Memories of Hawthorne

by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

CHAPTER XII

ITALIAN DAYS: I

My first frequent companionship with my father began in Italy, when I was seven years old. We entered Rome after a long, wet, cold carriage journey that would have disillusionized a Dore. As we jolted along, my mother held me in her arms, while I slept as much as I could; and when I could not, I blessed the patient, weary bosom upon which I lay exhausted. It was a solemn-faced load of Americans which shook and shivered into the city of memories that night. In "Monte Beni," as he preferred to call "The Marble Faun," my father speaks of Rome with mingled contempt for its discomforts and delighted heartiness for its outshining fascinations. "The desolation of her ruin" does not prevent her from being "more intimately our home than even the spot where we were born." A ruin or a picture could not satisfy his heart, which accepted no yoke less strong than spiritual power. Rome supplies the most telling evidence of human failure, because she is the theatre of the greatest human effort, both in the ranks of Satan and of God; and she visibly mourns her sins of mistake at the feet of spiritual victory, Saints Peter and Paul. (As a Catholic, I could hardly win the respect of the gentle reader if I were so un-American as to fear to stand by my belief.) And while the observer in Rome may well feel sad in the midst of reminders of the enormous sins of the past, there is an uplifting, for the soul eager to perceive the truth, in all her assurances of that mercy which is the cause of religion. If the Holy See was established in Rome because it was the city where the worst wickedness upon earth, because the most intelligent, was to be found, we may conclude that the old emperors, stormy and grotesque, are responsible for its melancholy "atmosphere of sin," to which Hilda alludes as a condition of the whole planet; and not the popes who have prayed in Rome, nor the people who believe there. In printed remarks about Italy both my parents say that she most reminds them of what is highest.

But, whether chilly or warm, the Eternal City did not at once make a conquest of my father's allegiance, though before he bade it farewell, it had painted itself upon his mind as sometimes the sunniest and most splendid habitation for a populace, that he knew. In the spring my sister wrote:—

"We are having perfectly splendid weather now,—unclouded Italian skies, blazing sun, everything warm and glorious. But the sky is too blue, the sun is too blazing, everything is too vivid. Often I long for the more cloudy skies and peace of that dear, beautiful England. Rome makes us all languid. We have to pay a fearful price for the supreme enjoyment there is in standing on the very spots made interesting by poetry or by prose, imagination, or (which is still more absorbing) truth. Sometimes I wish there had never been anything done or written in the world! My father and I seem to feel in this way more than the rest. We agree about Rome as we did about England."

In the course of the winter my mother had written of our chilly reception thus:—

NO. 37 VIA PORTA PINCIANA, 2D PLANO,

PALAZZO LAIIAZANI, ROME.

MY DEAR ELIZABETH,—I could not have believed I could be in Rome a day without announcing it to you in words and expressions which would have the effect at least of the bell of St. Peter's or the cannon of St. Angelo. . . . But my soul has been iced over, as well as the hitherto flowing fountains of the Piazza, di San Pietro. I have not been able to expand like corn and melons under a summer sun. Nipped have been all my blossoming hopes and enthusiasms, and my hands have been too numb to hold a pen. Added to this, Mr. Hawthorne has had the severest cold he ever had, because bright, keen cold he cannot bear so well as damp; and .Rosebud has not been well since she entered the city. It is colder than for twenty years before. We find it enormously expensive to live in Rome; our apartment is twelve hundred a year.

But I am in Rome, Rome, Rome! I have stood in the Forum and beneath the Arch of Titus, at the end of the Sacra Via. I have wandered about the Coliseum, the stupendous grandeur of which equals my dream and hope. I have seen the sun kindling the open courts of the Temple of Peace, where Sarah Clarke said, years ago, that my children would some time play. (It is now called Constantine's Basilica.) I have climbed the Capitoline and stood before the Capitol, by the side of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius,—the finest in the world [my father calls it "the most majestic representation of kingly character that ever the world has seen ">[,—once in front' of the Arch of Septimius Severus. I have been into the Pantheon, whose sublime portico quietly rises out of the region of criticism into its own sphere,—a fit entrance to the temple of all the gods. How wise was the wise and tact-gifted Augustus to reject the homage of Agrippa, who built it for his apotheosis, and to dedicate it to the immortal gods! It is now dedicated to the Immortal God.

