Chapter V (2)

One who goes from America into Europe realizes that to have crossed the Atlantic is not merely to have left one part of the habitable globe and gone into another. It is a passing from the New World into the Old, in almost every respect a different world from the one that is left behind. And in no place as at Rome is it brought home to one who crosses the ocean that the Atlantic is not the only gulf that divides these two worlds. Rome is the typical city of the Old World, or rather is the Old World in miniature. There all its most striking characteristics meet as they do in no other European city. There you may study old world customs and the old world life in its many phases, old world art and architecture, and above all those old-world monuments and ruins around which gather a thousand historical associations. Here rises the Palatine Hill, the original site and centre of the embryo mistress of the world, where tradition places the dwelling of Romulus, and where later stood the gorgeous palace of the Caesars, whose ruins still attest its old-time grandeur. Below is the Roman Forum which once rang with the eloquence of Cicero, and traversing it from north to south, the Via Sacra or Sacred Way. At one end of the Forum is the Mamertine Prison, a dark and dismal underground dungeon, where kings led captive by pagan Rome were strangled or starved to death, and where still exists the spring which, according to tradition, St. Peter, imprisoned here under Nero, miraculously caused to flow in order to baptize his jailers. At some distance to the south stands the Colosseum, nearly one-third of a mile in circumference, and originally containing seats for 87,000 spectators. Here, in the arena, the scene of gladiatorial combats, thousands of Christian martyrs fought the good fight and won the crown. A quaint prophetic saying, which dates from the 8th century, has it that

While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand,
When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall,
And when Rome falls, with it shall fall the World.

But I should never end if I were to speak of all the monuments of both Pagan and Christian Antiquity that make Rome the connecting link between the ancient and the modern world.

The Rome of to-day is not the Rome of twenty years ago. The tourist who wandered and mused among the ruins in and around it then would scarcely know it now, so vast is the change that has come over it. Your matter-of-fact modern man, who scowls at antiquity and lives in and for the present only, would say that the change has been greatly for the better. Streets have been widened and straightened, numberless new ones have been opened, and the wide space east and south of the Esquiline Hill, once studded with venerable ruins, is now occupied by rows of huge brick buildings, inferior in make and unsightly. In a word, the old Rome, amid whose magnificent ruins still abode the genius of Antiquity, has all but disappeared, and the new Rome, a third-rate modern city, shorn of much of its historical interest, has usurped its place. "Rome in twenty or thirty years," wrote Mr. Frederick Harrison recently in the "Fortnightly Review," "has become like any other European city--big, noisy, vulgar, overgrown, Frenchified and syndicate-ridden."

Rome, Rome thou art no more
As thou hast been!
On thy seven hills of yore
Thou sat'st a queen.

Newman had written of it, on visiting it for the first time in the early thirties of last century: "And now what can I say of Rome, but that it is the first of all cities, and that all I ever saw are but as dust (even dear old Oxford inclusive) compared with its majesty and glory?" It has certainly since then lost much of its charm for the tourist and the antiquarian. But the majesty and glory that so impressed Newman--these no spoiler's hand can pluck from the brow of the queenly city on the Tiber.

It is not merely the glamour antiquity throws around it that makes Rome a centre of attraction. In the wondrous works of art gathered into it from every side, in the number and magnificence of its churches and shrines, in the prestige it possesses as the capital of the Christian world for eighteen hundred years, it stands peerless among the cities of the earth. Anything like a detailed account of the art treasures in the Vatican alone would fill volumes. Almost every church in Rome, too, and every palace, has its works of art, its paintings, mosaics, and sculptures, of priceless value. And as for the churches, no words can fittingly describe them. "They could not have been in any place but Rome, which has turned the materials and buildings of the Empire to the purposes of religion." The exterior, save in the case of the large basilicas, is not striking; their beauty, like the glory of the king's daughter, is within. St. Peter's, of course, stands apart from and above them all, a world of wonders in itself. The first visit does not reveal its vastness nor the exquisite grace and delicacy of its proportions. It is only by visiting it again and again that one can, so to speak, take it all in, if indeed one can ever do so. There is this peculiarity about it, too, that it has what, for want of a better word to convey the idea, I am tempted to call a climate of its own. In winter, when Rome is swept by the tramontana, a penetrating and chilling wind which blows for days at a time from the snow-capped Apennines, making life scarce worth living in the fireless apartments of the Roman dwellings, you will find warmth and comfort within St. Peter's. And in vain will you seek amid the shady groves of the Roman villas for a tithe of the delicious coolness that dwells within the charmed circle of its walls all through the broiling heat of the summer months in Rome.

