a tumbler of black coffee and a hand at dominoes; or by foppish young men in duck trousers, who clatter on the tables for the _cameriere_ to bring copies of the “Tribuna” so they may sup on frivolities and horrors along with coffee and tobacco.

A ruder jocundity also, at this time, is making its start for high tide in poorer sections, where in arbored _osteries_, Tuscan wine-shops, and _spacci da vino_ straw-covered fiascos of chianti are passing, along with glasses of local wines whose prices will be found conspicuously chalked up on the outsides of the taverns at so many _soldi_ per half-litre.

As we follow the Corso toward the Pincian Gardens we find the congestion increasing, with a decided addition of carriages all bound in our direction. It is now the hour of the afternoon _passeggiata_; and one marvels that the ancient campus Martius should still be the heart of Rome, and wonders how this narrow street could have held its crowds when the mad, brilliant scenes of Carnival riot and revelry were enacted before these old Renaissance palaces. Every restaurant of the tumultuous Piazza Colonna is working to capacity, and groups of gay army officers swagger about the corners and over by the marble basin beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius where the taxi-cabs have their chief stand. No red-and-white street car dares venture in this favorite square, but busses and cabs supplant them to distraction. And who, indeed, does not prefer an omnibus to a street car! It may want the latter’s business-like directness, but what a holiday air it has of cozy, informal deliberateness! It is coaching in town. You may not arrive so soon, but what a lark you had! And if you mock at the faithful bus, there are the impertinent Roman cabs. Here is speed, seclusion, and economy. You cannot fail to be suited both financially and æsthetically, for you may pick between the latest varnished output of the factory and venerable, decrepit ramshackles that look to have been contemporary with the Colosseum. The Roman cabmen are an inconsequent lot; they wear green felt hats and greasy coats, and dash at one with a reckless scorn of human life that strengthens a suspicion that they are really banditti of the Campagna, transparently disguised. The famous Column of the philosophic Emperor never lacks its groupings of adaptable “rubber-necks,” who are twisting themselves into suicide graves trying to read the spiral band of reliefs that winds away up to the statue of St. Paul.

The Corso _passeggiata_ is an interesting affair. Toward four o’clock it quite fills the street. Young girls are out, with their inevitable chaperons, kittenish and alert-eyed; Bergamasque nurses, with scarlet ribbons and extraordinary silver ornaments falling below their snowy muslin caps; clerks in sober black; Douane men, in short capes and shining hats with yellow rosettes; hatless women, with light mantillas over their blue-black hair; the stolid country-folk,—the _contadini_,—with the men in brown velvet jackets and goatskin breeches, and the women in faded blue skirts and with red stays stitched outside their bodices; the despised _forestieri_, with guidebooks; _carabinieri_, in pairs, resplendent in braided uniforms and cocked hats; the nervous Bersaglieri, with shining round hats and glossy cocks’-feather plumes; army officers in cloaks or bright blue guard-coats, fresh from vermouth at Aragni’s; Savoyards in steel helmets and gold crests; diplomats in silk hats and Prince Albert coats; and clericals by the hundreds. The clericals, indeed, may always be relied upon to supply an effective color-touch anywhere in Rome. They come along in fluttering groups of every hue: English and French seminarists in cassocks of black, Germans in scarlet, Scotch in purple, and Roumanians in orange and blue; it is diverting to see them raise their black beavers to one another with the quietest and most serious air imaginable. Solemn lay brethren shuffle past in sombre brown of Franciscan and Capuchin, or white of the cowled and tonsured Dominicans. Occasionally, along a side street, one passes slowly, absorbed in his breviary, like Don Abbondio in “I Promessi Sposi.” Rome abounds in shovel-hats, shaven heads, sandals, and hempen girdles. But you must not expect to see them all in a Corso _passeggiata_.

