Chapter V: Part 5

Not, assuredly, from any lack of reverence for the colossal cathedral of St. Peter's is that Basilica a resort for Sunday afternoons; it suggests a social reunion, where every one goes, listens as he will to the music of the Papal choir in the Chapel of the Sacrament, and strolls about the vast interior where the promenade of the multitude does not yet disturb in the least the vesper service in the chapel. Here one meets everybody; the general news of the day is exchanged; greeting and salutation and pleasant little conversational interludes mark the afternoon, while the sun sinks behind the splendid pile of the Palazzo Vaticano, and the golden light through the window of the tribune fades into dusk. Can one ever lose out of memory the indescribable charm of this leisurely sauntering, in social enjoyment, in the wonderful interior of St. Peter's?

In the way of the regulation sight-seeing the visitor to Rome compasses most of his duty in this respect on his initial sojourn and goes the rounds that no one ever need dream of repeating. Once for all the visitor to Rome goes down into the Catacombs; makes his appallingly hard journey over Castel San Angelo, into its cells and dungeons, and to the colossal salon in which is Hadrian's tomb; once for a lifetime he climbs St. Peter's dome; drives out to old St. Agnes and descends into the crypt; visits the Church of the Capucines and beholds the ghastly spectacle of the monks' skulls; drives in the Appian Way; visits the Palace of the Cæsars, the Baths of Caracalla--a mass of ruins; the Forum; the Temples of Vesta and Isis; the Coliseum, and the classic old Pantheon. These form a kind of skeleton for the regulation sight-seeing of the Eternal City; things which, once done, are checked off with the feeling that the entire duty of the tourist has been fulfilled, and that, henceforth in Rome, there is laid up for him the crown of enjoyment, if not rejoicing; that he may go again and again to study the marvellous treasures of the Vatican galleries, the masterpieces of art in the Raphael stanze in the Vatican, the interesting pictures and sculpture in the many rich churches and galleries. The deadly chill of most of these galleries and churches in the winter is beyond words to describe. It is as if the gloom and chill and darkness of a thousand centuries were there concentrated.

One of the regulation places for the devout sight-seer, who feels responsible to his conscience for improving his privileges, is the Museo Nazionale, or the Tiberine Museum, a large proportion of whose treasures have been excavated in making the new embankments of the Tiber. It is located on the site of the Baths of Diocletian, the great ruins of which surround it in the most uncanny way. Built around a large court, the salons of the museum are entered from the inner cloisters. In the centre of the court is a fountain, and around it are antique fragments of statues, columns, and statuettes found in many places. The famous Ludovisi collection of antique statuary is now permanently placed in this museum,--a collection that includes the "Ludovisi Mars;" "Hercules," with a cornucopia; the "Hermes of Theseus," the "Discobolus Hermes;" the "Venus of Gnidus" as copied by Praxiteles; the "Dying Medusa;" the "Ludovisi Juno," which Winckelmann declares to be the finest head of Juno extant, a Greek work of the fourth century; a "Cupid and Psyche;" the two "Muses of Astronomy" and of "Epic Poetry," "Urania and Calliope;" "an Antoninus;" the largest sarcophagus known; a "Tragic Mask" (colossal) in rosso antico; a bust of "Marcus Aurelius" in bronze, and many other priceless works.

The splendor of scenic setting for art in the magnificent salons of the Casino Borghese has never been surpassed. They are, perhaps, the most impressive of any Roman interior, with lofty, splendidly decorated ceilings and walls, where recess and niche hold priceless sculptures. The splendor of these salons, indeed, quite exceeds description. In the principal one is a group on one wall--a colossal relief--representing Marcus Curtius plunging into the gulf in the Forum. There are busts of the twelve Cæsars; there are busts of all the Roman Emperors, with alabaster draperies, placed on pedestals of red granite. There are Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne;" Canova's celebrated statue of Princess Pauline Borghese (the sister of Napoleon I); Bernini's "David" and "Æneas and Anchises;" Thorwaldsen's "Faun;" "Diana," "Isis," "Juno," and many other celebrated classic statues. All the great paintings which were formerly in the Palazzo Borghese--over six hundred in all--are now in this casino. The great work in this collection is Raphael's "Entombment of Christ," painted in his twenty-fourth year. Titian's "Divine and Human Love;" Raphael's portrait of "Cæsar Borgia;" Correggio's "Danaë;" Domenichino's "Cumæan Sibyl" and "Diana;" Peruzzi's "Venus Leaving the Bath;" Van Dyck's "Crucifixion;" Titian's "Venus and Cupid;" and "Annunciation," by Paul Veronese; Vasari's "Lucrezia Borgia;" Botticelli's "Holy Family and Angels;" Van Dyck's "Entombment;" Carlo Dolce's "Mater Dolorosa," and Sassoferrato's "Three Ages of Man" are among the great masterpieces in this museum.

The Villa Borghese (by which is meant the park) is some three miles in extent, and was laid out some two hundred years ago by Cardinal Borghese. As recently as 1902 it was purchased by the government for three million francs, and its official name is now "Villa Comunale Umberto Primo." These grounds contain fountains, antique statues, tablets, small temples and many inscriptions, with statues of Æsculapius and Apollo, and an Egyptian gateway. They are open all day to every one freely and are one of the great attractions of Rome.