And what of the festival of Christmas in the Eternal City? In September, 1870, Victor Emmanuel's troops entered Rome by the breach of Porta Pia, and with their coming in the old-time Christmas and the old-time Easter went out. The faithful Romans have not had a Merry Christmas since. The Pope used to proceed in person to celebrate the midnight Mass at St. Mary Major's, where is preserved the Crib in which the Infant Saviour was laid on the night of His Nativity. With the exception of the Easter celebrations, it was the most imposing ceremony that could be witnessed at Rome in those days. The Saviour's Crib is always borne in procession through the church of St. Mary Major's on Christmas Eve. In some of the churches, and even in private houses, the scene of the Christ Child's birth in Bethlehem is represented in a wonderfully artistic and life-like way. One of these representations, which are got up mainly for the children, is to be seen in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, situated on the Capitoline Hill, where once stood a temple of Jove. Hither we students of the Propaganda used to wend our way, during the days within the octave of Christmas, to listen to the "children preachers of Aracoeli." These little ones, from five to ten years of age, standing on a platform facing the Christmas Crib, lifted their fresh young voices in greeting and prayer to their new-born King. It recalled the scene described in Matt. 21:15-16: the children crying in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," and Jesus saying to those who would rebuke them, "Yea, have you never read, Out of the mouths of infants and sucklings thou has perfected praise."

THE ROSES OF ASSISI.

In The Ave Maria, of February 8, 1908, the noted Danish writer, Johannes Jorgensen, tells of a visit to Assisi, and makes this passing allusion to the singular phenomenon also alluded to in The Diary of a Pilgrim: "Then there is the rose garden where the bushes are strangely flecked as if with spots of blood." When the present writer stood beside this little plot, in the early days of July, 1900, the roses were not in bloom--it was past their season in Italy--but the bushes were in leaf, of course. Strictly speaking, it is not the bushes that bear the flecks of red, but the roses and the leaves. The impression made upon one is not soon effaced. It looks for all the world as if those leaves had been sprinkled with blood. Here and there a leaf seems to have caught a drop, a few, two or three, which left a crimson stain, while most show a fleckless green. But this is not the most striking phase of the phenomenon. It has passed into a proverb that there is no rose without its thorn, though Milton, in a flight of fancy, found in our lost paradise,

Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.

But under the lovely sky of Italy and under the shadow of the Umbrian hills, in fair Assisi, famed forever as the birthplace and early home of the Poverello, grow roses without thorns. The writer felt the bushes with his hand, and proved them thornless. What is more, our little pilgrim group, of whom some have since gone on their long pilgrimage, were told on that July day, seven years ago, by the Prior of the Franciscan Monastery, a true son of Saint Francis if appearances count for aught, that time and time again was the experiment made of transplanting those bushes, and that they grew up with thorns and with stainless leaves. Here is the legend, if legend that can be called, which Nature seems to vouch for, copied from a leaflet, enclosing a spray of the rose leaves now brown with the years, which the writer brought with him from Assisi:

"One bitter winter's night, S. Francis being sorely tempted by the devil to lessen his austerities, overcame the evil one by throwing himself into a thicket of briers, and rolling himself in it till his body was all torn and bleeding. At the same moment the briers were changed into rose trees in full bloom, and a heavenly brightness shone around, and angels came to lead S. Francis to the Church of the Portiuncula, where Our Lord appeared to him in Person accompanied by His Mother and a heavenly host, and granted him the Indulgence of the Portiuncula. The miraculous rose bushes have no thorns, their leaves are stained with spots like blood in May, and can be seen in the Garden of the Friary adjoining the Portiuncula at the village of Santa Maria degli Angeli which is close to the Station of Assisi in Italy."