And I have been to St. Peter's! There alone in Rome is perpetual summer. You have heard of the wonderful atmosphere of this world of a basilica. It would seem to be warmed by the ardent soul of Peter, or by the breath of prayer from innumerable saints. One drops the hermetical seal of a curtain behind, upon entering, and behold, with the world is also shut out the bitter cold, and one is folded, as it were, in a soft mantle of down, as if angels wrapped their wings about us. I expanded at once under the invisible sun. There have been moments when I have felt the spell of Rome, but every one says here that it dawns gradually upon the mind. It would not have been so with me, I am convinced, if I had been warm. Who ever heard of an icicle glowing with emotion? What is Rome to a frozen clod? . . .

We were not able to seize upon the choicest luxuries of living, as our accommodations, even such as they were, proved to be expensive enough to hamper us. We had all expected to be blissful in Italy, and so the inartistic and inhuman accessories of life were harder to bear there than elsewhere. I remember a perpetual rice pudding (sent in the tin ten-story edifices which caterers supply laden with food), of which the almost daily sight maddened us, and threw us into a Burton's melancholy of silence, for nothing could prevent it from appearing. We all know what such simple despairs can do, and, by concerted movement, they can make Rome tame. If we had sustained ourselves on milk, like Romulus and Remus, and dressed in Russian furs, we might have had fewer vicissitudes in the midst of the classic wonders on all sides. But spring was faithful, and at its return we began to enjoy the scenes of most note within and beyond the walls: the gleaming ruins, and fresh, uncontaminated daisies that trustfully throve beside some of them; the little fountains, with their one-legged or flat-nosed statues strutting ineffectually above them,—fountains either dry as dead revelers or tinkling a pathetic sob into a stone trough; the open views where the colors of sunlit marble and the motions of dancing light surrounded the peasants who sprang up from the ground like belated actors in a drama we only keep with us out of childish delight.

My father had never looked so serious as he did now, and he was more slim than in England. He impressed me as permeated by an atmosphere of perception. A magnetic current of sympathy with the city rendered him contemplative and absorbent as a cloud. He was everywhere, but only looked in silence, so far as I was aware. "The Marble Faun" shows what he thought in sentences that reveal, like mineral specimens, strata of ideas stretching far beyond the confines of the novel. While he observed Rome, as he frequently mentions, he felt the sadness of the problems of the race which there were brought to a focus. Yet it is a singular fact that, notwithstanding this regret for her human pathos, perhaps the best book he ever wrote was created among the suggestive qualities of this haven of faith,—the book which inculcates the most sterling hope of any of his works. I saw in my walks with him how much he enjoyed the salable treasures and humble diversions of the thoroughfare, as his readers have always perceived. Ingenuous simplicity, freedom from self-consciousness and whitewash, frank selfishness on a plane so humble that it can do little harm,—all this is amusing and restful after long hours with transcendental folk. In regard to the tenets of these, my mother writes to her sister:—

"I am just on the point of declaring that I hate transcendentalism, because it is full of immoderate dicta which would disorganize society, and should never be uttered, in my opinion, except behind the veil, among priests. As to displaying before the great, innocent eyes of a girl like Una all the horror of a slave-auction—a convent is better than such untimely revelations. Now, you must not think I am a Catholic. I know the Lord withholds the pure from seeing what they should not—blessed be the Lord!—but I will not be the one to put what should not be seen before the eyes of the pure."

My father looked in good spirits as we moved along. When he trafficked with an Italian fruit-vender, and put a few big hot chestnuts into his pocket, with a smile for me, I (who found his smile the greatest joy in the world) was persuaded that really fine things were being done. The slender copper piece which was all-sufficient for the transaction not only thrilled the huckster with delight, but became precious to me as my father's supple, broad fingers held it, dark, thin, small, in a respectful manner. He caressed it for a moment with his large thumb,—he who was liberal as nature in June,—and when the fruit-vender was wrought up to the proper point of ecstasy he was allowed to receive the money, which he did with a smile of Italian gracefulness and sparkle, while my father looked conscious of the mirthfulness of the situation with as lofty a manner as you please. As for the peasant women we met, under their little light-stands of head-drapery, they were easily comprehensible, and expressed without a shadow of reserve their vanity and tiger blood by an openly proud smile and a swing of the brilliantly striped skirt. The handsomest men and women possible, elaborately dressed, shone beside tiers of the sweetest bunches of pale violets, or a solitary boy, so beautiful that his human splendor scintillated, small as he was, sat in the pose and apparel that the world knows through pictures, and which pigment can never well render any more than it can catch the power of a sunset or an American autumn. The marble-shops were very pleasant places. A whirring sound lulled the senses into dreamy receptiveness, as the stone wheel heavily turned with soft swiftness, giving the impression that here hard matter was controlled to a nicety by airy forces; and a fragrance floated from the wet marble lather, while the polishing of our newly picked up mementos from the ruins went on, which was as subtle as that of flowers. A man or two, hoary with marble-dust and ennobled by the "bloom" of it, stood tall and sad about the wheel, and we handed to these refined creatures our treasures of giallo-antico and porphyry and other marbles picked up "for remembrance" (and no doubt once pressed by a Caesar's foot or met by a Caesar's glance), in order to observe the fresh color leap to the surface,—yellow, red, black, or green.

