Chapter III: Part 3

Feeling thus about antiquities, I need not say that those of Rome, so crowned with the most thrilling historical and personal associations, are not wanting in charms for me. Yet I do not claim to be an antiquarian. It is all one to me whether the column of Phocas be forty feet high or sixty,--whether a ruin on the Palatine that fascinates me by its richness and grandeur, was once a Temple of Minerva or of Jupiter Stator; or whether its foundations are of travertine or tufa. I abhor details. My enjoyment of a landscape would be at an end if I were called upon to count the mild-eyed cattle that contribute so much to its picturesqueness; and I have no wish to disturb my appreciation of the spirit of a place consecrated by ages of heroic history, by entertaining any of the learned conjectures of professional antiquarians. It is enough for me to know that I am standing on the spot where Romulus built his straw-thatched palace, and his irreverent brother leaped over the walls of the future mistress of the nations. Standing in the midst of the relics of the grandeur of imperial Rome, the whole of her wonderful history is constantly acting over again in my mind. The stern simplicity of those who laid the foundations of her greatness, the patriotic daring of those who extended her power, the wisdom of those who terminated civil strife by compelling the divided citizens to unite against a foreign foe, are all present to me. In that august place where Cicero pleaded, gazing upon that mount where captive kings did homage to the masters of the world, your mere antiquarian, with his pestilent theories and measurements, seems to me little better than a profaner. When I see such a one scratching about the base of some majestic column in the Forum (although I cannot but be grateful to those whose researches have developed the greatness of the imperial city,) I do long to interrupt him, and remind him that his "tread is on an empire's dust." I wish to recall him from the petty details in which he delights, and have him enjoy with me the grandeur and dignity of the whole scene.

The triumphal arches,--the monuments of the cultivation of those remote ages, no less than of the power of the state which erected them,--the memorials of the luxury that paved the way to the decline of that power--all these things impress me with the thought of the long years that intervened between that splendour and the times when the seat of universal empire was inhabited only by shepherds and their flocks. It wearies me to think of the long centuries of human effort that were required to bring Rome to its culminating point of glory; and it affords me a melancholy kind of amusement to contrast the spirit of those who laid the deep and strong foundations of that prosperity and power, with that of some modern sages, to whom a hundred years are a respectable antiquity, and who seem to think that commercial enterprise and the will of a fickle populace form as secure a basis for a state as private virtue, and the principle of obedience to law. I know a country, yet in the first century of its national existence, full of hope and ambition, and possessing advantages such as never before fell to the lot of a young empire, but lacking in those powers which made Rome what she was. If that country, "the newest born of nations, the latest hope of mankind," which has so rapidly risen to a power surpassing in extent that of ancient Rome, and bears within itself the elements of the decay that ruined the old empire,--wealth, vice, corruption,--if she could overcome the vain notion that hers is an exceptional case, and that she is not subject to that great law of nature which makes personal virtue the corner-stone of national stability and the lack of that its bane, and could look calmly upon the remains of old Rome's grandeur, she might learn a great lesson. Contemplating the patient formation of that far-reaching dominion until it found its perfect consummation in the age of Augustus, (_Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem_,) she would see that true national greatness is not "the hasty product of a day"; that demagogues and adventurers, who have made politics their trade, are not the architects of that greatness; and that the parchment on which the constitution and laws of a country are written, might as well be used for drum-heads when reverence and obedience have departed from the hearts of its people.

A gifted representative of a name which is classical in the history of the drama, some years ago gave to the world a journal of her residence in Rome. She called her volume "A Year of Consolation"--a title as true as it is poetical. Indeed I know of nothing more soothing to the spirit than a walk through these ancient streets, or an hour of meditation amid these remains of fallen majesty. To stand in the arena of the Coliseum in the noonday glare, or when those ponderous arches cast their lengthened shadows on the spot where the first Roman Christians were sacrificed to make a holiday for a brutalized populace,--to muse in the Pantheon, that changeless temple of a living, and monument of a dead, worship, and reflect on the many generations that have passed beneath its majestic portico from the days of Agrippa to our own,--to listen to the birds that sing amid the shrubbery which decks the stupendous arches of the Baths of Caracalla,--to be overwhelmed by the stillness of the Campagna while the eye is filled with that rolling verdure which seems in the hazy distance like the waves of the unquiet sea--what are all these things but consolations in the truest sense of the word? What is the bitterest grief that ever pierced a human heart through a long life of sorrows, compared to the dumb woe of that mighty desolation? What are our brief sufferings, when they are brought into the august presence of a mourner who has seen her hopes one by one taken from her, through centuries of war and rapine, neglect and silent decay?