FROM NEW YORK TO NAPLES.

DECEMBER 10, '08.

We leave New York at noon. It is a perfect winter's day--the air cold and crisp, the sun brightly shining. There are all manner of craft in the North River, or Hudson, and our big ship makes her way among them with leisurely dignity. On our starboard is Jersey City; on the port side, the buildings of Old Manhattan raise their giant forms, fearfully and wonderfully tall. Presently we pass by the statue of Liberty, and leave the great metropolis of the New World behind. A marvellous city is New York, marching forward with gigantic strides to the forefront of the world's cities. Even now it is second only to London, and in ways not a few it is first. We pass out of the roar of its traffic, away from its teeming, busy life, and the restful ocean takes us to its heaving bosom.

"Our next port of call is Boston," says one passenger to another standing near him, just as we are getting out to sea. "Not at all," rejoins the other, "this boat doesn't call at Boston." An officer of the ship, who is standing by, is appealed to, and he bears out the first speaker. The news is received with surprise amounting almost to consternation. Hardly one of the passengers knew of this change in our programme of travel. Back to Boston; it is like going back home again! But to Boston we steer our course. Off Cape Cod, miles and miles out at sea, men are fishing in their dories. We pass within fifty yards of one, but so intent is he upon his work that he does not as much as cast one look at us. After a little we pick up our pilot, and begin threading our way through the narrow entrance to Boston harbour.

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DECEMBER 11.

Our ship is docked at Charlestown. We go ashore, take an "L" road car at City Square, and speedily reach Boston. Our friends in the city, to whom we bade farewell a few days before, are almost thunderstruck at seeing us. They can scarce believe their eyes. We seem to have dropped upon them from the skies, or rather to have been spirited back through space from the ocean. A few words clear up the mystery. Next morning (Saturday) we say an early Mass, and hasten back on board. But the good ship "Cretic" is in no hurry to put to sea. She lingers for a full hour beyond the allotted time. We could not have missed her if we tried.

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DECEMBER 12.

It is snowing heavily as we steam slowly out of Boston harbour. We drop our pilot, and at noon have the lightship abeam. At last we are fairly under way, but so thickly falls the snow that we move along at little more than half-speed, and the steamer's whistle keeps blowing as in a fog. After an hour or two we run out of the snowstorm, and the whistling ceases. A tugboat inward bound, towing three huge barges, is the last object we descry this day, for darkness soon settles upon the scene.

This evening I sit and listen dreamily to the soft accents of the Italian tongue. One or two of the saloon passengers are Italian and the ship's doctor is a native of the land of sunshine and song. It is twenty-five years since I dwelt in that land, but those intonations strike the ear and those inimitable gestures the eye as familiarly as if it were but yesterday. What a wonderful thing is memory! How it bridges the years, and brings the dead past to life again! By it we reverse the poet's process, and "stretch a hand through time to catch" the forms of things long passed away.

"Vedi Napoli e poi Mori." This, my Italian friend tells me, is the original of the saying that runs in English: "See Naples and die." As you approach Naples, Mount Vesuvius rises in the rear, and beyond it is the little town of Mori. The original saying is, "See Naples and then Mori." But as it happens that "mori" is also the imperative of the verb "morire"--"to die," a play upon the word gives the meaning, "See Naples and then die"--as if no place else worth seeing were left in all the wide world.

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DECEMBER 13.

Our first Sunday at sea, the third of Advent. We have passed from the region of snow and sleet, and the change is welcome. The morning breaks bright and clear, and as the day wears on it grows distinctly warmer. The sun shines out of a cloudless sky and the air is balmy as in a June day. While I write the thermometer out on the promenade deck shows 56 degrees in the shade. Frost and snow are things of the past--things of the land we have left behind.