The great palaces of Rome are of later date than those of Florence. There are some eighty principal ones, of which the Palazzos Veneziano, Farnese, Doria, Barberini, Colonna, and the Rospigliosi (containing Guido's famous "Aurora") are the most important. The Farnesina Palace contains some of the most interesting pictures in Rome, and the traditions of the residence of Agostino Chigi, during the pontificate of Leo X, are still found in Rome,--traditions of the lavish magnificence of the entertainments given here to the Pope and the Cardinals.

The Monte Pincio is the famous drive of Roman society, and the promenade around the brow of the hill offers one of the most enchanting views of the world. Near the Trinità di Monti stands the historic Villa Medici, the French Academy of which the great Carolus Duran is now the director. The view across the valley in which lies the Piazza di Spagna, the river to St. Peter's, from the Villa Medici, is one of the finest in Rome.

The architecture of the garden façade is attributed to Michael Angelo. These gardens have a circuit of more than a mile, laid out in the formal rectangles and densely bordered walks of the Italian custom. All manner of old fragments of sculpture are scattered through them,--a torso, a broken bust, a ruined statue, an old and partly broken fountain,--and entablatures and reliefs are seen in the walls on every hand. No sound of the city ever penetrates into this dense foliage which secludes the gardens of the famous Villa Medici.

One of the features of Roman life is the fashionable drive on Monte Pincio in the late afternoons. An hour or two before sunset the terrace of the Piazza Trinità di Monti begins to be thronged with pedestrians, who lean over the marble balustrade, gazing at the incomparable pictured panorama where the vast dome of St. Peter's, the dense pines of the Villa Pamphilia-Doria on the Janiculum, and the dark cypress groves on Monte Mario loom up against the golden western sky.

Compared with the extensive parks of modern cities the Monte Pincio would prefigure itself as a drive for fairies alone. It comprises a few acres only, thickly decorated with trees and shrubbery, with a casino for the orchestra that plays every afternoon, and a circular carriage drive so limited in extent that the same carriage comes in view every few minutes.

The Eternal City has had so many birthdays that one would fancy them to have become negligible; but it was announced on April 21 of 1907 that the date was a special anniversary, and she took on aspects of festivity. The municipal palaces and museums were hung with tapestries, flags were flying from the Capitol, the municipal guards were all in full dress uniform and the municipal orchestra played in the Piazza Colonna. The historic bell began ringing at eight in the morning in peals that were well calculated to call the Cæsars from their tombs and which might, indeed, have been mistaken for the final trumpet calls of Gabriel. But the Romans take their pleasures rather sadly and sternly,--not like the light-hearted Florentines in song and laughter, or with the joyous abandon of the Neapolitans,--so there was no special manifestation on the part of the populace, and the day, cold, gloomy, and cheerless, did not inspire gayety.

When the Republic of Rome was established (on Feb. 9, 1849) a provisional government was appointed. In March of that year Mazzini proposed that the assembly should appoint a Committee of War, and it was decided to send troops to Piedmont. Later a triumvirate, consisting of Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini, was formed, but disaster was near. In April the French troops landed at Cività Vecchia, and the Italians prepared to defend their country from the control of Louis Napoleon. Mazzini is said to have been "the life and the soul" of this defence. But the Republic was doomed, and when it had fallen the Pope returned, only under the protection of the French. But the French Empire, too, was doomed to fall; and when Garibaldi transferred his successes to Victor Emmanuel, the monarchy was consolidated by the union of Rome with Italy, and the present "Via Venti Settembre" in Rome--the street named to commemorate that 20th of September, 1870, on which the Italian troops entered the city and the Papal reign ended--perpetuates the story of those eventful days. "Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, and Garibaldi have been designated, along with Mazzini, as the founders of the modern Italy," said Dr. William Clarke, "but a broad line divides Mazzini from the others." Dr. Clarke sees between Cavour and Mazzini "the everlasting conflict between the idealist and the man of the world. The former," he continues, "stands by the intellect and the conscience; the latter by the limitations of actual fact and the practical difficulties of the case," and Dr. Clarke notes further:--

"It was pre-eminently Mazzini who gave to Italy the breath of a new
life, who taught her people constancy in devotion to an ideal
good. Prophets are rarely successful in their own day, and so it
has been with the prophet of modern Italy. The making of Italy has
not proceeded in the way he hoped it would; for the Italians, who
are an eminently subtle and diplomatic people, have apparently
thought it best to bend to the hard facts by which they have been
surrounded. But if, as Emerson teaches, facts are fluid to thought,
we may believe that the ideas of Mazzini will yet prevail in the
nation of his birth, and that he may yet be regarded as the
spiritual father of the future Italian commonwealth. For of him, if
of any modern man, we may say that he

'Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,
And did not dream it was a dream.'"