Among all of Rome's monuments of antiquity, there are few that impress me so strangely as those old Egyptian obelisks, the trophies of the victorious emperors, which the pontiffs have made to contribute so greatly to the adornment of their capital. It is almost impossible to turn a corner of one of the principal streets of the city without seeing one of these peculiar shafts that give a fine finish to the perspective. If their cold granite forms could speak, what a strange history they would reveal! They were witnesses of the achievements of a power which reached its noonday splendour centuries before the shepherd Faustulus took the foundling brothers into his cottage on the banks of the Tiber. The civilization of which they are the relics had declined before the Roman kings inaugurated that which afterwards reclaimed all Europe from the barbarians. Yet there they stand as grim and silent as if they had but yesterday been rescued from the captivity of the native quarry, and had never seen a nobler form than those of the dusty artisans who wrought them--as dull and unimpressible as some of the stupid tourists whom I see daily gazing upon these glorious monuments, and seeing only so much brick and stone.

MODERN ROME

Acknowledging as I do the charms which the Rome of antiquity possesses for me, it must still be confessed that the Rome of the present time enchants me with attractions scarcely less potent. Religion has consecrated many of the spots which history had made venerable, and thus added a new lustre to their associations. I turn from the broken columns and gray mouldering walls of old Rome to those fanes, "so ancient, yet so new," in which the piety of centuries has found its enduring expression. Beneath their sounding arches, by the mild light of the lamps that burn unceasingly around their shrines, who would vex his brain with antiquarian lore? We may notice that the pavement is worn away by the multitudes which have been drawn thither by curiosity or devotion; but we feel that Heaven's chronology is not an affair of months and years, and that Peter and Paul, Gregory and Leo, are not mere personages in a drama upon the first acts of which the curtain long since descended. Who thinks of antiquity while he inhabits that world of art which Rome encloses within her walls? Those are not the triumphs of a past age alone; they are the triumphs of to-day. The Apollo's bearing is not less manly, its step not less elastic, than it was in that remote age when its unknown sculptor threw aside his chisel and gazed upon his finished work. To-day's sunshine is not more clear and golden than that which glows in the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, though he who thus made the sunbeams his servants has been sleeping for nearly two centuries in the dusty vaults of _Trinita de' Monti_. Were Raphael's deathless faces more real while he was living than they are now? Were Guido's and Domenichino's triumphs more worthy of admiration while the paint was wet upon them? or were the achievements of that giant of art, Michel Angelo, ever more wonderful than now? No; these great works take no note of time, and confer upon the city which contains them something of their own immortality.

I have heard people regret that so many of our artists should expatriate themselves, and spend their lives in Rome or Florence. To me, however, nothing seems more natural; and if I were a painter, or a sculptor, I feel certain that I should share the common weakness of the profession for a place of residence in harmony with my art. What sympathy can a true artist feel with a state of society in which he is regarded by nine people out of ten as a useless member, because he does not directly aid in the production of a given quantity of grain or of cloth? Every stroke of his brush, every movement of his hands in moulding the obedient clay, is a protest against the low, mean, materialistic views of life which prevail among us; and it is too much to ask of any man that he shall spend his days in trying to live peaceably in an enemy's camp. When figs and dates become common articles of food in Lapland, and the bleak sides of the hills of New Hampshire are adorned with the graceful palm tree and the luxuriant foliage of the tropics, you may expect art to flourish in a community whose god is commerce, and whose chief religious duty is money-getting.

Truly the life of an artist in Rome is about as near the perfection of earthly happiness as is commonly vouchsafed to mortal man. The tone of society, and all the surroundings of the artist, are so congenial that no poverty nor privation can seriously interfere with them. The streets, with their architectural marvels, the trim gardens and picturesque cloisters of the old religious establishments, the magnificent villas of the neighbourhood of the city, and the vast, mysterious Campagna, with its gigantic aqueducts and its purple atmosphere, and those glorious galleries which at the same time gratify the taste of the artist and feed his ambition,--these are things which are as free to him as the blessed sunlight or the water that sparkles in the countless fountains of the Holy City. I do not wonder that artists who have lived any considerable time in Rome are discontented with the feverish restlessness of our American way of life, and that, after "stifling the mighty hunger of the heart" through two or three wearisome years in our western world, they turn to Rome as to a fond mother, upon whose breast they may find that peace which they had elsewhere sought in vain.