Not having a portable altar, we are unable to say Mass. There are more than seven hundred persons in the steerage, mostly Italians seeking "la bella patria"--their own lovely homeland. I arrange with the captain to have a service for them at 3 p.m. The second-class saloon being too small, we hold the service under an awning on the deck. Dressed in cassock and with my rochet on--for the very first time--I kneel upon the main hatch and say aloud in Latin the Rosary and Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which they all answer in the same tongue. These people, I may remark by the way, are all taught from childhood to say those prayers in the language of the Church. Prayers over, I address them a few words in Italian, the season and the occasion furnishing a theme. Exiles are we from home, seeking a fatherland afar, and One has come down from that fatherland to raise us up and to lead us on. As we cross the sea of life, not always calm and untroubled as the one we sail to-day, we must pause from time to time to lift up our eyes and fix them on the eternal truths that shine like stars upon our pathway. We must prepare for the advent of the Sun of Justice, and from the lesser lights turn our gaze longingly to the bright morning Star that heralds His rising. Such is the sum of what I said, but I must own that it sounds much better in this English summary than it did in such poor Italian as I could muster.

* * *

DECEMBER 14.

At noon the log reads:

Lat. Long. Weather Remarks
41.34 56.28 Fresh gale: W. SW.
Dis. 317 SW. S. S. W., rough
quarterly sea.
Average Speed: 13.49

We have run into a storm, or it has run in upon us. "Fresh gale" means a wind blowing 50 or 60 miles an hour. But our ship is very steady. Still there is a good deal of motion--of that queer, all-round, uncertain, miserable motion so apt to induce sea-sickness. My companion, though he has been so seldom to sea, is a better sailor than I. As for me, I feel that I could very easily be quite sick if I wanted to. But I don't want to, and up to a certain point one can fight this sickness off. My chief occupation all day is fighting off seasickness. The wild winds, the wailing sea-waves, the reeling, staggering ship keep telling me it is of no use; that I had better crawl into my berth and give up the uneven struggle. But I hold out in spite of all of them. As I write this in the steamer's library at 6 p.m. the battle is still on and the issue somewhat doubtful.

* * *

DECEMBER 15.

The battle is fought and won--thanks to the abating of the storm and a calmer sea. The weather to-day is fine and warm--58 degrees in the shade. It was 68 degrees yesterday, and the mugginess of the atmosphere made it unpleasant. For me, indeed, it is never too pleasant on board ship. I have an uneasy feeling that the most one can hope for is a truce, and that the battle with sea-sickness may have to be fought over again at any moment. Under such circumstances writing is not easy.

The sea, the deep mysterious sea, with its changeful, elusive hues and its passionate moods! The dominant mood, I fancy, is melancholy. The sea lifts up its voice only to weep, and every sea-sound dies away in a sob or a wail. When the crested waves break into foam, what are the spray drops but the tears of the salt sea? It not only yields a grave to the countless millions that are buried beneath its waters, but weeps for them ever, and chants over them an unending requiem. And its loneliness is beyond words. Mid-ocean seems the native home of solitude--a solitude that the passing ship leaves unbroken. What a tale this lonely, moaning sea could tell of the men who have sunk into its depths, "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown!" But till it gives up its dead, that tale shall not be told.

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DECEMBER 16.

Late last evening I sat talking in the smoking-room with a Protestant gentleman from Minneapolis. Some years ago he visited the Holy Land, and I was interested in the account he gave of it. He does not seem to have been much impressed by the country itself or its sanctuaries. "The most beautiful sight I saw in the Holy Land," he declared with evident sincerity, "was the face of a nun." It was not the physical, but the spiritual beauty of the face that struck him and imprinted itself upon his memory. A beautiful soul beamed out from it--a soul made beautiful by close communion with God. "I will feed on God," says Alexandrine in A Sister's Story, not knowing very well at the moment what she means. But she did feed on God, and became beautiful as an angel, with that beauty which never can fade. If we would be truly beautiful let us feed on God the Uncreated Beauty, ever ancient and ever new.

* * *

DECEMBER 17.

