“Those who wish to fix the scenes and events of Roman history securely in their minds will do best to take them in groups. Suppose, for instance, that people wish to study the story of St. Laurence. Let them first visit the beautiful little chapel in the Vatican, where the whole story of the saint’s life is portrayed in the lovely frescoes of Angelico da Fiesole. Let them stand on the green sward by the Navicella, where he distributed the treasures of the church in front of the house of St. Ciriaca. Let them walk through the crypto-porticus of the Palatine, up which he was dragged to his trial. Let them lean against the still existing bar of the basilica, where he knelt to receive his sentence. Let them visit S. Lorenzo in Fonte, where he was imprisoned, and baptized his fellow-prisoners in the fountain which gives the church its name. Let them go hence to S. Lorenzo Pane e Perna, built upon the scene of his terrific martyrdom, which is there portrayed in fresco. Let them see his traditional chains, and the supposed gridiron of his suffering at S. Lorenzo in Lucina; and, lastly, at the great basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura let them admire the mighty church which for 1200 years has marked the site of that little chapel which Constantine built near the lowly catacomb grave in which the martyr was laid by his deacon Hippolytus.
“Let us turn to a very different character. Let us turn to Rienzi. How vivid will his story seem to those who go first to the old tower of the Crescenzi near the Bocca della Verità, which belonged to his ancestors, and then to the street behind S. Tommaso where he was born—the son of a publican and a washerwoman, for to such humble offices were the Crescenzi then reduced. They will find Rienzi again at the little church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, whither he summoned the citizens at midnight to hold a meeting for the re-establishment of ‘the Good Estate,’ and in which he kept the Vigil of the Holy Ghost—and at the Portico of Octavia, on whose ancient walls he painted his famous picture allegorical of the sufferings of the Romans under the oppression of the great patrician families, thus flaunting defiance in the eyes of the Savelli, who could look down upon the picture from the windows of their palace above the Theatre of Marcellus. At S. Giorgio in Velabro the pediment still remains under the old terra-cotta cornice where an inscription proclaimed that the reign of the Good Estate was begun. We must follow Rienzi thence, bareheaded, but in full armour, to the Capitol, and to the Lateran, where he took his mystic bath in the great vase of green basalt in which Constantine is falsely said to have been baptized. We must think of his flight, after his short-lived glories were over, by the light of the burning palace, down the steps of the Capitol, and of his wife looking out of the window to witness his murder at the foot of the great basaltic lioness, which looks scarcely older now than on the night on which it was sprinkled with his blood. Lastly, we may remember that his body was hung, a target for the stones of those by whom he was so lately adored, in the little piazza of S. Marcello in the Corso, and that, in strange contradiction, it was eventually burnt by the Jews in the desolate mausoleum of Augustus, surrounded by Roman emperors, in a fire of dried thistles, till not a fibre of it remained.
“Let us take one more character from a much later time. Let us take Beatrice Cenci. In the depths of the Ghetto, ghastly and grim, still stands the old palace of Francesco Cenci, whose colossal rooms and dark passages were the scene of her long misery. Hard by is the little church which one of that wretched family built in the hope of expiating its crimes. As we walk through the wearisome Tor di Nona on our way to S. Peter’s, we may think of the old tower which gave the street its name, in which the beautiful young girl is said to have undergone for forty hours the torture of the ‘vigilia,’ followed by the still more terrific agony called ‘tortura capillorum.’ At Sta. Maria Maggiore we may look upon the stern face of Clement VIII., the cruel judge who knew no mercy, and who, in answer to all pleadings in their behalf, bade that the whole Cenci family should be dragged by wild horses through the streets of Rome. The ancient Santa Croce palace still stands, in which the Marchesa Santa Croce was murdered by her two sons on the night in which a last effort was being made for the pardon of Beatrice—an event which sealed her fate. In the Corte Savelli we may think of her terrible execution. Before the high altar of S. Pietro in Montorio she reposes from her long agony. And finally, we must go to the Palazzo Barberini, where, in the picture which Guido Reni is said to have painted in her prison, we may gaze upon the pale composure of her transcendent loveliness.