The churches of Rome impress me in a way which I have never heard described by any other person. I do not speak of St. Peter's, (that "noblest temple that human skill ever raised to the honour of the Creator,") nor do I refer to those other magnificent basilicas in which the Christian glories of eighteen centuries sit enthroned. These have a dignity and majesty peculiarly their own, and the most thoughtless cannot tread their ancient pavement without being for the time subdued into awe and veneration. But the parish churches of Rome, the churches of the various religious orders and congregations, and those numerous little temples which are so thickly scattered through the city, attract me in manner especially fascinating. There is an air of cosiness and at-home-ativeness about them which cannot be found in the grander fanes. Some of them seem by their architectural finish to have been built in some fine street or square, and to have wandered off in search of quiet to their present secluded positions. It is beneath their arches that the Roman people may be seen. Before those altars you may see men, women, and children kneeling, their lips scarcely moving with the petitions which are heard only in another world. No intruding tourists, eye-glassed and Murrayed, interfere with their devotions, and the silence of the sacred place is unbroken, save by the rattling of a rosary, or at stated times by the swell of voices from the choir chapel. These are the places where the real power of the Catholic religion makes itself felt more unmistakably than in the grandest cathedrals, where every form and sound is eloquent of worship. I remember with pleasure that once in London, as I was passing through that miserable quarter which lies between Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, I was attracted by the appearance of a number of people who were entering a narrow doorway. One or two stylish carriages, with crests upon their panels, and drivers in livery, stood before the dingy building which seemed to wear a mysterious air of semi-cleanliness in the midst of the general squalour. I followed the strange collection of the representatives of opulence and the extremest poverty through a long passage-way, and found myself in a large room which was tastefully fitted up for a Catholic chapel. The simplicity of the place, joined with its strictly ecclesiastical look, the excellent music, the crowded and devout congregation, and the almost breathless attention which was paid to the simple and persuasive eloquence of the preacher, who was formerly one of the chief ornaments of the established church, whose highest honours he had cast aside that he might minister more effectually to the poor and despised,--all these things astonished and delighted me. To see that church preserving, even in its hiddenness and poverty, its regard for the comeliness of God's worship, and adorning that humble chapel in a manner which showed that the spirit which erected the shrines of Westminster, Salisbury and York, had not died out, carried me back in spirit to the catacombs of Rome, where the early Christians left the abiding evidences of their zeal for the beauty of the house of God. I was at that time fresh from the continent, and my mind was occupied with the remembrance of the gorgeous churches of Italy. Yet, despite my recollection of those "forests of porphyry and marble," those altars of _lapis lazuli_, those tabernacles glittering with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and those mosaics and frescoes whose beauty and variety almost fatigue the sense of the beholder,--I must say that it gave me a new sense of the dignity and grandeur of the ancient Church, to see her in the midst of the poverty and obscurity to which she is now condemned in the land which once professed her faith, and was once thickly planted with those institutions of learning and charity which are the proudest monuments of her progress. A large ship, under full sail, running off before a pleasant breeze, is a beautiful sight; but it is by no means so grandly impressive as that of the same ship, under close canvas, gallantly riding out the merciless gale that carried destruction to every unseaworthy craft which came within its reach.

I am not one of those who lament over the millions which have been expended upon the churches of Rome. I am _not_ inclined to follow the sordid principle of that apostle who is generally held up rather as a warning than an example, and say that it had been better if the sums which have been devoted to architectural ornament had been withheld and given to the poor. Religion has no need, it is true, of these visible splendours, any more than of set forms and modes of speech. For it is the heart that believes, and loves, and prays. But we, poor mortals, so enslaved by our senses, so susceptible to external appearances, need every thing that can inspire in us a respect for something higher than ourselves, or remind us of the glories of the invisible, eternal world. And can we doubt that He who praised the action of that pious woman who poured the precious ointment upon His sacred head, looks with complacency upon the sacrifices which are made for the adornment of the temples devoted to His worship? Is it a right principle that people who are clad in expensive garments, who are not content unless they are surrounded by carved or enamelled furniture, and whose feet tread daily on costly tapestries, should find fault with the generous piety which has made the churches of Italy what they are, and should talk so impressively about the beauty of spiritual worship? I have no patience with these advocates for simplicity in every thing that does not relate to themselves and their own comforts.

"Shall we serve Heaven with less respect
Than we do minister to our gross selves?"

I care not how simple our private houses may be, but I advocate liberality and splendour in our public buildings of all kinds, for the sake of preserving a due respect for the institutions they enshrine. I remember, in reading one of the old classical writers,--Sallust, I think,--in my young days, being greatly impressed by his declaration that private luxury is a sure forerunner of a nation's downfall, and that it is a fatal sign for the dwellings of the citizens to be spacious and magnificent, while the public edifices are mean and unworthy. Purely intellectual as we may think ourselves, we are, nevertheless, somewhat deferential to the external proprieties of life, and I very much doubt whether the most reverential of us could long maintain his respect for the Supreme Court if its sessions were held in a tap-room, or for religion, if its ministers prayed and preached in pea-jackets and top-boots.