Between the period of the establishment of the Roman Republic in 1849 and the consummation of United Italy in 1870 the years were rich to the artist, whatever they may have been to philosopher and patriot. The way for the painter and the sculptor seems to have been a flowery and a pictorial one,--a very _via buona fortuna_, through a golden, artistic atmosphere. The perpetual excursions may lead the serious spectator to wonder where working hours come in, but, at all events, those days are rich in color. Friends grouped together by the unerring law of elective affinities loitered in galleries and churches. San Martina, near the Mamertine prisons, was a point of interest because of Thorwaldsen's bequest to it of the original cast of his beautiful statue of "Christ" which is in Copenhagen. This is, perhaps, the finest work ever conceived by the Danish sculptor, and is one that no visitor of to-day can behold unmoved. Both Canova and Bernini are also represented in this church,--the former by a statue of "Religion" and the latter by a bust of Pietro da Cortona. Beneath the present Church of San Martina is the ancient one containing the shrine of the martyr, under a superb bronze altar. Of this church, Mrs. Jameson says in her "Sacred and Legendary Art":--

"At the foot of the Capitoline Hill, on the left hand as we descend
from the Ara Coeli into the Forum, there stood in very ancient
times a small chapel, dedicated to St. Martina, a Roman virgin. The
veneration paid to her was of very early date, and the Roman people
were accustomed to assemble there on the first day of the year.
This observance was, however, confined to the people, and was not
very general till 1634, an era which connects her in rather an
interesting manner with the history of art. In this year, as they
were about to repair her chapel, they discovered, walled into the
foundations, a sarcophagus of terra cotta, in which was the body of
a young female, whose severed head reposed in a separate casket.
These remains were very naturally supposed to be those of the saint
who had been so long venerated on that spot. The discovery was
hailed with the utmost exultation, not by the people only, but by
those who led the minds and consciences of the people. The Pope
himself, Urban VIII, composed hymns in her praise; and Cardinal
Francesco Barberini undertook to rebuild her church."

The painter, Pietro da Cortona, entered into this feeling and at his own expense built the chapel and painted for its altar piece the picture representing the saint in triumph, while the temple in which she has gone to sacrifice falls in ruins from a raging tempest.

In any stray ramble in Rome the sojourner might chance, at any moment, upon obelisk, a pedestal or inscription linked with the great names of the historic past. Hawthorne has recorded how, by mere chance, he turned from the Via delle Quattro Fontane into the Via Quirinale and was thus lured on to an obelisk and a fountain on the pedestal of which on one side was the inscription, "Opus Phidias," and on the other, "Opus Praxiteles," and he exclaims:--

"What a city is this, when one may stumble, by mere chance--at a
street corner as it were--on the works of two such sculptors! I do
not know the authority," he continues, "on which these statues
(Castor and Pollux I presume) are attributed to Phidias and
Praxiteles; but they impressed me as noble and godlike, and I feel
inclined to take them for what they purport to be."

While the Papal ceremonies are neither so frequent nor so magnificent as in former days, still any hotel guest in Rome is liable, any morning, on coming down to the _salle-à-manger_ for coffee, to find every woman (who is taking her Rome seriously) arrayed in a black robe with a black lace veil on her head. One would fancy they were all a procession of nuns, about to retire from the world into the strict seclusion of the cloister. But it is nothing so momentous. It is only that every lady, with the devotion to spectacles which every visitor in Rome feels, as a matter of course, has secured the pink ticket entitling her to admission to the Vatican Palace to see the "passage" of the Pope, as he makes his way, attended by the Cardinals of the Sacred College, to the Sistine Chapel where his Holiness "creates" new Cardinals. Although rumored that the spectacle will be a gorgeous one, that the Pope will be carried aloft preceded by the silver trumpeters and attended by the Cardinals and the ambassadors and other dignitaries in the full dress of their ceremonial costumes and their orders, the reality is less impressive. Some feminine enthusiasts fare forth at the heroic hour of eight, although the procession is not announced to pass until a quarter after ten (which in Italy should be translated as a quarter after eleven, at the earliest, if not after twelve, which would be the more probable), in order to secure good standing room. For everybody is to stand--of course, comfort being a thing conspicuous only by its absence in Italy! Those of us too well aware by the experiences of previous visits to Italy that no Italian function was ever on time, from the starting of a railway train to the crowning of a king, only betake ourselves to the glories of the Palazzo Vaticano at the hour named, and we have then--as one's prophetic soul or his commonplace memory warned him--to wait more than an hour wedged into a dense crowd of all nationalities, none of whom seem at this particular juncture, at least, to be at all overburdened with good manners. And what went they out for to seek? Instead of an impressive spectacle--a thing to remember for a lifetime--one merely sees Pius X walking, surrounded by his Cardinals in a group,--not a procession,--he alone in the centre with his mitre on his head,--the whole scene hardly lasting over a minute, and as his Holiness is not as tall as most of his Cardinals, he is almost hidden from view. It had been rumored that the Pope was to be borne aloft in the Papal chair, preceded by the traditional white fan and the silver trumpets; but the present Pope is temperamentally inclined to minimize all the ceremonials investing his sacred office.

Yet there is always a thrill in entering the Vatican. To ascend that splendid _Scala Regia_ designed by Bernini, with one of the most ingeniously treated perspective effects to be found, it may be, in the entire world; to cross this _Scala_ with its interesting frescoes by Salviati and others; to see at near range the picturesque Swiss Guard,--surely any pretext to enjoy such a morning is easily accepted of whatever occurrence one may grasp in order to obtain the hour.