Far more were we thrilled at finding scraps of iridescent glass lachrymals, containing all the glories of Persian magnificence, while pathetically hinting of the tears of a Roman woman (precious only to herself, whatever her flatterers might aver) two thousand years ago.

The heart of Rome was acknowledged to be St. Peter's, and its pulse the Pope. The most striking effect the Holy Father produced upon me, standing at gaze before him with my parents, was when he appeared, in Holy Week, high up in the balcony before the mountainous dome, looking off over the great multitude of people gathered to receive his blessing. Those eyes of his carried expression a long way, and he looked most kingly, though unlike other kings. He was clothed in white not whiter than his wonderful pallor. My father implies in a remark that Pio Nono impressed him by a becoming sincerity of countenance, and this was so entirely my infantile opinion that I became eloquent about the Pope, and was rewarded by a gift from my mother of a little medallion of him and a gold scudo with an excellent likeness thereon, both always tenderly reverenced by me.

Going to the Pincian Hill on Sunday afternoons, when my father quite regularly made me his companion, was the event of my week which entertained me best of all. To play a simple game of stones on one of the gray benches in the late afternoon sunshine, with him for courteous opponent, was to feel my eyes, lips, hands, all my being, glow with the fullest human happiness. When he threw down a pebble upon one of the squares which he had marked with chalk, I was enchanted. When one game was finished, I trembled lest he would not go on with another. He was never fatigued or annoyed—outwardly. He had as much control over the man we saw in him as a sentinel on duty. Therefore he proceeded with the tossing of pebbles, genially though quietly, not exhibiting the least reluctance, and uttering a few amused sounds, like mellow wood-notes. Between the buxom groups of luxuriant foliage the great stream of fashion rolled by in carriages, the music of the well-trained band pealing forth upon the breeze; and in the tinted distance, beyond the wall of the high-perched garden which surrounded us, the sunset shook out its pennons. Through the glinting bustle of the crowd and the richness of nature my father peacefully breathed, in half-withdrawn brooding, either pursuing our pebble warfare with kindest stateliness, or strolling beside lovely plots of shadowed grass, fragrant from lofty trees of box. An element by no means slight in the rejoicing of my mind, when I was with him of a Sunday afternoon, was his cigar, which he puffed at very deliberately, as if smoking were a rite. The aroma was wonderful. The classicism which followed my parents about in everything of course connected itself with my father's chief luxury, in the form of a bronze match-box, given him in Rome by my sister, upon which an autumn scene of harvest figures was modeled with Greek elegance, and to this we turned our eyes admiringly during the lighting of the cigar. There was a hunter returning to a home draped with the grape, bringing still more of that fruit, and a rabbit and bird, hung upon a pole, while his wife and child were ever so comfortably disposed upon the threshold, and the hunting-dog affectionately lapped the young matron's hand. An autumn was also depicted on the reverse, presumably a year earlier than the one just described, where two lovers stood among sheaves of wheat, their sickles in hand, and the youth held up a bunch of grapes which the maiden, down-looking, gently raised her arm to receive. At last it would grow too late to play another game, and my father's darkly clothed form would be drawn up, and his strongly beautiful face lifted ominously. Before leaving the hill we went to look over the parapet to the west, where stood, according to "Monte Beni," "the grandest edifice ever built by man, painted against God's loveliest sky." Quoit-players were no doubt rolling their disks upon the road below us; and on the very first glance it almost always happened that a springing, vaporous-looking quoit would appear without one's seeing the man whose hand had sent it on its way. It was a refined pastime, immortalized by the Discobolus, which, however, cannot give the charm of the whirling quoit.