Displeasing as is the presence of most of the English-speaking tourists one meets in Rome, there are two places where they delight to congregate, which yet have charms for me that not even Cockney vulgarity or Yankee irreverence can destroy. The church of the convent of _Trinita de' Monti_ wins me, in spite of the throng that fills its nave at the hour of evening every Sunday and festival day. Some years since, when I first visited Rome, the music which was heard there was of the highest order of merit. At present the nuns of the Sacred Heart have no such great artistes in their community as they had then, but the music of their choir is still one of those things which he who has once heard can never forget. It is the only church in Rome in which I have heard female voices; and, though I much prefer the great male choirs of the basilicas, there is a soothing simplicity in the music at _Trinita de' Monti_ which goes home to almost every heart. I have seen giddy and unthinking girls, who laughed at the ceremonial they did not understand, subdued to reverence by those strains, and supercilious Englishmen reduced to the humiliating necessity of wiping their eyes. Indeed, the whole scene is so harmoniously impressive that its enchantment cannot be resisted. The solemn church, lighted only by the twilight rays, and the tapers upon the high altar,--the veiled forms of the pious sisterhood and their young pupils in the grated sanctuary,--the clouding of the fragrant incense,--the tinkling of that silvery bell and of the chains of the swinging censer,--those ancient and dignified rites,--and over all, those clear, angelic voices praying and praising, in litany and hymn--all combine to make up a worship, one moment of which would seem enough to wipe away the memory of a lifetime of folly, and disappointment, and sorrow.

The Sistine Chapel is another place to which I am bound by an almost supernatural fascination. My imperfect eyesight will not permit me to enjoy fully the frescoes that adorn its lofty walls; but I feel that I am in the presence of the great master and some of his mightiest conceptions. I do not know whether the chapel is most impressive in its empty state, or when thronged for some great religious function. In the former condition, its fine proportions and its simplicity satisfy me so completely, that I hardly wish for the pomp and splendour which belong to it on great occasions. I know of nothing more grand than the sight of that simple throne of the Sovereign Pontiff, when it is occupied by that benignant old man, to whom more than two hundred millions of people look with veneration as to a father and a teacher,--and surrounded by those illustrious prelates and princes who compose a senate of moral and intellectual worth, such as all the world beside cannot parallel. Those venerable figures--those gray hairs--those massive foreheads, and those resplendent robes of office, seem to be a part of some great historical picture, rather than a reality before my eyes. There is nothing more severe in actual experience, or more satisfactory in the recollection, than Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel. The crowd, the fatigue, and the presence of so many sight-seers, who have come with the same feeling that they would attend an opera or a play, are not calculated to increase one's bodily comfort, or to awaken the sentiments proper to so sacred a season as that which is then commemorated. But after these have passed away, there remains the recollection, which time does not diminish, but makes more precious, of that darkening chapel and the bowed-down heads of the Pope and cardinals, of the music, "yearning like a god in pain," of the melodious woe of the _Miserere_, the plaintive majesty of the Lamentations and the Reproaches, and the shrill dissonance of the shouts of the populace in the gospel narrative of the crucifixion. These are things which would outweigh a year of fatigue and pain. I know of no greater or more sincere tribute to the perfections of the Sistine choir, and the genius of Allegri and Palestrina, than the patience with which so many people submit to be packed, like herring in a box, into that small chapel. But old and gouty as I am, I would gladly undergo all the discomforts of that time to hear those sounds once more.

I hear some people complain of the beggars, and wonder why Rome, with her splendid system of charities for the relief of every form of suffering, permits mendicancy. For myself, I am not inclined to complain either of the beggars or of the merciful government, which refuses to look upon them as offenders against its laws. On the contrary, it appears to me rather creditable than otherwise to Rome, that she is so far behind the age, as not to class poverty with crime among social evils. I have a sincere respect for this feature of the Catholic Church; this regard for the poor as her most precious inheritance, and this unwillingness that her children should think that, because she has organized a vast system of benevolence, they are absolved of the duty of private charity. In this wisdom, which thus provides for the exercise of kindly feelings in alms-giving, may be found one of the most attractive characteristics of the Roman Church. This, no less than the austere religious orders which she has founded, shows in what sense she receives the beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." And the same kind spirit of equality may be seen in her churches and cathedrals, where rich and poor kneel upon the same pavement, before their common God and Saviour, and in her cloisters, and universities, and schools, where social distinctions cannot enter.