One curious feature of the past is to-day equally in evidence in Rome. Strolling at any time into the Church of San Agostino one beholds a curious spectacle. It is in this church that is placed the beautiful bronze statue of the Virgin and Child by Sansovino. It is approached by a platform on which is placed a stool that enables one to mount and thus reach the foot of the statue, which is kissed and the wish of the devotee is offered. This Madonna is believed to have the power to grant each wish and prayer; to heal the sick; restore the blind, the deaf, and the lame; to grant immunity from loss or illness; to grant success and prosperity. The poor Madonna must have her hands full with these avalanches of petitions, but she sits calmly in state and, if the striking testimony of votive offerings can be credited, she is most amiable in granting the prayers of her devotees. For she is hung with priceless jewels; necklaces, brooches, bracelets, diamond and ruby and sapphire rings on her fingers, she is a blaze of splendor. Around this statue there is a perpetual crowd, whatever hour of day one chances to wander in, and from prince to beggar the bronze foot is kissed, as each waits his turn to mount the stool and prefer his secret wish. The walls of the church are covered with the votive offerings to the Madonna for her aid,--rich jewels, orders, tablets,--offerings of all kinds. In this church is entombed the body of Santa Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, placed in an urn of verd-antique, in a special chapel beautifully decorated. After preferring one's secret wish to the Virgin one must wander on to the Fontane de Trevi and throw his penny into the water to insure his return to Rome, and then he may rest, _mens conscia recti_!

Although Holy Week in Rome has less ceremonial observance in these latter days than those of the impressive scenes so vividly portrayed by Mme. de Staël in "Corinne," it still attracts a multitude of visitors and offers much to touch and thrill the life of the spirit, quite irrespective as to whether the visitor be of the Catholic or Protestant faith. In the great essentials of Christianity, all followers of Christ unite. The Pope does not now take part in public services on Easter, and that scene of the Pontifical blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's given to the multitude below who throng the piazza remains only in memory and in record. But the stately and solemn services of Good Friday in the vast and grand interior of St. Peter's are an experience to linger forever in memory. The three hours' service--the chanting of the Miserere--was a scene to impress the imagination. This service is held in the late afternoon of Good Friday, in the tribune of St. Peter's, the extreme end of the church where the vast window of yellow glass gives a perpetually golden light. The chair believed to have been that of St. Peter's is here placed, enclosed in ivory and supported by statues of four Fathers of the church, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, and St. Athanasius, from a design of Bernini.

In the tribune is the tomb of Urban VIII (who was Matteo Barberini), of which the redundant decoration tells the story that it is also Bernini's work. Opposite this tomb is that of Paul III, by della Porta, under the supervision of Michael Angelo, it is said, and the beauty and dignity of the bronze figure of the aged Pope, in the act of giving the benediction, quite confirm this tradition. On a tablet in the wall of the tribune are engraved the names of all the bishops and prelates who, in 1854, accepted the belief of the Immaculate Conception,--this tablet being placed by the order of Pio Nono.

In this tribune on the late afternoon of the Good Friday of 1907 the seats were filled with worshippers to listen to the three hours' chant of the Miserere. Princes and peasants sat side by side, and an immense throng who could not find seats stood, often wandering away in the dim distances of the cathedral and ever and again returning. The high altar, where Canova's beautiful figure of the kneeling Pope always enchains the visitor, was, as usual, surrounded. The lights burned--these perpetual lamps--and the moving throng went and came. The scene grew mystic, dream-like, as the solemn music floated on the air.

The Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, on the left of the cathedral, was made into the sepulchre that day, and anything more beautiful than the myriad altar lights and the flowers could not be imagined. At the altar black-robed nuns were kneeling, and all over the chapel, kneeling on the floor, were people of all grades and ranks of life, from the duchess and princess to the beggar woman with a ragged shawl on her shoulders and her baby in her arms. St. Peter's was nearly filled all that day with people, not crowded, but apparently thronged in almost every part.

The altar in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament was one mass of deep red roses. The chapel was completely darkened, but the blaze of myriads of tall candles illuminated the roses and the black-robed nuns and the black-robed devotees. It was a scene never to be forgotten.

Even in the latter-day Rome, historic names are not wanting. One of these, the Princess Christina Bonaparte, _née_ Ruspoli, died in 1907 in her Roman villa in Via Venti Settembre. She was the widow of Prince Napoleon Charles Bonaparte and a cousin of the Empress Eugénie. With her husband in Paris until 1870, she fled (whilst her husband was fighting at Metz) as soon as the Commune was proclaimed. The princess was considered a beautiful woman and her portrait had been painted by Ernest Hébert, but it was lost when the Palace of the Tuileries was destroyed in 1870.

With this princess dies the name of the Bonaparte family. Her daughters, Donna Maria Gotti-Bonaparte and Princess Maria della Moskowa, were often with her in Rome.

The Palazzo Bonaparte is very near Porta Pia. Although called a palace, it is simply a plain house of some five stories, with narrow halls and stone staircases, no elevator, no electric lights. The princess occupied the first floor, while the apartments above were let to various families.

With the exception of the royal palaces there are few in which suites are not obtainable for residence by any one who desires them.