The entries in my mother's diary so abound in names and persons met day by day, names both unknown to the world and familiar to it, that it is hard to understand how there was time for sightseeing or illness, or the reading which was kept up. The wife of a distinguished sculptor in Rorffe afterwards said in a letter that this year of 1859 was remarkably for its crowd of tourists, and added that 1860 proved very quiet. It does not sound quiet to hear that she had just enjoyed a horseback ride with Mr. Browning; but Americans and English certainly did have rich enjoyment in Italy in those days, and grew exacting. The jottings of the diary stir the imagination quite pleasantly, beginning January 16, 1859: "Mr. Browning called to visit us. Delightful visit. I read Charlotte Bronte for the second time.—Mrs. Story sent a note to my husband to invite him to tea [my mother being housed with my sick sister] with Mr. Browning.—Mr. Horatio Bridge spent the evening.—Read 'Frederick the Great.'—Mr. Motley called, and brought 'Paradise Lost' for Una.—I went to the sunny Corso with my husband, who is far from well. Mrs. Story asks us to dine with Mr. de Vere, Lady William Russell, Mr. Alison, Mr. Browning, and other interesting people.—Lovely turquoise day. I prepared Julian's Carnival dress. Went to the Hoars' balcony, and the Conservatori passed in gorgeous array. The George Joneses took Una to drive in the Corso, and the Prince of Wales threw her a bouquet from his balcony. I read the 'Howadji in Syria' as I sat at the Hoars' window.—I had a delightful visit from E. Hoar. She saw the Pope yesterday, and he blessed her. Mrs. Story looked very pretty in a carriage at the Carnival, with a hat trimmed with a wreath of violets. —Mr. and Mrs. Story called for us to go to the Doria Villa. We had a glorious excursion, finding rainbow anemones and seeing wonderful views. Mr. Christopher Cranch joined us.—I went to the Vatican for the first time this year, with E. Hoar. We met there Mr. Hawthorne escorting Mrs. Pierce and Miss Vandervoort. We went through all the miles of sculpture.—Una and I called on Mrs. Pierce, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Pickman, Mrs. Hoar, and met Mrs. Motley. In the afternoon I went with E. Hoar to Mr. Story's studio. Mrs. Pickman called on me.—Mr. Hawthorne and I and Julian went to call on Miss Cushman, and to Mr. Page's studio. Mr. Motley had made a long call early in the day, and teased Mr. Hawthorne to dine with him, to meet Lord Spencer's son.—Mrs. Story brought Una the first lilies-of-the-valley that have bloomed in Rome this year. I went with Rose to Trinita dei Monti to hear the nuns sing vespers. Coming out, I met' Miss Harriet Hosmer.—Superb day. I went with my husband to call at Miss Hosmer's studio, and met the Hon. Mr. Cowper, who stopped to talk. Mr. Browning darted upon us across the Piazza., glowing with cordiality. Miss Hosmer could not admit us, because she was modeling Lady Mordaunt's nose.—Governor Seymour called.—I took Rose to a window in the Carnival. It was a mad, merry time. A gentleman tossed me a beautiful bouquet and a bonbon.—Julian and I went to the Albani Villa with Mrs. Ward and Mr. Charles Sumner. A charming time.—In the twilight I went with Mr. Hawthorne to the Coliseum and the Forum. It grew to lovely moonlight.—After dinner I went to the Pincian gardens with Mr. Hawthorne and Julian. It was moonlight.—Mr. Sumner made a long call."

Among the friends much with us was the astronomer, Miss Maria Mitchell, whom we had long known intimately. She smiled blissfully in Rome, as if really visiting a constellation; flashing her eyes with silent laughter, and curling her soft, full, splendid lips with fascinating expressions of satisfaction. I loved her for this, but principally because, while with us in Paris, it was she who had with delicious comradeship introduced me to that perfection of all infantile taste—French gingerbread, warm (on an outdoor counter) with the sunshine of the skies! She had the long list of churches and ruins and pictures catalogued upon her efficient tongue, and she and my mother ran together like sisters to see the sights of beauty and reminiscence; neither of them ever tired, and never disappointed. Her voice was richly mellow, like my father's, and her wit was the merry spray of deep waves of thought. The sculptor, Miss Harriet Hosmer, it was easy to note, charmed the romancer. She was cheerfulness itself, touched off with a jaunty cap. Her smile I remember as one of those very precious gleams that make us forget everything but the present moment. She could be wittily gay; but there was plenty of brain power behind the clever mot, as immensities are at the source of the sun-ray. There was a blessing in the presence of Miss Elizabeth Hoar, once engaged to that beloved brother of Mr. Emerson whom death had taken. She seemed to me (I plead guilty to fancifulness) like a tall, speaking monument, composed of diamonds and pearls. She talked a great deal, gently, with a penetrating sweetness of voice, and looking somewhat down, as those do who have just received the news of a bitter sorrow. She knew everything that was fine in history and poetry and art; and to be near her, and to catch at moments the clear unfaltering challenge of her sad but brave eyes, was to live a little nobler one's self.

