"Lui pauvre écolier, élevé si durement, qui souvent, pendant son enfance, n'avait pour oreiller qu'une dalle froide, il passe devant des temples tout de marbre, devant des colonnes d'albâtre, des gigantesques obélisques de granite, des fontaines jaillissantes, des villas fraîches et embellies de jardins, de fleurs, de cascades et de grottes. Veut-il prier? il entre dans une église qui lui semble un monde véritable, où les diamants scintillent sur l'autel, l'or aux soffites, le marbre aux colonnes, la mosaïque aux chapelles, au lieu d'un de ces temples rustiques qui n'ont dans sa patrie pour tout ornement que quelques roses qu'une main pieuse va déposer sur l'autel le jour du dimanche. Est-il fatigué de la route? il trouve sur son chemin, non plus un modeste banc de bois, mais un siège d'albâtre antique récemment déterré. Cherche-t-il une sainte image? il n'aperçoit que des fantaisies païennes, des divinités olympiques, Apollon, Vénus, Mars, Jupiter, auxquelles travaillent mille mains de sculpteurs. De toutes ces merveilles, il ne comprit rien, il ne vit rien. Aucun rayon de la couronne de Raphaël, de Michel-Ange, n'éblouit ses regards; il resta froid et muet devant tous les trésors de peinture et de sculpture rassemblés dans les églises; son oreille fut fermée aux chants du Dante, que le peuple répétait autour de lui. Il était entré à Rome en pèlerin, il en sort comme Coriolan, et s'écrie avec Bembo: 'Adieu, Rome, que doit fuir quiconque veut vivre saintement! Adieu, ville où tout est permis, excepté d'être homme de bien.'"—Audin, Histoire de Luther, c. ii.
It was in front of this church that the cardinals and magnates of Rome met to receive the apostate Christina of Sweden upon her entrance into the city.
On the left side of the piazza rise the terraces of the Pincio, adorned with rostral-columns, statues, and marble bas-reliefs, interspersed with cypresses and pines. A winding road, lined with mimosas and other flowering shrubs, leads to the upper platform, now laid out in public drives and gardens, but, till twenty years ago, a deserted waste, where the ghost of Nero was believed to wander in the middle ages.
Hence the Eternal City is seen spread at our feet, and beyond it the wide-spreading Campagna, till a silver line marks the sea melting into the horizon beyond Ostia. All these churches and tall palace roofs become more than mere names in the course of the winter, but at first all is bewilderment Two great buildings alone arrest the attention:
"Westward, beyond the Tiber, is the Castle of St. Angelo, the immense tomb of a pagan emperor with the archangel on its summit.... Still further off, a mighty pile of buildings, surmounted by a vast dome, which all of us have shaped and swelled outward, like a huge bubble, to the utmost scope of our imaginations, long before we see it floating over the worship of the city. At any nearer view the grandeur of St. Peter's hides itself behind the immensity of its separate parts, so that we only see the front, only the sides, only the pillared length and loftiness of the portico, and not the mighty whole. But at this distance the entire outline of the world's cathedral, as well as that of the palace of the world's chief priest, is taken in at once. In such remoteness, moreover, the imagination is not debarred from rendering its assistance, even while we have the reality before our eyes, and helping the weakness of human sense to do justice to so grand an object. It requires both faith and fancy to enable us to feel, what is nevertheless so true, that yonder, in front of the purple outline of the hills, is the grandest edifice ever built by man, painted against God's loveliest sky."—Hawthorne.
Here the band plays under the great palm-tree every afternoon except Friday. On Sunday afternoons the Pincio is in what Miss Thackeray describes as "a fashionable halo of sunset and pink parasols"—when immense crowds collect, showing every phase of Roman life; and disperse again as the Ave-Maria bell rings from the churches, either to descend into the city, or to hear benediction sung by the nuns in the Trinità de' Monti.
"When the fashionable hour of rendezvous arrives, the same spot, which a few minutes before was immersed in silence and solitude, changes as it were with the rapidity of a scene in a pantomime to an animated panorama. The scene is rendered not a little ludicrous by the miniature representation of the Ring in Hyde Park in a small compass. An entire revolution of the carriage-drive is performed in the short period of three minutes as near as may be, and the perpetual occurrence of the same physiognomies and the same carriages trotting round and round for two successive hours, necessarily reminds one of the proceedings of a country fair, and children whirling in a roundabout."—Sir G. Head's 'Tour in Rome.'
"The Pincian Hill is the favourite promenade of the Roman aristocracy. At the present day, however, like most other Roman possessions, it belongs less to the native inhabitants than to the barbarians from Gaul, Great Britain, and beyond the sea, who have established a peaceful usurpation over all that is enjoyable or memorable in the Eternal City. These foreign guests are indeed ungrateful, if they do not breathe a prayer for Pope Clement, or whatever Holy Father it may have been, who levelled the summit of the mount so skilfully, and bounded it with the parapet of the city wall; who laid out those broad walks and drives, and overhung them with the shade of many kinds of tree; who scattered the flowers of all seasons, and of every clime, abundantly over those smooth, central lawns; who scooped out hollows in fit places, and setting great basons of marble in them, caused ever-gushing fountains to fill them to the brim; who reared up the immemorial obelisk out of the soil that had long hidden it; who placed pedestals along the borders of the avenues, and covered them with busts of that multitude of worthies,—statesmen, heroes, artists, men of letters and of song,—whom the whole world claims as its chief ornaments, though Italy has produced them all. In a word, the Pincian garden is one of the things that reconcile the stranger (since he fully appreciates the enjoyment, and feels nothing of the cost,) to the rule of an irresponsible dynasty of Holy Fathers, who seem to have arrived at making life as agreeable an affair as it can well be.
"In this pleasant spot the red-trousered French soldiers are always to be seen; bearded and grizzled veterans, perhaps, with medals of Algiers or the Crimea on their breasts. To them is assigned the peaceful duty of seeing that children do not trample on the flower-beds, nor any youthful lover rifle them of their fragrant blossoms to stick in his beloved one's hair. Here sits (drooping upon some marble bench, in the treacherous sunshine,) the consumptive girl, whose friends have brought her, for a cure, into a climate that instils poison into its very purest breath. Here, all day, come nursery maids, burdened with rosy English babies, or guiding the footsteps of little travellers from the far western world. Here, in the sunny afternoon, roll and rumble all kinds of carriages, from the Cardinal's old-fashioned and gorgeous purple carriage to the gay barouche of modern date. Here horsemen gallop on thorough-bred steeds. Here, in short, all the transitory population of Rome, the world's great watering-place, rides, drives, or promenades! Here are beautiful sunsets; and here, whichever way you turn your eyes, are scenes as well worth gazing at, both in themselves and for their historical interest, as any that the sun ever rose and set upon. Here, too, on certain afternoons in the week, a French military band flings out rich music over the poor old city, floating her with strains as loud as those of her own echoless triumphs."—Hawthorne.