It was at a pleasant _déjeûner_ one spring day in Rome that the project was launched, that we should go motoring that afternoon to Frascati, Albano, Castel Gandolfo, Lago di Nemi, and all that wonderful region. We were lunching with a friend who had a charming apartment in one of the sumptuous old palaces of Rome, where, in a niche on the marble staircase, the statue of Cæsar Augustus stood,--a copy of the famous statue in the Capitoline,--where lofty, decorated ceilings, old paintings and sculptures adorned the rooms, and where from the windows we looked out on the tragedy-haunted Castel San Angelo, with the dome of San Pietro in the background. Our friend who invited us to fly in his motor had brought his touring car over from America. The one note of new luxury now is for travellers to journey with their touring cars. In a year or two more it will be airships or soaring machines. On this wonderful May afternoon, all azure and gold, we started off in the great, luxurious touring car which was arranged even to carry two trunks, with a safe in it for the deposit of valuables, a hamper for refreshments, and, indeed, almost every conceivable convenience. On we flew through Rome, past the great Basilica of San Maria Maggiore; past the wonderful pile of San Giovanni Laterano, with the colossal statues of the apostles surmounting the façade; through the Porta San Giovanni into the narrow, walled lane leading out on the Campagna; on, on, to the Alban hills. We flew past olive orchards and vineyards, and the vast green pasture lands of the Campagna whose vivid green was ablaze with scarlet poppies. Far away to the west there was a white shining line--the line of the sea.

At Frascati we stopped at the Villa Torlonia, the country place of the ducal family, whose grand Roman palazzo is in the Bocca di Leone in the old part of Rome. The Torlonia have an only daughter, Donna Teresa, whose _débutante_ ball a year ago is said to have been the most magnificent entertainment in Rome for fifty years. A writer, in a recent article on the nobility of Rome, said of this family:--

"The Torlonia figure repeatedly in the novels of Thackeray, who
was never tired of portraying them. They have been most useful
citizens, and since the days of the old army contractor, who
founded the house, have augmented the family wealth by judicious
investments, especially in connection with the draining and
reclaiming of the marsh lands that abound in the former Papal
States. They have contracted matrimonial alliances with the
Colonna, with the Borghese, the Belmonte, the Doria, and the
Sforza."

The Villa Torlonia at Frascati is a very large estate with extensive gardens, terraces, and a cascade of three falls on the hillside, which is turned on (the water) at pleasure. The house, however, is a shabby-looking affair, a two or three story, rambling, yellow structure, which, at Newport, would not be considered too good for the gardener.

After the usual fashion of the Italians who seldom travel, the Torlonia, wealthy as they are, simply remove from their palace in Rome to their villa at Frascati instead of travelling to Switzerland, Germany, or elsewhere in the summer.

The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland were the guests of the Torlonia that day, the entire party enjoying themselves _al fresco_, and the beautiful cascade pouring down within the near distance.

These outlying towns, Frascati, Albano, Castel Gandolfo, and Lago di Nemi, the picturesque group in the Alban Mountains, are some sixteen to eighteen miles from Rome. These Alban hills rise like an island from the vast plain of the Campagna, the highest point being some three thousand feet above sea level. They are covered with villages and castles and villas, and have in all a population of some fifty thousand. The region is volcanic, and the beautiful Lago di Nemi and Lago di Albano were the craters of extinct volcanoes. All this region was the haunt of Cicero, Virgil, and Livy. At Tusculum, near Frascati, are the remains of Cicero's villa, and also of an ancient theatre hewn out of solid rock. The view to the west toward Rome is most beautiful. The dome of St. Peter's crowns the Eternal City; and the Campagna--a sea of green--is as infinite in sight as is the Mediterranean. There are splendid villas and estates in these Alban hills that belong to the Roman nobility, and here the Pope has his summer palace. "The Alban Mount is also full of historical and legendary interest," says a writer on the country around Rome. "The Latin tribe, one of the constituent elements of the Roman people, had here its seat. Upon the highest peak of the range was the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, where all the tribes of Latin blood, the Romans included, met every year to worship; and where the victorious generals of the Republic repaired to offer praises and acknowledgments. In these mountain glens undoubtedly most of that ballad literature of Rome, the loss of which Macaulay so eloquently laments and so successfully restores, had its origin. Nor need the scholar be reminded that this is the scene of the most original and vigorous portions of the Æneid of Virgil; nor how the genius of the poet, which rather languidly recounts the traditions borrowed from Greece, wakes to new life, when he feels his feet upon his own soil and deals with Latin names and Latin legends."

The Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati is celebrated for its fantastic waterworks in elaborate fountains and cascades. In the gardens a statue of Pan with a pipe of reeds and one of a satyr with a trumpet are made to play (both the pipe and the trumpet) by water. The hydraulic engineer must have found in Frascati his earthly paradise, for he commanded the water to leap into foam and spray in the air, to rush down marble terraces, and to form itself into obelisks of liquid silver.

At Grotto Ferrata is a vast monastery of monks of the Order of Basilio (Greek), a monastery so colossal as to be mistaken for a fortress. The chapel has frescoes by Domenichino. At Castel Gandolfo is the summer Papal palace, that has not been occupied by a Pope since the overthrowing of the temporal power in 1870. It has a beautiful and commanding view toward Rome. It was built by Urban VIII.

All the magic of Italy is in this picturesque excursion. In the vast grounds of the Villa Barberini are the ruins of the ancient palace and gardens of Domitian. On one hillside is a broken wall; a long avenue of ilex trees reveals here and there fragments of mosaic pavement. Crumbling niches hold fragments of statues. The hill itself is still pierced with the long tunnels driven through it by Domitian that he might pass unseen,--presumably safe from his enemies,--from the palace to the gardens. From the parapet, Rome is seen across the shining Campagna and the dome of Michael Angelo gleams against the blue Italian sky.