I will give here two letters from this friend, showing her strength of sympathy and tenderness:—

FLORENCE, May.

DEAR SOPHIA,—We are here after a journey entirely prosperous in every respect, driving through a country as lovely as it could be. Such wreaths of hawthorn, such hanging tassels of laburnum, such masses of delicate purple flowers draping the rocks and carpeting every broken ground,—golden broom on every hillside, scarlet poppies illuminating every field of grain, and the richest crimson clover, like endless fields of strawberries,—I never saw before. We have had just clouds enough to make beautiful shadows on the mountains. How I wish you and Una could be floated on a cloud over the charming region. I thought of the dear child at every new flower, but not without a pang; for my only disappointment in leaving Rome (no, the other was that I had not seen Mr. Browning) was that I could not send Una some flowers the morning of our departure. I had set my heart upon it, but could not find any pretty enough. Every fresh spray of hawthorn on our journey renewed the prick of my disappointment. We should have liked to take Julian along with us as our traveling artist, to lay up the flowers for us in imperishable colors [he already painted flowers remarkably]; we were reminded of him very often. I saw dear little Rose's patron, St. Rosa, in the Staffa Gallery at Perugia,—very beautiful. I have much to thank you for, dear Sophia, in all sorts of aid and sympathy. Very charming is the recollection of every meeting with you, from the first lovely Sunday at the Villa Doria; and then the day when we visited the willful Queen of Egypt as she sat waiting to be made again immortal in marble [in Story's studio]. Those days in Rome were made brighter to me by the sunshine of kindness and a hearty sympathy, beginning with the day which will be an exhilarating thought to me as long as I live, when you showed me St. Peter's Piazza under the blue sky; and then we passed the wall of the Capitol, and looked down upon ancient Rome. It was a wonderful day, Sophia, and I shall never forget that you received me in that city. I hope you will have many joyous days before you leave Europe, so that you may all forget the many anxieties of the last three months. I wish to send my love to Mrs. Story. I enjoy the thought of her, and Mr. Story, very much. I have always loved them for their thorough kindness to Margaret [Fuller d'Ossoli], and now I have seen them I love them for themselves. Love and constant remembrance to Una and dear little Rose. You don't know how hard it is not to know about you, day by day. [Later.] I had your other letter in Genoa, and was rejoiced to get it. I had driven with Lizzie and Mr. May the very day before from Villeneuve to Montreux to call upon you, the people at Hotel Byron assuring us you were to spend a month at Montreux. However, the news from Una was precious, for it was the first intelligence we had had since we left the dear child in bed in Rome, with that trickish fever playing about her. I did not receive the note from Mr. Hawthorne. I am almost glad you are not going to take her back into the low ground at Concord this autumn. . . .

Many friends were in Rome, both as residents and as tourists, and in all my after-life our two winters there were the richest of memories, in regard both to personalities and exquisite objects, and to scenes of artistic charm. Yet, as I have said elsewhere, if the tall, slender figure of my father were not at hand, even my mother's constantly cheering presence and a talkative group of people could not warm the imagination quite enough. He says, in speaking of the Carnival, "For my part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and riotously as any urchin there." These few words explain his magnetism. The decorous pretense of his observant calm could not make us forget the bursts of mirth and vigorous abandon which now and then revealed the flame of unstinted life in his heart. And I, watching constantly as I did, saw a riotous throw of the confetti, a mirthful smile of Carnival spirits, when my father was radiant for a few moments with a youth's, a faun's merriment.