Unless we have yielded too much to the blandishments along the way, we should be crossing the sunny, somnolent circle of the Piazza del Popolo and climbing the fountained and statue-set terraces of the Pincian Gardens as the first strains of the promenade concert usher in the hour of four. The spectacle that confronts us on the low, broad brow of the old hill is animated and brilliant. Hundreds of motor-cars, private carriages and hired cabs roll in a long, gay procession around the driveways, their occupants arrayed in the last word of Italian fashion, and a multitude of happy loiterers stroll leisurely in the mild afternoon sunshine along sylvan paths hedged with box or bordered with flowers, where long lines of marble portrait-busts of Italy’s dead immortals extend into the pleasant shade of groves of myrtles and fragrant acacias. What a contrast in occupation to the scenes that in olden days were enacted here—the luxury and splendor of the golden suppers that the war-worn Lucullus gave to Rome’s poets and artists; or the vicious and voluptuous orgies with which the vile Messalina indulged the depraved favorites of the Claudian court! Young Rome, this afternoon, has decked itself in its gayest raiment, and youth vies with youth in gallantries to the fashionable beauties who prefer the fascinating town, even in summer, to the listless diversions of the country. “Visiting” goes on between carriage-parties, which is said to answer the social requirements of calls at the house. Mild refreshments are being served in a lively little café to which many repair when weary with lounging among the brilliant flowers and lovely foliaged paths; and groups ramble across the new viaduct and stroll among the sycamores and stone-pines of the neighboring Villa Borghese. The Pincian Gardens seem very formal and compact and precisely ornate as compared with our parks at home, but there is much more of sociability and comfort than is to be found Sunday afternoons in New York’s Central Park, for instance. That is probably because New York’s pedestrians are centred in the Mall to hear the band, or around the lakes to watch the boating, and all her carriage-folk are by themselves in the East Side Drive. The Pincian promenade mingles both classes into a great family party. It is a brilliant scene, but it must have been much more so in other days when the popes joined the company in the great glass coach drawn by six black horses in crimson trappings, and outriders and footmen flocked about them.

One wonders whether Pius X does not sometimes think with a sigh of regret of the liberties of his early predecessors, as he paces the flowered garden paths of his voluntary prison and lifts his gentle, shining face toward these pleasant Pincian heights. How often will the memory recur to me of that mild and friendly man, as once I saw him in the Vatican’s Court of the Pine, in his snowy robes and the little cap scarce whiter than his hair. I remember his only ornaments to have been the famous Fisherman’s ring, and a long gold chain about his neck from which a great crucifix was pendent. It was the occasion of a calisthenic drill given by a local orphan asylum for his Holiness’s special benefit. Each little athlete in gray was burning to do his very best in so notable a presence, and was, indeed, succeeding, with the glaring exception of the smallest of the band, whose eager efforts had resulted only in an uninterrupted series of comical mischances, to the infinite chagrin of himself and associates and the increasing amusement of the Pope. In due time the performance came to an end, and the boys were drawn up facing each other in a double line through which, attended by cardinals, chamberlains, and members of the Papal Guard, his Holiness passed extending his hand to be kissed. When he reached the diminutive and blushing blunderer, he halted his imposing train and laid his hand on the boy’s head and smoothed his hair and patted his cheek with affectionate tenderness, whispering the while an intimate message of good cheer, as though it were something strictly confidential between himself and that fatherless little waif whose face was shining with reverence and awe and whose eyes were full of happy tears. I am, I trust, as confirmed a Protestant as the next, but I confess that my heart was bowed as well as my head as that white-robed figure turned, as it disappeared through a door of the Vatican, and raised a hand toward us in the sign of the cross.

The marble parapet of the Pincio is, at this hour, a prime favorite among Roman loafing-places. As from an upper theatre box, one looks precipitously down into the great, peaceful, siesta-drugged circle of the Piazza del Popolo, the scene in other days of so much cruelty and often of so much happiness. The stone lions of the fountain spout patiently to the delighted observation of scores of playing children, and drowsy cabmen nod on the boxes of the long rank of waiting victorias. One may indulge to his fullest in moral reflections over the slender obelisk from the Heliopolis Temple to the Sun, upon which Moses himself may have gazed in days before Rome was thought of, and when the celestial consorts, Isis and Osiris, still waved their lotus sceptres and ruled the quick and the dead. Nineteen hundred years ago Nero, who should have begun blood-letting with himself instead of ending it there, was buried in this ground, and you are told how the evil spirits that haunted the accursed spot were not finally exorcised until yonder church of Santa Maria had been reared above his tomb. One will find it more agreeable to look across the piazza at the portal of the Flaminian Way and re-create the scenes of the triumphant entrance of the noble, hardy Trajan walking by the side of his fair and amiable wife.