How shall we feed on God? First by prayer. Not as completely is the fish immersed in the sea or the bird in the air as the soul is in God, for He is everywhere, and "in Him we live, and move, and are." Every time we breathe we drink in the fresh air to renew the life of the body; every time we pray, if we pray aright, we draw down the grace of God to give new life to the soul. And as when a man ceases to breathe we know that the life is gone out of him, so when a man ceases to pray we may know that his soul is dead within him. But there is another, a more literal and yet more wondrous way of feeding on God, and that is Holy Communion. "I am the Bread of Life," and again, "He who eats Me shall also live by Me." "As the hare in winter," says St. Francis of Sales, "grows white by feeding on the snow, so the soul grows white by feeding on this Heavenly Manna." The science may be at fault, but the thought is true. "It is the boast of the Catholic Church," observes Cardinal Newman, "that she can keep the young heart chaste, because she gives Jesus for food and Mary for nursing-mother." I am quoting from memory, and do not vouch for the exact accuracy of the quotation.

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DECEMBER 18.

Last night we passed the first two of the Azores. These islands were discovered by Portuguese navigators about the middle of the fifteenth century, and still belong to Portugal. They number nine in all, and have a population of some 260,000. About noon we sight Pico, the third of the group, and steam by it for hours, at a distance of six or seven miles off. Though we have sunshine at sea, it is raining and misting ashore, and we fail to get a good view. However, I have counted as many as seven little villages where the snow-white cottages form into clusters on the sloping shore. These islands are of volcanic origin, and the conical peak of an extinct volcano seems to have given its name to the island we are passing by. It is visible for a moment or two, and we catch just a glimpse of it as it peeps out of a cloud. But it is a coy peak and hastes to hide itself beneath its veil of mist.

* * *

DECEMBER 19.

I have learned that the mountain we passed yesterday rises to a height of 7,460 feet, and slopes to the sea at an angle of 40 degrees. The bare head of it, uplifted above its bed of cloud, and outlined against the blue sky, with the sun shining full upon it, is still vividly before my imagination. No human eye witnessed the volcanic upheavel which cast this mountain peak up into the clouds out of the bosom of the sea. But Captain Tillard of H.M.S. "Sabrina" was eye-witness, in 1811, of the rise and extinction of an island in the neighbourhood, which reached a height of 410 feet and was swallowed up by the sea after an existence of 119 days.

For more than a week we have held our lonely way on the ocean, no sail seen, no smoke of steamer on the far horizon. The sea gulls alone bear us company, whether the same birds that followed us from the first, or fresh relays from the pastures of the deep, no one can tell. Birds of ocean, foster-children of the wandering sea, their home is on the rolling wave, their haunts no man may know. But the same Providence that feeds the sparrows on the dry land gives food to these rovers on the wilderness of waters.

* * *

DECEMBER 20.

Our second Sunday at sea. I say the Rosary and Litany in the second cabin, where there are a number of Italians. I also give a short instruction. A wee mite of a boy, with the coal black hair and dark complexion of the South, keeps eyeing me curiously the while, as if wondering how one who looks so little like a countryman can speak the language.

Ever since we got fairly away from the American coast we have had summer weather, the thermometer ranging from 50 to 70 degrees. The temperature of the water has been even higher. One day it was 72 degrees; this morning it was 62. The Gulf Stream is here at its widest. Only the short day can bring home to us the fact that we are at the winter solstice.

* * *

DECEMBER 21.

To-day the larger gulls that haunt the seashore and nest in the rocks are abroad. They are tokens that the land is not very far away. Sometime to-night we reach Gibraltar, but must lie outside till morning, for no ship can enter the port of that grim fortress save in the day.

Now that our ocean voyage is nearing its end, our thoughts turn back to the loved ones we have left behind. The uppermost feeling in my own mind at the moment is gratitude, first to God for all His goodness, and next to the many friends, whether personally known to me or not, who have so generously given of their means and freed my mind from all anxiety on that score. I feel that I owe them more than can be put in words. May the peace of God and His blessing abide with them always, and may He, in His own way and in His own good time, repay them a hundredfold.

This batch of notes was mailed at Gibraltar.

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FROM NEW YORK TO NAPLES