When I walk through the cloisters of these venerable institutions of learning, or gaze upon the ancient city from _Monte Mario_, or the Janiculum, it seems to me that never until now did I appreciate the world's indebtedness to Rome. Dislike it as we may, we cannot disguise the fact, that to her every Christian nation owes, in a great measure, its civilization, its literature, and its religion. The endless empire which Virgil's muse foretold, is still hers; and, as one of her ancient Christian poets said, those lands which were not conquered by her victorious arms are held in willing obedience by her religion. When I think how all our modern civilization, our art, letters, and jurisprudence, sprang originally from Rome, it appears to me that a narrow religious prejudice has prevented our forming a due estimate of her services to humanity. To some, the glories of the ancient empire, the memory of the days when her sovereignty extended from Britain to the Ganges, and her capital counted its inhabitants by millions, seem to render all her later history insignificant and dull; but to my mind the moral dignity and power of Christian Rome is as superior to her old military omnipotence as it is possible for the human intellect to conceive. The ancient emperors, with all their power, could not carry the Roman name much beyond the limits of Europe; the rulers who have succeeded them have made the majestic language of Rome familiar to two hemispheres, and have built up, by spiritual arms, the mightiest empire that the world has ever seen. For me, Rome's most enduring glories are the memories of the times when her great missionary orders civilized and evangelized the countries which her arms had won, when her martyrs sowed the seed of Christianity with their blood, and her confessors illumined the world with their virtues; when her pontiffs, single-handed, turned back barbarian invasions, or mitigated the severities of the feudal age, or protected the people by laying their ban upon the tyrants who oppressed them, or defended the sanctity of marriage, and the rights of helpless women against divorce-seeking monarchs and conquerors. These things are the true fulfilment of the glowing prophecy of Rome's greatness, which Virgil puts into the mouth of Anchises, when AEneas visits the Elysian Fields, and hears from his old father that the mission of the government he is about to found is to rule the world by moral power, to make peace between opposing nations, to spare the subject, and to subdue the proud:

"Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos."

ROME TO MARSEILLES

The weather was fearfully hot the day of my departure from Rome. The sun was staring down, without winking, upon that wonderful old city, as if he loved the sight. The yellow current of old Father Tiber seemed yellower than ever in the glare. Except from sheer necessity, no person moved abroad; for the atmosphere, which early in the morning had seemed like airs from heaven, before noon had become most uncomfortably like a blast from the opposite direction. The Piazza di Spagna was like Tadmor in the wilderness. Not a single English tourist, with his well-read Murray under his arm, was to be seen there; not a carriage driver broke the stillness of the place with his polyglot solicitations to ride. The great staircase of _Trinita de' Monti_ seemed an impossibility; to have climbed up its weary ascent under that broiling sun would have been poor entertainment for man or beast. The squares of the city were like furnaces, and made one mentally curse architecture, and bless the narrow, shady streets. The soldiers on guard at the gates and in the public places looked as if they couldn't help it. Now and then a Capuchin monk, in his heavy, brown habit, girded with the knotted cord, toiled along on some errand of benevolence, and made one marvel at his endurance. Occasionally a cardinal rolled by in scarlet state, looking as if he gladly would have exchanged the bondage of his dignity and power for a single day of virtuous liberty in linen pantaloons.

Traffic seemed to have departed this life; there were no buyers, and the shopkeepers slumbered at their counters. The _cafes_ were shrouded in their long, striped awnings, and seemed to invite company by their well-wet pavement. A few old Romans found energy enough to call for an occasional ice or lemonade, and talked in the intervals about _Pammerstone_, and his agent, Mazzini. How the sun blazed down into the Coliseum! Not a breath of air stirred the foliage that clothes that mighty ruin. Even the birds were mute. To have crossed that broad arena would have perilled life as surely as in those old days when the first Roman Christians there confessed their faith. On such a day, one's parting visits must necessarily be brief; so I left the amphitheatre, and walked along the dusty _Via Sacra_, pausing a moment to ponder on the scene of Cicero's triumphs, and of so many centuries of thrilling history, and coming to the conclusion that, if it were such a day as that when Virginius in that place slew his dear little daughter, the blow was merciful indeed. The market-place in front of the Pantheon, usually so thronged and lively, was almost deserted. The fresh, bright vegetables had either all been sold, or had refused to grow in such a heat. But the Pantheon itself was unchanged. There it stood, in all its severe grandeur, majestic as in the days of the Caesars, the embodiment of heathenism, the exponent of the worship of the old, inexorable gods,--of justice without mercy, and power without love. Its interior seemed cool and refreshing, for no heat can penetrate that stupendous pile of masonry,--and I gathered new strength from my short visit. It was a fine thought in the old Romans to adapt the temples of heathenism to the uses of Christianity. The contrasts suggested to our minds by this practice are very striking. When we see that the images of the old revengeful and impure divinities have given place to those of the humble and self-denying heroes of Christianity, that the Saviour of the world stretches out His arms upon the cross, in the place from which the haughty Jupiter once hurled his thunderbolts, we are borne at once to a conclusion more irresistible than any that the mere force of language could produce. One of our own poets felt this in Rome, and expressed this same idea in graceful verse:--

"The goddess of the woods and fields,
The healthful huntress undefiled,
Now with her fabled brother yields
To sinless Mary and her Child."