The elm-tops are rustling in the deep groves of the Villa Borghese, and the yellow Tiber, “too large to be harmless and too small to be useful,” slips swiftly between the yellow walls of its quays. To the mind’s eye, in the azure distance Mons Sacer is clear, and Tivoli and the Sabine Farm of Horace. Like the Archangel Michael on the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, the sun, too, begins to sheathe his sword, and its glitter throws a warm mantle over the shoulders of the marble angels on the bridge. Most conspicuously, as is proper, it lingers on the pale dome of St. Peter’s, touches into life the sculptured saints of the portico, and floods obelisk, fountains, and all that vast elliptical piazza toward which are extended the sheltering arms of Bernini’s colonnade. How fair, beneath that roof, are the dazzling marbles, shining tombs, sculptured effigies, and glowing mosaics! But fairer far is this prospect from the hill, of Rome in her soft coat of many colors, the velvety ruins of the Palatine, the stone-pines in sentinel stiffness down the distant Appian Way, the sunny piazzas, the sparkling fountains, and the verdure and bloom of the slopes of the Janiculum, under the cloudless blue of a soft Italian sky. _Ave, Roma eterna!_

PRAGUE

4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.

A brooding, stolid city is Prague; the sombre capital of a restless, feverish people. It is the hotbed and “darling seat” of all Bohemia; and Bohemia languishes for her lost independence as Israel did by the waters of Babylon. She does not, however, pine in hopeless despair like the Hebrews, but nourishes a keen expectation of regaining her lost estate, and grits her teeth, in the mean while, with fiery impatience. She points, and with reason, to the fact that the Slavs—Czechs, Slovaks, and Moravians—easily outnumber the Hungarians; yet Hungary is free, and she in bondage. And so Bohemia, for all her exterior of gracious courtesy, is bitter and hard at heart; a people of a passionate, thwarted patriotism; a people that has suffered and been degraded, but that has never for a moment forgotten. Prague is an expression of all this; in her sullen, gloomy architecture; in the persistence of national types and characteristics; and peculiarly in the wild, reckless Moldau, which visualizes the traditional, savage intolerance that is bred in the bone of the fatalistic Slav.

There are too many daws about for Prague to wear her heart on her sleeve, so while she bides her time she presents a smiling mask. It may sometimes be a rather weary smile, and the forests that engulf her are gloomy and sinister; but her skies are not always lowering and overcast, and the peace of her fatigue from the national struggle is profound. It is just this deep, brooding peace that appeals to the stranger within her gates; and along with it he senses here a wonderful charm and underlying subtility that invests this curious old city with a lambent play of the imagination.

It was of Prague that Alexander von Humboldt said: “It is the most beautiful inland city I have ever seen.” And it must have been of some such spot that “R. L. S.” was mindful when he expressed the paradox that “any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is only in a few, and those highly favored, that we can pass a few hours agreeably.” Restfulness is surely one of the prime essentials of the “highly favored” few; and there is no restfulness at all comparable with that we feel in some venerated spot whose present hush and quiet is a reaction from its other days of fever and turmoil. One finds these qualities in Prague, whose calm and serenity seem doubly intense in contrast with its history of tumult and savagery and the hatred and violence that racked and convulsed it for hundreds of years. It has frequently been lightly disposed of as being an “out-of-the-way place”; but no place is more delightful than an “out-of-the-way” place, and particularly when it has the natural and architectural beauty of this one, or has been the theatre of such unusual and stirring occurrences.