Having quoted a letter of my sister's which expresses his opinion and her own of the irksomeness of sight-seeing, however heroic the spot, I will add this little paragraph from the next winter's correspondence, when, though only fifteen, she wrote very well of Europe and America, concluding: "It shows you have not lived in Europe, dear aunt, and do not know what it is to breathe day after day the atmosphere of art, that you can think of our being satisfied. We have seen satisfactorily, but the longer we stay, the higher and deeper is our enjoyment, and the more are our minds fitted to understand and admire, and the nearer do our souls approach in thought and imagination to that fount of glory and beauty, from which the old artists drew so freely."

In art, Catholicity was utterly bowed down to by my relatives and their friends, because without it this great art would not have been. For, as scientists and dreamers have proved that gold cannot be made until we know as much as the earth, so uninspired artists have proved that religious art can only grow under conditions known solely to the heart that is Catholic. Every religious school of art which has departed from imitation of the Old Masters has forfeited holiness in depicting the Holy Family.

My mother's letters describing my sister's illness with Roman fever recall the many persons of interest whom we saw. She writes: "Carriages were constantly driving to the door with inquiries. People were always coming. Even dear Mrs. Browning, who almost never goes upstairs, came the moment she heard. She was like an angel. I saw her but a moment, but the clasp of her hand was electric, and her voice penetrated my heart. Mrs. Ward, also usually unable to go upstairs, came every day for five days. One day there seemed a cloud of good spirits in the drawing-room, Mrs. Ward, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Story, and so on, all standing and waiting. Magnificent flowers were always coming, baskets and bouquets, which were presented with tearful eyes. The American minister constantly called. Mr. Aubrey de Vere came. Every one who had seen Una in society or anywhere came to ask. Mrs. Story came three times in one day to talk about a consultation. The doctor wished all the food prepared exactly after his prescription, and would accept no one's dishes. 'Whose broth is this?' 'This is Mrs. Browning's.' 'Then tell Mrs. Browning to write her poesies, and not to meddle with my broths for my patient!' 'Whose jelly is this?' 'Mrs. Story's.' 'I wish Mrs. Story would help her husband to model his statues, and not try to feed Miss Una!' General Pierce came three times a day. I think I owe to him, almost, my husband's life. He was divinely tender, sweet, sympathizing, and helpful." She adds: "No one shared my nursing, because Una wanted my touch and voice; and she was not obliged to tell me what she wanted. For days, she only opened her eyes long enough to see if I were there. For thirty days and nights I did not go to bed; or sleep, except in the morning in a chair, while Miss Shepard watched for an hour or so. Una had intervals of brightness and perfect consciousness. In one of these, she tied up a bouquet of flowers with hands that almost shook the flowers to pieces with their trembling, to send them to a friend who was ill. She raised herself upon her elbow, and wrote with a pencil a graceful note, quoting her father's 'Wonder-Book' in reference to the bouquet."

I went with my father and mother to several painters' and sculptors' studios (besides innumerable visits to churches and galleries), all filling my mind with unfailing riches of memory. I hope I shall be pardoned for giving the general effect of this companionship and sight-seeing upon many years of reflection in a strain that is autobiographical. The studio which I best remember was Mr. Thompson's, he who had painted the portrait of my father used in the editions of "Twice-Told Tales." The room was very large, but not very high, and it had a great deal of shadow in it. I did not think he painted as well as Raphael; but I delighted in the smell of his pigments, which were intensely fragrant. I thought his still moist canvas upon the easel, of a little Peter and a well-groomed angel, infinitely amusing. It was history scrubbed, and rather reduced in size. I was half appalled, half fascinated, by my temerity in having such frivolous private opinions of a picture that my mother and father felt the excellence of with reverence and praise. A minute portrait of me was painted by Mr. Thompson; one for which I did not find it at all amusing to sit, as I had to occupy a stiff chair (I think it was even a high stool) without any of the family to keep me in heart, although I had almost never been left with friends in that way, and although I was by that time a perfect recluse in disposition. So I was under the impression that I was being punished by the invisible powers, which I was conscious of eminently deserving. The small painting shows this idea of Purgatorial arrest by a clever touch here and there, without depicting a frown or positive gloom. The patronizing demeanor of an artist at work upon a portrait, which we all know so well,—the inevitable effect of his faith in himself, the very breath of artistic endeavor, without which he would lounge through life asking, "Of what use is it to attempt?"—made me furious, in my naughty, secret mind. I was not accustomed to being patronized; my mother herself had never given me a command. Besides, I was out of temper to think that my quietly observant father had stood in admiration before that picture of the liberating of St. Peter, of which I wearied, liking it so cordially that he had uttered his conclusive, deeply sympathetic "Yes," when my mother gave voice to her praise; whereas I had not had the grace to glow, but voted all the pictures bores in a lump. Mr. Thompson, below the average size, and harmlessly handsome, always wore the prevailing gleam of a smile that showed chiefly at the eyes, offset by a nimbus of gray and black hair.