But I must hurry on towards St. Peter's. There are three places in Rome which every one visits as soon as possible after he arrives, and as short a time as may be before his departure--the Coliseum, the Pantheon, and St. Peter's. The narrow streets between the Pantheon and the Bridge of St. Angelo were endurable, because they were shady. It was necessary to be careful, however, and not trip over any of the numerous Roman legs whose proprietors were stretched out upon the pavement in various picturesque postures, sleeping away the long hours of that scorching day. At last the bridge is reached Bernini's frightful statues, which deform its balustrades, seem to be writhing under the influence of the sun. I am quite confident that St. Veronica's napkin was curling with the heat. The bronze archangel stood as usual upon the summit of the Castle of St. Angelo. I stopped a few moments, thinking that he might see the expediency of sheathing his sword and retreating, before he should be compelled, in the _confusion_ of such a blaze as that, to _run_ away; but it was useless. I moved on towards St. Peter's, and he still kept guard there as brazen-faced as ever. The great square in front of the basilica seemed to have scooped up its fill of heat, and every body knows that it is capable of containing a great deal. The few persons whom devotion or love of art had tempted out in such a day, approached it under the shade of its beautiful colonnades. I was obliged to content myself with the music of one of those superb fountains only, for the workmen were making a new basin for the other. St. Peter's never seemed to me so wonderful, never filled me up so completely, as it did then. The contrast of the heat I had been in with that atmosphere of unchangeable coolness, the quiet of the vast area, the fewness of people moving about, all conspired to impress me with a new sense of the majesty and holiness of the place. The quiet, unflickering blaze of the numerous lamps that burn unceasingly around the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles seemed a beacon of immortality. To one who could at that hour recall the bustle and turmoil of the Boulevards of Paris, or of the Strand, or of Broadway, the vast basilica itself seemed to be an island of peace in the tempestuous ocean of the world. I am not so blind a lover of Gothic architecture that I can find no beauty nor religious feeling in the Italian churches. I prefer, it is true, the "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault," and the "storied windows richly dight"; but I cannot for that reason sneer at the gracefully turned arches, the mosaic walls and domes rich in frescoes and precious marbles, that delight one's eyes in Italy. Both styles are good in their proper places. The Gothic and Norman, with their high-pitched roofs, are the natural growth of the snowy north, and to attempt to transplant them to a land where heat is to be guarded against, were as absurd as to expect the pine and fir to take the place of the fig tree and the palm. Talk as eloquently as we may about being superior to external impressions, I defy any man to breathe the quiet atmosphere of any of these old continental churches for a few moments, without feeling that he has gathered new strength therefrom to tread the thorns of life. Lamartine has spoken eloquently on this theme: "Ye columns who veil the sacred asylums where my eyes dare not penetrate, at the foot of your immovable trunks I come to sigh! Cast over me your deep shades, render the darkness more obscure, and the silence more profound! Forests of porphyry and marble! the air which the soul breathes under your arches is full of mystery and of peace! Let love and anxious cares seek shade and solitude under the green shelter of groves, to soothe their secret wounds. O darkness of the sanctuary! the eye of religion prefers thee to the wood which the breeze disturbs! Nothing changes thy foliage; thy still shade is the image of motionless eternity!"

There was not time to linger long. The pressure of worldly engagements was felt even at the shrine of the apostles. I walked about, and tried to recall the many splendid religious pageants I had there witnessed, and wondered sorrowfully whether I should ever again listen to that matchless choir, or have my heart stirred to its depths by the silver trumpets that reecho under that sonorous vault in the most solemn moment of religion's holiest rite. Once more out in the clear hot atmosphere which seemed hotter than before. The Supreme Pontiff was absent from his capital, and the Vatican was comparatively empty. The Swiss guards, in their fantastic but picturesque uniform, were loitering about the foot of the grand staircase, and sighing for a breath of the cool air of their Alpine home. I took a last long gaze at that grand old pile of buildings,--the home of all that is most wonderful in art, the abode of that power which overthrew the old Roman empire, inaugurated the civilization of Europe, and planted Christianity in every quarter of the globe,--and then turned my unwilling feet homewards. In my course I passed the foot of the Janiculum Hill: it was too hot, however, to think of climbing up to the convent of Sant' Onofrio--though I would gladly have paid a final visit to that lovely spot where the munificence of Pius IX. has just completed a superb sepulchre for the repose of Tasso. So I crossed the Tiber in one of those little ferry boats which are attached to a cable stretched over the river, and thus are swung across by the movement of the current,--a labour-saving arrangement preeminently Roman in its character,--and soon found myself in my lodgings However warm the weather may be in Rome, one can keep tolerably comfortable so long as he does not move about,--thanks to the thick walls and heavy wooden window shutters of the houses,--so I found my room a cool asylum after my morning of laborious pleasure.