Had we but one hour to spend in Prague we should certainly choose the charmed one between four and five o’clock of an afternoon. The sunshine is then most languid and golden, and the day declines slowly over the castled tops of the Hradschin-crowned slope, and the lengthening shadows of towers and turrets creep out on the river, and the copper domes and ruddy tiles of the Neustadt glow in bright spots against the darkling green of the wooded hillsides. If one does not then feel a profound and elevating sense of tranquillity and translating beauty, it will be because he has eyes to see yet sees not.

Since Prague rests under the imputation of being “out of the way,”—and even Shakespeare set this inland kingdom down as “a desert country near the sea,” and lost his compass completely in the shipwreck in the “Winter’s Tale” with Antigonus exclaiming: “Our ship hath touch’d upon the deserts of Bohemia”; and a confused mariner replying, “Aye, my lord; and fear we’ve landed in ill time,”—we may, perhaps, be pardoned for observing that in general appearance it is a wooded valley traversed in its full length by a swift, turbulent river, which follows a northerly course excepting where it bends sharply to the east in the very heart of the city. This stream, the Moldau, rushes along as if in desperate haste to throw itself into the Elbe, and seems to have the one idea, as it dashes through Prague, of getting done with its business and on its way at the earliest moment possible. It has scoured its islands into ovals, slashed the rocky bases of the hills, and continually assailed its bridges and quays. But through all its exhibitions of ill humor the Praguers have indulgently condoned and even extolled it; it was only when the beloved and venerated Karlsbrücke fell a partial victim to its violence, a dozen years ago, that patience ceased to be a virtue and the unnatural marauder was comprehensively anathematized with all the sibilant fury of the hissing tongue of the Czech. Speed apart, there is little to complain of with the Moldau; it is broad and of a pleasant deep blue, and the beauty it supplies to the setting of the city is supplemented by the importance of its traffic, the amusements on its many little wooded islands, and the delights of its boating and bathing. In a word, it is a noble stream—and none the less Bohemian, perhaps, for being a little proud and head-strong.

As the afternoon sun lies heavy over Prague one notes with delight how snugly the old city nestles along the river and up the hillsides of the valley, and with what a natural and comfortable air; not at all as though trying, as newer cities do, to shoulder its suburbs out of the way. It seems a perfect type of the mediæval town, with buildings of solid stone of an agreeable and universal creamy tone, four-square and enduring. It abounds in quaint, high pitched roofs; in curious, turreted spires; in red tiles and green copper domes; and in objects of antique and archaic fascination. Shade trees are everywhere. Indeed, from the thickly wooded heights of the surrounding hills right down to the river quays the gray of the houses and the red and green of the roofs make beautiful color combinations with the feathery foliage.

One stands on the old Karlsbrücke and looks upstream and there he sees the rocky heights of the Wyschehrad Hill on which the fair and wise Libussa reared her castle when she laid the foundations of the city, thirteen centuries ago, and which he will want to visit later to look over the fortifications and to study the glowing frescoes on the cloister walls of the Benedictine monastery of Emmaus. In the elbow of the Moldau, downstream, he will observe the old sections of Prague huddled together in cramped confusion, with no sign left of the ancient separating walls that once defined the original seven districts, though he is to learn, by and by, that the early names remain unchanged—the Aldstadt, and the Jewish Josephstadt, and around and above them the Neustadt, which, of course, from an American time-point, is really not “new” at all. On his left, along the river, he sees the Kleinseite spread out, and on the hillside above it that far-famed acropolis, the redoubtable Hradschin, with its dusty, barracks-like royal and state palaces, and the great bulk of the cathedral of St. Vitus rising out of it like some man-made mount. Such is the first bird’s-eye impression of Prague, set in its wooded slopes, stolid and softly colored. Later on one can scrape acquaintance with its rambling, flourishing, modern suburbs, to the eastward and downstream, and wrestle at his pleasure with such impressive nomenclature as Karolinenthal and Bubna-Holeschowitz.