“It is by thus entwining one sight with another, till they become the continuous links of a story, that they are best fixed in the mind. They should also be read about, not merely in guide-books, but in the works of those who, from long residence in Italy and the deep love which they bear to it, have become impressed with the true Italian spirit. Amongst such books none are more delightful than the many volumes of Gregorovius, from his ‘History of the City of Rome’ to his enchanting ‘Lateinische Sommer,’ and his graphic little sketches of the burial-places of the Popes. I have often been laughed at for constantly recommending and quoting novels in speaking of Rome and its interests; yet in few graver works are such glimpses of Rome, of Roman scenery, Roman character, Roman manners to be obtained as in Hawthorne’s ‘Marble Faun,’ which English publishers so foolishly call ‘Transformation;’ in ‘Mademoiselle Mori;’ in the ‘Improvisatore’ of Hans Christian Andersen; in the ‘Daniella’ of George Sand; and, will my audience be unutterably shocked if I add, in the Pagan-spirited ‘Ariadne’ of Ouida. The writers of these books have really known Rome and loved it, and yet several of them have only spent one or two winters here. The same knowledge, the same inspiration, is open to all of us, and the reason why English and American visitors so seldom carry away from Rome more than they bring to it is because they have never seen it at all; because the life in a hotel, with its English and French dinners, its English or French-speaking waiters, its newspapers and reading-rooms, is not a Roman life; because the shop-keepers in the Via Condotti, their washerwomen, or their masters of music and languages, are the only Italians these visitors have come in contact with; because their sights are doled out to them by conceited couriers or ignorant ciceroni; because they have no ideas of the peasants and their costumes beyond the models of the Via Felice and the Trinità de’ Monti.
“And all this might be so different! Can one look at the amethystine mountains which girdle in the Campagna around Rome without wishing to penetrate their recesses? In the mountain towns which hang like eagles’ nests to their rocks there are not only costumes, but every one wears a costume: there the true Italian life may be seen. By the railway which leads to Naples it is very easy now to reach many of these beautiful places and to have glimpses of a true Italy. The grand temples of Cori, the rock-perched Norba, and mysterious beautiful flower-peopled Ninfa may now be visited in one day from the station of Velletri, returning to Rome in the evening. At Sora near Arpino, the gloriously situated home of Cicero and of Marius, and at San Germano, close to Monte Cassino and to Aquino with its beautiful Roman arches of triumph, there are now very tolerable hotels; and oh! believe me, there is no enjoyment more intense than that of spring days on these lonely mountain heights carpeted with sweet basil and thyme, or in these old desolate cities where the women come up from the fountains with great brazen conche poised upon their black locks, like animated caryatides.
“But I would also urge those who cannot make these excursions to do at least something which will give them an individual interest, a personal property in Rome itself. Let them collect marbles or plants, or even photographs, or let them make sketches, choosing perhaps some special line of interest, either the ancient Roman remains, or the memorials of the saints, or the mediaeval tombs, thus appropriating and having their own little personal share in the great field of archaeology. I remember that two English ladies,[301] long valued members of the society here, made a perfect collection of drawings of all the mediaeval towers in Rome, whether campanile of the churches, or old brick fortresses of the Anicii and Frangipani. I have known another lady, a much honoured American resident in this place,[302] who spent much of her time in making a perfect collection of drawings and photographs of all Italian subjects connected with Dante. And, depend upon it, that the very fact that these persons thus created for themselves a private centre around which all other interests should circle, gave them a wider grasp and an easier remembrance for all that came across them.
“Archaeology is generally regarded as a dead and dry study, though it need not be so. But its animating power is history, and to bring it into life it must be combined with history, not in its narrowest, but in its widest sense. To a life-long student of classical details, it may be a matter of vital importance whether a stone on the Palatine is of the time of the kings or the Republic; but to the casual visitor to Rome, to the ladies who form so great a portion of my present audience, this can scarcely be a question of thrilling excitement. To the unlearned, I believe it to be of more interest to reflect upon the gladiatorial combats and the Christian martyrdoms in the Coliseum than to discuss the exact manner in which its sheltering velarium was sustained.
“Let our Roman archaeology, then, be unlimited as to ages, let it grasp as much as it can of the myriad human sympathies which Rome has to offer or awaken; for thus, and only thus, can it do a great work, in arousing highest thoughts and aims, as it opens the ancient treasure-house and teaches the vast experience of more than two thousand years. Then, as John Addington Symonds says:—
‘Then from the very soil of ancient Rome
You shall grow wise, and walking, live again
The lives of buried peoples, and become
A child by right of that eternal home,
Cradle and grave of empires, on whose walls,
The sun himself subdued to reverence falls.’