"The wreck is beautiful," writes Mrs. Humphry Ward, in "Eleanor," of this romantic spot; "for it is masked in the gloom of the overhanging trees; or hidden behind dropping veils of ivy; or lit up by straggling patches of broom and cytisus that thrust themselves through the gaps in the Roman brickwork and shine golden in the dark. At the foot of the wall, along its whole length, runs a low marble conduit that held the sweetest, liveliest water. Lilies of the valley grow beside it, breathing scent into the shadowed air; while on the outer or garden side of the path the grass is purple with long-stalked violets, or pink with the sharp heads of the cyclamen. And a little farther, from the same grass, there shoots up, in happy neglect, tall camellia trees, ragged and laden, strewing the ground red and white beneath them. And above the camellias again the famous stone-pines of the villa climb into the high air, overlooking the plain and the sea, peering at Rome and Soracte."

One could wander all day in the strange ruins of the old Barberini grounds, and in the vast spaces of the gardens and through the Villa Doria.

The beauty of the avenue of ilex trees through which we flew from Castel Gandolfo to Lago di Nemi surpasses description. This lake, some four miles in circumference, lies in a crater hollow, with precipitous hills surrounding it, the water so clear that the ancients called it the "Mirror of Diana." In it was constructed an artificial island in the design of a Roman state barge.

Over the long viaduct at Ariccia we flew; everywhere in the little town people, donkeys--an almost indistinguishable mass--filled the narrow streets; and thus on to Genzano and the Lago di Nemi, with its fabled fleet at the bottom.

The Chigi woods, that fill the deep ravine under the great viaduct at Ariccia, were in the most brilliant emerald green. Past these forests lay the vast stretch of the Pontine Marshes; and turning toward Rome again, the splendor of the sunset flamed in the sky. One could but recall Mrs. Humphry Ward's vivid picture of a storm seen over this part of the Campagna:--

"The sunset was rushing to its height through every possible phase
of violence and splendor. From the Mediterranean, storm clouds were
rising fast to the assault and conquest of the upper sky, which
still above the hills shone blue and tranquil. But the northwest
wind and the sea were leagued against it. They sent out threatening
fingers and long spinning veils of cloud across it--skirmishers
that foretold the black and serried lines, the torn and monstrous
masses behind. Below these wild tempest shapes again--in long
spaces resting on the sea--the heaven was at peace, shining in
delicate greens and yellows, infinitely translucent and serene,
above the dazzling lines of water. Over Rome itself there was a
strange massing and curving of the clouds. Between their blackness
and the deep purple of the Campagna rose the city--pale
phantom--upholding one great dome, and one only, to view of night
and the world. Round and above and behind, beneath the long flat
arch of the storm, glowed a furnace of scarlet light. The buildings
of the city were faint specks within its fierce intensity, dimly
visible through a sea of fire. St. Peter's alone, without visible
foundation or support, had consistence, form, identity; and between
the city and the hills, waves of blue and purple shade, forerunners
of the night, stole over the Campagna towards the higher ground.
But the hills themselves were still shining, still clad in rose and
amethyst, caught in gentler repetition from the wildness of the
west. Pale rose even the olive gardens; rose the rich brown
fallows, the emerging farms; while drawn across the Campagna from
north to south, as though some mighty brush had just laid it there
for sheer lust of color, sheer joy in the mating it with the
rose,--one long strip of sharpest, purest green."

The Villa Falconieri, in Frascati, which was built by Cardinal Ruffini, with the old ilex tree preserved in the portals, has recently been purchased by the Emperor of Germany, who proposes to transform it into an Academy for the accommodation of German students in Rome. These national academies draw their corresponding numbers of students from the nations thus represented, and contribute to the cosmopolitan aspects of Rome. The American Academy in Rome is now being transferred from the Ludovisi quarter to a large and convenient building outside Porta Pia.

Perhaps the eminently social quality of Roman life may be indirectly due to the lack of library privileges which is a conspicuous defect in Rome. The Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele, under the courteous administration of Commendatore Conte Guili, has, it is true, a collection of over half a million volumes and thousands of very rare and valuable manuscripts. It has a large public reading room, and books are loaned on the signature of any embassy or consulate; yet this library, while offering peculiar advantages to theological and other special students and readers, does not afford any extended privileges to the general reader of modern English and American publications. It is located in a grim and forbidding old stone palace, approached by an obscure lane from the Corso, where, as there is no sidewalk, the pedestrian shares the narrow, dark, cold, stone-paved little street with carts, donkeys, peasants, and beggars.

The great monument to King Victor Emmanuel, of mingled architecture and sculpture, a colossal structure of white marble with arches and pillars forming beautiful colonnades, the capital of each column heavily carved, and the sculpture, which is being done by a number of artists, will be of the most artistic and beautiful order. This memorial will occupy an entire block, and it is located very near the Capitol. All the old buildings in the vicinity will be torn down to give a fine vista for this transcendently noble and sumptuous memorial.

The directors of this work aim to have it completed and ready to be unveiled in 1911, the jubilee year of Italy's resurrection as a united country.

Encircled by the old Aurelian wall and near the great pyramid that marks the tomb of Caius Cestius, who died 12 B.C., lies the Protestant cemetery of Rome, full of bloom and fragrance and beauty, under the dark, solemn cypress trees that stand like ever-watchful sentinels. When Keats was buried here (in 1820), Shelley wrote of "the romantic and lovely cemetery ... under the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and the mossy walls and towers now mouldering and desolate which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered even in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death," he added, "to think of being buried in so sweet a place."