Between four and five o’clock the visitor will find an especial pleasure in noting the activities that prevail in the several little green islands that fret the impetuous Moldau as it hurries through this “hundred-towered, golden Prague.” The dearest of these to the sentimental Czech is bright Sophien-Insel, that you could almost leap onto from the stone coping of the neighboring Kaiser-Franzbrücke. It always wears a gay and inviting appearance, with café tables set under fine old oaks, but precisely at four, summer afternoons, the leader of its military band lifts his baton and launches some crashing prelude, and the noisy company instantly stills and with nervously tapping fingers and glowing eyes abandons itself to that music passion which is the deepest and most intense expression of the Bohemian temperament. It gives the _dilettante_ a new conception of the power of this inspiring art to observe the significant and varying expressions that play over the faces of a Prague audience under its influence. He witnesses then the profoundest stirring of the Slavic nature and the moving of emotional depths beyond the conception of the reserved and impassive Anglo-Saxon. Especially is this so when the music is of a national character, such as the “Ma Vlast” symphonic poems of Smetana, or a Slavic dance of Dvorak’s. These Bohemian masters, with their fellow countryman, Fibich, constitute a trinity that is reverenced in their native land to an extent that almost passes belief, and that has done so much in making Prague one of the foremost centres of Europe.

The music from the Sophien-Insel floats down the river to our vantage-point on Karlsbrücke, mellowed and softened, and contributes just the right pleasing note to the agreeable mood these picturesque surroundings excite. The ponderous, antique old structure on which we stand has the appearance of some full-page color illustration for a charming Middle-Age romance. For half a millennium it has dug its broad arches into the bottom of the Moldau, stoutly defiant of flood or storm. Its massive buttresses are crowned with heroic statues so deeply revered that pilgrimages are made by the faithful to pay their devotions before them. For a third of a mile this old veteran strides the stream, and at each end he lifts an amazing mediæval tower well worth a journey to stare at. These ponderous structures, weathered by centuries of storm to a rich brownish black, are pierced by a deep Gothic archway through which the street traffic pours all day. Their sides are decorated with colonnades and traceries, armorial bearings and statues of ancient heroes of the city, and their tops are incredible creations of slender turrets and of pointed roofs so desperately precipitate that they seem like long narrow paving-stones tilted end to end.

Catholic legend and ceremonial run riot on the old bridge. The statues are almost altogether of a religious character, and two of them, the Crucifixion Group and the bronze one of St. John Nepomuc, are practically never passed without the sign of the cross and the raising of hat or cap; in the case of the latter the devout will touch the tablet that marks the spot from which he is said to have been cast into the river, and then kiss their fingers and bless themselves. For St. John Nepomuc, of all the holy martyrs, was Prague’s very own. The legend is dramatic. Father John was the queen’s confessor, five hundred years ago, and when he declined to oblige the king by revealing what the queen had told under the seal of the confessional, his Majesty had him summarily cast into the Moldau, from just where we are standing at the centre of this bridge. The result was far from the expectations of the king, for not only was the poor priest preserved from sinking, but—which is quite as hard to believe of so swift a stream as this—he actually remained floating for four days at the very spot where he fell, and five bright stars hung above him all the while! When they took him out he was dead, and to this extent only did the king succeed. As was perfectly natural, the amazed Praguers could see nothing in all this but an astounding miracle; and when Catholicism had finally displaced the Protestantism that followed the Hussite wars for two hundred years, their clamor for the canonization of Father John eventually resulted in placing the name of St. John Nepomuc in the catalogue of Rome. Equipped with a saint all their own, they adroitly converted the statues of the Protestant John Huss, that stood here and there about town, into St. John Nepomucs by the simple expedient of adding a five-starred halo to each.

Now, if to-day were the sixteenth of May, St. John Nepomuc’s special day, we should behold the greatest festival of all the year. An altar would be erected beside his statue, here on the bridge, and mass celebrated before enormous kneeling crowds. Bohemian peasants would flock into town from miles and miles around, in all the picturesque finery of the national dress, gala performances would be given at the theatres, an especial illumination of the city made at public expense, and fireworks displayed to-night on Schutzen-Insel. It would be an orderly celebration, too, for the Czechs are more fond of dancing than drinking; and religious enthusiasm would be practically universal, for Prague, which for two centuries was exclusively Protestant, now numbers at least nine Catholics out of every ten of its people.