At last, the good byes having all been said, behold me, with my old portmanteau, (covered with its many-coloured coat of baggage labels, those trophies of many a hard campaign of travel,) at the office of the diligence for Civita Vecchia. The luggage and the passengers having been successfully stowed away, the lumbering vehicle rolled down the narrow streets, and we were soon outside the gate that opens upon the old Aurelian Way. Here the passports were examined, the postilions cracked their whips, and I felt indeed that I was "banished from Rome." It is a sad thing to leave Rome. I have seen people who have made but a brief stay there shed more tears on going away than they ever did on a departure from home; but for one who has lived there long enough to feel like a Roman citizen--to feel that the broken columns of the Forum have become a part of his being--to feel as familiar with St. Peter's and the Vatican as with the King's Chapel and the Tremont House--it is doubly hard to go away. The old city, so "rich with the spoils of time," seems invested with a personality that appeals most powerfully to every man, and would fain hold him back from returning to the world. The lover of art there finds its choicest treasures ever open to him; the artist there finds an abundance of employment for his chisel or his brush; the man of business there finds an asylum from the vexing cares of a commercial career; the student of antiquity or of history can there take his fill amid the "wrecks of a world whose ashes still are warm," and listen to the centuries receding into the unalterable past with their burdens of glory or of crime; the lover of practical benevolence will there be delighted by the inspection of establishments for the relief of every possible form of want and suffering; the enthusiast for education finds there two universities and hundreds of public schools of every grade, and all as free as the bright water that sparkles in Rome's countless fountains; the devout can there rekindle their devotion at the shrines of apostles and martyrs, and breathe the holy air of cloisters in which saints have lived and died, or join their voices with those that resound in old churches, whose pavements are furrowed by the knees of pious generations; the admirer of pomp, and power, and historic associations can there witness the more than regal magnificence of a power, compared to which the houses of Bourbon or of Hapsburg are but of yesterday; the lover of republican simplicity can there find subject for admiration in the facility of access to the highest authorities, and in the perfection of his favourite elective system by which the supreme power is perpetuated. There is, in short, no class of men to whom Rome does not attach itself. People may complain during their first week that it is dull, or melancholy, or dirty; but you generally find them sorry enough to go away, and looking back to their residence there as the happiest period of their existence. Somebody has said,--and I wish that I could recall the exact words, they are so true,--that when we leave Paris, or Naples, or Florence, we feel a natural sorrow, as if we were parting from a cherished friend; but on our departure from Rome we feel a pang like that of separation from a woman whom we love!

At last Rome disappeared from sight in the dusk of evening, and the discomforts of the journey began to make themselves obtrusive. The night air in Italy is not considered healthy, and we therefore had the windows of the diligence closed. Like Charles Lamb after the oyster pie, we were "all full inside," and a pretty time we had of it. As to respiration, you might as well have expected the performance of that function from a mackerel occupying the centre of a well-packed barrel of his finny comrades, as of any person inside that diligence. Of course there was a baby in the company, and of course the baby cried. I could not blame it, for even a fat old gentleman who sat opposite to me would have cried if he had not known how to swear. But it is useless to recall the anguish of that night: suffice it to say that for several hours the only air we got was an occasional vocal performance from the above-mentioned infant. At midnight we reached Palo, on the sea coast, where I heard "the wild water lapping on the crag," and felt more keenly than before that I had indeed left Rome behind me. The remainder of the journey being along the coast, we had the window open, though it was not much better on that account, as we were choking with dust. It was small comfort to see the cuttings and fillings-in for the railway which is destined soon to destroy those beastly diligences, and place Rome within two or three hours of its seaport.

At five o'clock in the morning, after ten toilsome hours, I found myself, tired, dusty, and hungry, in Civita Vecchia, a city which has probably been the cause of more profanity than any other part of the world, including Flanders. I was determined not to be fleeced by any of the hotel keepers; so I staggered about the streets until I found a barber's shop open. Having repaired the damage of the preceding night, I hove to in a neighbouring _cafe_ long enough to take in a little ballast in the way of breakfast. Afterwards I fell in with an Englishman, of considerable literary reputation, whom I had several times met in Rome. He was one of those men who seem to possess all sorts of sense except common sense. He was full of details, and could tell exactly the height of the dome of St. Peter's, or of the great pyramid,--could explain the process of the manufacture of the Minie rifle or the boring of an artesian well, and could calculate an eclipse with Bond or Secchi,--but he could not pack a carpet-bag to save his life. That he should have been able to travel so far from home alone is a fine commentary on the honesty and good nature of the people of the continent. I could not help thinking what a time he would have were he to attempt to travel in America. He would think he had discovered a new nomadic tribe in the cabmen of New York. He had come down to Civita Vecchia in a most promiscuous style, and when I discovered him he was trying to bring about a union between some six or eight irreconcilable pieces of luggage. I aided him successfully in the work, and his look of perplexity and despair gave way to one of gratitude and admiration for his deliverer. Delighted at this escape from the realities of his situation, he launched out into a profound dissertation on the philosophy of language and the formation of provincial dialects, and it was some time before I could bring him down to the common and practical business of securing his passage in the steamer for Marseilles. Ten o'clock, however, found us on board one of the steamers of the _Messageries Imperiales_, and we were very shortly after under way. We were so unfortunate as to run aground on a little spit of land in getting out of port, as we ran a little too near an English steamer that was lying there. But a Russian frigate sent off a cable to us, and thus established an alliance between their flag and the French, which drew the latter out of the difficulty in which it had got by too close a proximity to its English neighbour.