In the old cemetery (immediately adjoining the pyramid and separated from the new one by a wall) is the grave of Keats (who died in 1821) with its unique inscription, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Beside it is that of his friend, Joseph Severn, who died in 1829, and near these the grave of John Bell, the famous writer on surgery and anatomy. In the new or more modern cemetery the visitor lingers by the graves of Shelley and his friend, Trelawney; August Goethe (the son of the poet); of William and Mary Howitt, who died in 1879 and 1888. Not merely, however, do the names of Keats and Shelley allure the visitor to poetic meditations; but here lie the earthly forms of many a poet, painter, and sculptor of our own country, with their wives and children, who have sought in the Eternal City the atmosphere for art and who, enamoured by the loveliness of Rome, continued there for all their remaining years. These graves, these sculptured memorials, are eloquent with the joys, the sorrows, the achievements and the failures, the success and the defeat, of the artistic life in a foreign land. Many of these memorial sculptures are the work of the husband or the father, into which is inseparably joined the personal tenderness to the artist's skill. Especially noticeable are the graves of the wives of three American sculptors,--William Wetmore Story, Richard S. Greenough, and Franklin Simmons. Each of these is marked by a memorial sculpture created by the husband, and the three different conceptions of these sculptors are interesting to contrast. That of Mr. Story is of an angel with outspread wings, kneeling, her head bowed in the utter despair and desolation of hopeless sorrow. The figure has the greatest delicacy of beauty and refinement and tenderness; but it is the grief that has no support of faith, the grief that has no vision of divine consolation. On the memorial monument is simply the name, Emelyn Story, born in Boston, 1820, died in Rome in 1898, and the note that it is the last work of W. W. Story, in memory of his beloved wife. Here, also, is Mr. Story buried, his name and dates of birth and death (1819-1901) alone being inscribed.

At the tomb of Sarah B. Greenough, the wife of Richard S. Greenough, the monument is designed to represent Psyche escaping from the bondage of mortality. This Psyche is emerging from her garments and she holds in her hand a lamp. On this is the inscription: "Her loss was that as of a keystone to an arch."

Mrs. Greenough was a very accomplished musician, and she had the unique honor of having been made a member of the "Arcadians."

The memorial sculpture over the grave of Mrs. Franklin Simmons is, as elsewhere noted, the work of her husband, a figure called "The Angel of the Resurrection." The angel is represented as a male figure (Gabriel) holding in the left hand a golden trumpet while the right is outstretched. His wings are spread, his face partly turned to the right. The form is partially draped and in every detail is instinct with a complete harmony; every fold of the drapery, every curve of the body, and the lofty and triumphant expression of the face in its ineffable glory of achievement proclaim the triumph of immortality. It stands on a pedestal that gives it, from the base of the pedestal to the tip of the outstretched wings, a height of some twenty-one feet. This monument, seen against a background of dark cypress trees, speaks the word of positive and complete faith in the divine promise of eternal life.

"Then life is--to wake, not sleep,
Rise and not rest, but press
From earth's level where blindly creep
Things perfected, more or less,
In the heaven's height--far and steep."

The visitor lingers over the grave of that interesting painter, J. Rollin Tilton, whose landscapes from Egypt and Italian scenes were so vivid and picturesque.

Richard Henry Dana, the elder, born in Boston in 1815, came to Rome to die in 1882.

Very near the tomb of William Wetmore and Emelyn Story is that of Constance Fenimore Woolson. Over the graves of William and Mary Howitt is the inscription: "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me."

On the wall just back of the new tomb erected over the ashes of Shelley by Onslow Ford in 1891 is a memorial tablet placed to Frederick W. H. Myers, bearing this inscription:--

"This tablet is placed to the memory of Frederick William Henry
Myers, born at Keswick, Cumberland, Feb. 6, 1843; died in Rome,
Jan. 17, 1901. 'He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him long
life ever and forever.'"

Over the grave of John Addington Symonds, whose best monument is in his admirable History of the Renaissance in Italy, is a Latin inscription written by Professor Jowett of Oxford, and a stanza from the Greek of Cleanthes, translated by Mr. Symonds as follows:--

"Lead thou, our God, law, reason, motion, life;
All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow;
Lead me, for I will follow without strife,
Or, if I strive, still more I blindly follow."

John Addington Symonds, who certainly ranks as the most gifted interpreter of Italy, in her art, her legends and associations, and her landscape loveliness, died in the Rome he so loved in 1893. His wife was ill in Venice, but his daughter, Margaret,--his inseparable companion and his helper in his work,--was with him. It is Miss Symonds who prefaced a memorial volume to her father with the exquisite lines:--

"O Love; we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer beyond the sea."

Near the graves of Keats and of his friend, Joseph Severn, are those of Augustus William Hare and John Gibson, the sculptor, who died in 1868. Some ten years before Hawthorne, meeting Gibson at a dinner given by T. Buchanan Read, wrote of him that it was whispered about the table that he had been in Rome for forty-two years and that he had a quiet, self-contained aspect as of one who had spent a calm life among his clay and marble.