As we look about us this afternoon we derive a vivid consciousness of being very far from home, set down in an environment that is, for Europe, oddly foreign and unfamiliar. The soft, sibilant prattle of the Czechish speech is heard on every hand, and the names on cars and corners are outlandish to us, with their profusion of consonants and curious accent marks like our o and v. One sees a great disproportion in numbers between the German and Czechish population; only thirteen to the hundred are said to be German, but in the opinion of Bohemians that is too many, for the stubborn struggle for the existence of the old national speech and spirit against the threatening usurpation of the Teutonic invaders is a real matter of life and death. As we watch the crowds throng along the bridge the prevalence of the Slavic type is very noticeable: short of body, heavy of head, and with high cheek bones and coarse features. The general expression is one of settled melancholy, bred of their peculiar fatalism. Having heard the “Bohemian Girl” and read the foundationless libels of popular French literature, one looks about for gypsies; he will be lucky if he finds one. Bohemia, as he should have known, is one of the leading industrial countries of Europe, and Prague is made up of hard-working, skillful mechanics. Energy and resolution are stamped on these serious, rugged faces; on the powerful men, the tall, strong women, and even on the little black-eyed children. And they can do many worthy things well: they market the country’s rich coal and iron deposits, make garnets to perfection, and manufacture beet-sugar by thousands of tons. Who has not heard of Bohemian glass, or Pilsener beer? And shall we belittle the resourcefulness of Bohemia, with the prosperous resorts of Karlsbad and Marienbad well within the western boundary of the Böhmer Wald? If this does not convince, one has only to run over to Dresden, seventy-five miles away, which he can reach by rail in four hours at an outlay of but eight florins, and ask any one where the finest farm produce comes from and what section yields the best fruit and honey, butter and eggs, milk and cheese.

If now we can manage to look away from the bridge and its crowds, we shall observe that the afternoon activities of the river-life of Prague are manifold and highly interesting. There is a prodigious bustling about of longshoremen on the fine, broad quays, and boats of many descriptions and diversified cargoes are laboriously struggling upstream or drifting guardedly down. From time to time huge, unwieldy rafts pass along to the din of vigorous shouting and hysterical warnings. Bathers at the riverside establishments are adding their share of laughter and frolic, their diversions watched with vast amusement by the afternoon idlers loitering along the embankments. On our right the shaded walks and trim lawns of the popular Rudolfs-Quai are comfortably filled with a leisurely company of promenaders and of nursemaids airing their charges. All this contributes an agreeable note of homeliness and contentment and seems eminently in harmony with the prevailing serenity and peace of the surrounding groves. There is at hand a little chain footbridge which they call the Kettensteg, and in a beautiful clump of lindens at its end rise the sculptured porticoes of the classic Rudolfinum, Prague’s noble home of the arts and industries. Enter it, and you find whole halls devoted to the work of Bohemian artists, with the school of old Theodoric of Prague represented in surprising completeness, an entire cabinet filled with the engravings of that famous Praguer, Wenzel Hollar, and many of the most beautiful paintings of such celebrated Bohemians as Gabriel Max, Václav Brozǐk and Josef Mánes.

With artistic bridges arching the river in whichever direction you look, with music and soft voices welling up from the gay islands, and with a full and virile life at cry along the quays, you find yourself about as far removed as possible from the atmosphere of Longfellow’s “Beleaguered City”:—

“Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream,
With the wan moon overhead,
There stood, as in an awful dream,
The army of the Dead.”

Assuredly, there is no “army of the dead” at this hour beside the Moldau, whatever there may be under the “wan moon” in a poet’s eye. On the contrary, there is an army of the living, a quarter-million of them, and it marches without resting, day in and day out, along the Graben and the stately Wenzels-Platz, and through the venerable Grosser Ring and the narrow, crooked alleys of old Josephstadt.