I wondered, even at seven years of age, how sculptors in the flesh could come and carve original conceptions among the unspeakably successful attempts of those who were already thinnest dust, yet whose names have so much personality in them that a sovereign presence fills the place where they are spoken,—sculptors whose statues step as it were unexpectedly (themselves surprised) into sight, with none of the avoirdupois of later stone-work; that heaviness which, in some of the finest of these modern figures, causes them to pause involuntarily, as if snowed upon. The high degree of smoothness of the old statues, as well as their mellowed whiteness, may give life; added to that wonderful deep cutting in all crevices and detail of nature, such as gives, in literature, the life to Balzac's endlessly studied facts of situation. The sugary porousness of much of the inferior marble of to-day arrests the eye, and troubles it. Story's Cleopatra is smooth, close-fibred as glass, and the snowstorm has not been allowed to drift upon the folds of her robe, the interstices of her modeling. She, with a few others of still later date, comes near to the old art, which has as much possibility for our imaginative survey as the plot of "The Marble Faun," so marvelously, so intricately, so unslavishly finished. In looking at the Dying Gladiator, we wonder whether he has already passed on from mastering the thought of his approaching death to the remembrance of his wife and children; or whether upon the agony of the physical pang and the insult to courage, which his wound has brought him to endure, is yet to break the pathos of a hero's regret for the relinquished sweetness of love and home.

The Marble Faun suggests the problem as to whether he has for an instant stopped laughing, or will not immediately laugh; and what has a little while ago, or will suddenly cause, the animal fury of gladness to turn this jocund athlete into a dancing, bewilderingly enticing companion, chiming with guffaws and songs. Cleopatra's watchful melancholy partook also of classic momentariness, and I hoped she would spring to her feet. I liked very much to go to Mr. Story's studio, and I thought that for so slight a figure he was remarkably fearless.

The arches of triumph, which my mother studied reverently, seemed to me too premeditated and unnecessary; although an architect could no doubt have explained why, even to the present day, the little door for the little cat should supplement the big door of all space, which one would at first take to be a hero's best environment. Not thus unnecessary appeared the Coliseum; haunted by wild beasts, especially lions, leaping (I imagined) in hobgoblin array from the cavernous entrances which were pointed out to me as connected in the days of triumphant tyranny with their donjons. Many tender thoughts filled my reflections as I saw pilgrims visiting, and kneeling before, the black cross in the centre, and the altars around the walls. I delighted to muse within the circular ruin, upon whose upper rim, jagged but sunlit, delicate vegetation found a repentant welcome. The circular form of the ruin is full of eloquence, as one approaches from the Forum. What would be grace in a smaller structure is tragedy in so immense a sweep, which melts into vagueness, or comes mountainously upon you, or swirls before you in a retreating curve that figures the never-changing change of eternity.

The tomb of Cecilia Metella, and other successive tombs of the Appian Way beyond the walls, gave me my first impression of death that really was death. There could be, I reflected, looking at the sepulchres of these old Romans, no pretty story about the poor folk having gone to heaven comfortably from their apparent bodies. Here were the ashes of them, after a thousand years, in contemptible little urns; and they were expected to enjoy, in that much impaired state, sundry rusty bric-a-brac, dolls, and tear-vials of spookish iridescence, until, in the vast lapse of time, even a ghost must have got tired. Unaided by the right comment, I was dragged down considerably by those pagan tombs; and as an antidote, the unexplained catacombs were not sufficiently elevating. I did not read the signs of the subterranean churches aright, any more than the uncultivated Yankee reads aright an Egyptian portraiture. Monkish skulls and other unburied bones, seen by the light of moccoletti, were to me nothing but forms of folly. The abounding life of Catholicity was hardly understood by our party, which for some reason seemed inclined to impute the most death to the faith which has the most form. We did not gather how this abounding life can afford, though making more of our little fleshly sojourn than any other patron, to compare a skull with the life of the spirit, and relegate it to ornamentation and symbol.