Dwight Benton, an American painter and writer, who was for some time in the diplomatic service and whose home had been in Rome for more than a quarter of a century, lies buried here. For many years he was the editor of _The Roman World_, which still sustains the interesting character that marked it during his editorship. Of his work in art a friend wrote:--

"In painting, as in literature, Dwight Benton took his inspiration
from nature. His paintings of Italian scenery are true and faithful
representations of its character and atmospheric effects. His
tramps on the Roman Campagna were long and often tiring, but he
worked with all an artist's enthusiasm, unmindful of cold, rain,
and even hunger. He would delight, as all true artists, in an old
convent, a tree, a tower, a cross, which he would reproduce with a
peculiar and striking perfection of tone and color. In his
paintings of Keats's and Shelley's tombs, not only are the slabs
and marble there, but there, also, in all their naturalness, are
the stately pines and cypresses above, with the sunshine and
shadows alternating between them, and in the background the
turreted top of St. Paul's Gateway, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius,
all lending effect and picturesqueness to the whole."

The present King of Italy purchased one of Mr. Benton's paintings, called "Giornata di tristezza."

While art abounds in Rome, less can be said for literature. There is a large and admirable selected Italian library in connection with the Collegio Romano; but while these books circulate, under certain conditions, to visitors, and the courtesy of the librarian and his staff is generously kind, the location and the Italian methods render it a matter of some difficulty to avail one's self of its resources. In the Piazza di Spagna there are two circulating libraries, but although one of these claims twenty-five thousand volumes, the majority are of mediocre fiction and almost none, if any, of the important modern works are to be found here. The visitor who is a subscriber to this library passes into a small, dark room, where one window looking on the street hardly does more than make the darkness visible, and he must take the catalogue to the window and stand in order to decipher the list, which is hardly, indeed, worth the trouble, as there are very few volumes of any pretension to importance in the collection, and of late years no additions, apparently, have ever been made. The other circulating library, while far preferable, is still in crowded rooms and the assortment is limited. The visitor in Rome who cares for reading matter looks forward with delight to Florence, with its noble circulating library, to which access is so easy and whose conduct in all ways is so convenient and grateful to the guest.

In Rome, however, one finds his romance embodied in life and his history written in the streets and in the marvellous structures. His poetry is in her art, her ruins, her magical loveliness of hillside vistas, her infinite views over the Campagna, her sapphire skies, and her luminous, golden atmosphere.

"_Here Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles,
And yonder, bluest of the isles,
Calm Capri waits
Her sapphire gates,
Beguiling to her bright estates._"

"_Oh, Signor! thine the amber hand,
And mine the distant sea
Obedient to the least command
Thine eyes impose on me._"

III

DAY-DREAMS IN NAPLES, AMALFI, AND CAPRI

"With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Where summer sings but never dies."

Naples is the paradise of excursions. It is set in the heart of incomparable loveliness. Over its sapphire sea one sails away--to the Fortunate Isles, or some others equally alluring. Its heights and adjacent mountains offer views that one might well cross the ocean to enjoy. Its atmosphere is full of classic interest; of song, and story, and legend, and romance; of history, too, which in its tragic and exciting episodes is not less vivid in color and in strange studies of human life than is any romance. Naples is the city of fascination. Rome is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment; Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is simply--fascinating. There is the common life of the streets and the populace continually _en scène_; the people who are at home on the sunny side in winter, or the shady side in summer; there is the social life of the nobility, which is brilliant and vivacious. The excursions, of which Naples is the centre, are the chief interest to travellers, and these, while possible in winter, are far more enjoyable in the early spring. Still even in midwinter the days are sunny, and while the air is crisp and cool, it is not cold. The grass is as green as in June; but the foliage and flowers are more or less withered. Naples has the high and the lower town, the former the more desirable, and the fine hotels perched on the terraces, with the view all over the Bay of Naples, Capri, Sorrento, and Vesuvius, offer a vista hardly to be duplicated in the entire world. The lower town has its fine hotels on the water's edge, with a beautiful view over the bay, less enchanting than when seen from above. The Bay of Naples is enclosed in two semicircular arms that extend far out at sea, the southern reaching nearly to Capri, while near the termination of the northern,

"Fair Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles."

Far out at sea the sun shines dazzlingly on the blue Mediterranean. The landscape is full of those curious formations that are always inherent in volcanic regions. The region surrounding Naples is abrupt, picturesque, with the same irregular outline of hills that characterizes the elevations in the Tonto basin in Arizona. The vegetation is of the tropical type. The cactus is common, although it grows to no such monstrous heights as in Arizona. Orange and lemon groves prevail as far as the eye can see. On every height towns and villages crown the crests and sweep in winding terraces around the hillsides. Olive orchards abound. Castles and ruins gleam white in the sunshine on the ledge of rocky precipices. The curved shores shine like broken lines of silver, with deep indentations at Naples and at Castellammare. Between these two points rises Vesuvius, the thin blue smoke constantly curling from the summit that, since the eruption of 1906, has lost much of its elevation. In many places there is hardly the width of a roadway between the low mountains and the coast, but the cliffs are tropically luxurious in vegetation. Everywhere the habitations of the people crowd the space. From the monasteries and the castles that crown the heights, both distant and near to the clustered villages of the plain and those clinging to the hillsides, the scene is one unending panorama of human life. For Naples is only the focussing point of these densely populated regions of Southern Italy. The city stretches along the coast on both sides her semicircular bay; but the terraced hills, the stretches of land beyond, and every peak and valley are thickly sown with human habitations. Its commanding heights, two of which rise in the middle of the town, and its beautiful mirrored expanse of water give to it the most unparalleled variety and beauty of landscape loveliness.