I went afterwards to the Villa Borghese, outside the Porta del Popolo. The gardens occupy thirty or forty acres, and are always thronged in the afternoon with the carriages of the Roman and foreign nobility. In summer, it must be a heavenly place; even now, with its musical fountains, long avenues, and grassy slopes, crowned with the fan-like branches of the Italian pine, it reminds one of the fairy landscapes of Boccaccio. We threaded our way through the press of carriages on the Pincian hill, and saw the enormous bulk of St. Peter's loom up against the sunset sky. I counted forty domes and spires in that part of Rome that lay below us—but on what a marble glory looked that sun eighteen centuries ago! Modern Rome—it is in comparison, a den of filth, cheats and beggars!
Yesterday, while taking a random stroll through the city, I visited the church of St. Onofrio, where Tasso is buried. It is not far from St. Peter's, on the summit of a lonely hill. The building was closed, but an old monk admitted us on application. The interior is quite small, but very old, and the floor is covered with the tombs of princes and prelates of a past century. Near the end I found a small slab with the inscription:
"TORQUATI TASSI
OSSA
HIC JACENT."
That was all—but what more was needed? Who knows not the name and fame and sufferings of the glorious bard? The pomp of gold and marble are not needed to deck the slumber of genius. On the wall, above, hangs an old and authentic portrait of him, very similar to the engravings in circulation. A crown of laurel encircles the lofty brow, and the eye has that wild, mournful expression, which accords so well with the mysterious tale of his love and madness.
Owing to the mountain storms, which imposed on us the expense of a carriage-journey to Rome, we shall be prevented from going further. One great cause of this is the heavy fee required for passports in Italy. In most of the Italian cities, the cost of the different visès amounts to $4 or $5; a few such visits as these reduce our funds very materially. The American Consul's fee is $2, owing to the illiberal course of our government, in withholding all salary from her Consuls in Europe. Mr. Brown, however, in whose family we spent last evening very pleasantly, on our requesting that he would deduct something from the usual fee, kindly declined accepting anything. We felt this kindness the more, as from the character which some of our late Consuls bear in Italy, we had not anticipated it. We shall remember him with deeper gratitude than many would suppose, who have never known what it was to be a foreigner.
To-morrow, therefore, we leave Rome—here is, at last, the limit of our wanderings. We have spent much toil and privation to reach here, and now, after two weeks' rambling and musing among the mighty relics of past glory, we turn our faces homeward. The thrilling hope I cherished during the whole pilgrimage—to climb Parnassus and drink from Castaly, under the blue heaven of Greece (both far easier than the steep hill and hidden fount of poesy, I worship afar off)—to sigh for fallen art, beneath the broken friezes of the Parthenon, and look with a pilgrim's eye on the isles of Homer and of Sappho—must be given up, unwillingly and sorrowfully though it be. These glorious anticipations—among the brightest that blessed my boyhood—are slowly wrung from me by stern necessity. Even Naples, the lovely Parthenope, where the Mantuan bard sleeps on the sunny shore, by the bluest of summer seas, with the disinterred Pompeii beyond, and Pæstum amid its roses on the lonely Calabrian plain—even this, almost within sight of the cross of St. Peter's, is barred from me. Farewell then, clime of "fame and eld," since it must be! A pilgrim's blessing for the lore ye have taught him!
CHAPTER XLII. —
Palo.—The sea is breaking in long swells below the window, and a glorious planet shines in the place of the sunset that has died away. This is our first resting-place since leaving Rome. We have been walking all day over the bare and dreary Campagna, and it is a relief to look at last on the broad, blue expanse of the Tyrrhene Sea.