Through the streets of Rome trotted in brown garb and great unloveliness a frequent monk, brave and true; and each of these, I was led by the feminine members of the family, to regard as a probable demon, eager for my intellectual blood. A fairer sight were the Penitents, in neat buff clothes of monastic outline, their faces covered with their hoods, whose points rose overhead like church steeples, two holes permitting the eyes to peep with beetle glistenings upon you. They went hurryingly along, called from their worldly affairs; and my mother imparted to me her belief that they were somewhat free of superstition because undoubtedly clean. Sometimes processions of them, chanting, came slowly through the city, bearing the dead to burial. I did not know, then, that the chanting was the voicing of good, honest, Bible-derived prayers; I thought it was child's play, useless and fascinating. In the churches the chanting monks and boys impressed me differently. Who does not feel, without a word to reveal the fact, the wondrous virtue of Catholic religious observance in the churches? The holiness of these regions sent through me waves of peace. I stepped softly past the old men and women who knelt upon the pavements, and gazed longingly upon their simpler spiritual plane; I drew back reluctantly from the only garden where the Cross is planted in visible, reverential substance. For the year ensuing this life in Rome, I entertained the family with dramatic imitations of religious chants, grumbling out at sundown the low, ominous echoings of the priests, answered by the treble, rapid and trustful, of the little choristers, gladly picturing to myself as I did so the winding processions in St. Peter's.

In the square beneath our windows, during Lent, booths were set, and countless flat pancake-looking pieces of dough were caught up by a white-capped and aproned cook, with a long-handled spoon, and fried in olive oil placed in a caldron at the booth's door, to be served to passers in the twinkling of an eye. I watched this process until I grew to regard Lent as a tiresome custom. Having tested the cakes, I found them to be indistinct in taste, for all their pretty buff tint, and the dexterous twist of the cook's wrist as he dumped them and picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should have been sharply interested in the idea of becoming a Catholic, but their entire absence of relish convinced me that the Italians lacked mental grasp and salvation at a single swoop: and this in spite of the fact that one of my mother's most valued friends, Mrs. Ward, had lately joined the Church. It was her husband who said of her, "Whatever church has Anna, has St. Anna!" Perhaps the most exquisite speech ever uttered by a husband.

Before this serious season of pancakes, which was all Lent was to me at the time of which I speak, the Carnival had rushed upon my sight, carrying all our friends through its whirlpool. Every gay cloth, shawl, and mat that could be brought into service I had rejoiced to see displayed upon the balconies. A narrow, winding street the Corso seemed, being so full, and the houses so high; and a merry blue strip of heaven far away overhead, glancing along the housetops, assured us space still existed. Sudden descents of flowers upon one's shoulders and lap in the carriage, from a window or a passer, or a kindly feeling stranger in another carriage, made one start in mirthful response. Sudden meetings with dear friends, or friends who seemed almost dear in the cheerful hurly-burly, became part of the funny scrimmage. At each side-street sat on a stony standing horse a beautifully proportioned and equipped guard, in gleaming helmet and calm demeanor.

To stand or sit at the windows beside the show was an experience full of pleasure; and if the window was on a level with the heads of the huddling passers, one could be in all the merriment yet not jostled; one could easily pick out a pretty woman or a handsome man to whom to throw a bouquet; and one could see energetic revelers, already well supplied with flowers, reaching high windows with bouquets by means of those wooden contrivances which can be extended or contracted at will, and look like impracticable ladders. The fair recipient at the lattice never failed to respond with an ecstatic smile if this Jacob's ladder had been sufficiently long to reach her welcoming hand. Meantime, many bunches of flowers, some large and elegant, some small and merely gay of color, were being thrown aloft or flung downward, making fountains and cataracts of flowers. Sometimes these bouquets fell into the street dejectedly, upon whose pavement little ragamuffins were always ready to pounce for them, and sell them again as fast as possible to passers who had exhausted their supply, had become mad with the Carnival, and caught sight, in that very moment, of some cherished comrade to whom they wished to throw a greeting. There was an intoxicating enjoyment in being singled out as the recipient of fragrant flowers, sent with a laugh of the eyes; or of a handful of sugared almonds, tossed with a gay shout of compliment. If the passer who thus honored us was a complete stranger, meeting us for this one moment in racial kindness, we felt the untrammeled bonhomie which, God knows, we were expected to feel as a matter of course not for a moment only, but for life.

Upon all these things I delighted to think and afterwards to ponder, because I realized that they were of vital interest to the intelligence which was to me greatest and dearest.