It was a beautiful, cloudless day, and reminded me of many halcyon days I had spent on that blue Mediterranean in other times. It reminded me of some of my childhood's days in the country in New England,--days described by Emerson where he says that we "bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba,"--when "the day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm, wide fields,"--when "the cattle, as they lie on the ground, seem to have great and tranquil thoughts." It was on such a day that I used to delight to pore over my Shakspeare, undisturbed by any sound save the hum of the insect world, or the impatient switch of the tail, or movement of the feet, of a horse who had sought the same shade I was enjoying. To a man who has been rudely used by fortune, or who has drunk deep of sorrow or disappointment, I can conceive of nothing more grateful or consoling than a summer cruise in the Mediterranean. "The sick heart often needs a warm climate as much as the sick body."

My English friend, immediately on leaving port, took some five or six prescriptions for the prevention of seasickness, and then went to bed, so that I had some opportunity to look about among our ship's company. There were two men, apparently companions, though they hardly spoke to each other, who amused me very much One was a person of about four feet and a half in height, who walked about on deck with that manner which so many diminutive persons have, of wishing to be thought as tall as Mr. George Barrett. He boasted a deportment that would have made the elder Turveydrop envious, while it was evident that under that serene and dignified exterior lay hidden all the warm-heartedness and geniality of that eminent philanthropist who was obliged to play a concerto on the violin to calm his grief at seeing the conflagration of his native city. The other looked as if "he had not loved the world, nor the world him"; he was a thin, bilious-looking person, and seemed like a whole serious family rolled into one individuality. I felt a great deal of curiosity to know whether he was reduced to that pitiable condition by piety or indigestion. I felt sure that he was meditating suicide as he gazed upon the sea, and I stood by him for some time to prevent his accomplishing any such purpose, until I became convinced that to let him take the jump, if he pleased, would be far the more philanthropic course of action. There was a French bishop, and a colonel of the French staff at Rome, among the passengers, and by their genial urbanity they fairly divided between them the affections of the whole company. Either of them would have made a fog in the English Channel seem like the sunshine of the Gulf of Egina. I picked up a pleasant companion in an Englishman who had travelled much and read more, and spent the greater part of the day with him. When he found that I was an American, he at once asked me if I had ever been to Niagara, and had ever seen Longfellow and Emerson. I am astonished to find so many cultivated English people who know little or nothing about Tennyson; I am inclined to think he has ten readers in America to one in England, while the English can repeat Longfellow by pages.

After thirty hours of pleasant sailing along by Corsica and Elba, and along the coast of France, until it seemed as if our cruise (like that of the widow of whom we have all read) would never have an end, we came to anchor in the midst of a vast fleet of steamers in the new port of Marseilles. The bustle of commercial activity seemed any thing but pleasant after the classical repose of Rome; but the landlady of the hotel was most gracious, and when I opened the window of my room looking out on the Place Royale, one of those peripatetic dispensers of melody, whose life (like the late M. Mantalini's after he was reduced in circumstances) must be "one demnition horrid grind," executed "Sweet Home" in a manner that went entirely home to the heart of at least one of his accidental audience.

MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY

If the people of Marseilles do not love the Emperor of the French, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. He has so completely changed the aspect of that city by his improvements, that the man who knows it as it existed in the reign of Louis Philippe, would be lost if he were to revisit it now. The completion of the railway from Paris to Marseilles is an inestimable advantage to the latter city, while the new port, in magnitude and style of execution, is worthy of comparison with the splendid docks of London and Liverpool. The flags of every civilized nation may be seen there; and the variety of costumes and languages, which bewilder one's eyes and ears, assure him that he is in the commercial metropolis of the Mediterranean. The frequency of steam communication between Marseilles and the various ports of Spain, Italy, Africa, and the Levant, draws to it a large proportion of the travellers in those directions. I believe that Marseilles is only celebrated for having been colonized by the Phocaeans, or some such people, for having several times been devastated by the plague, and for having been very perfectly described by Dickens in his Little Dorrit. The day on which I arrived there was very like the one described by Dickens; so if any one would like further particulars, he had better overhaul his Little Dorrit, and, "when found, make note of it."