To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants, is a strong primâ facie ground of suspicion. There is vice on those worn, wretched faces—vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces—vice in those streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery. In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city, where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind;
where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off—if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will not be surprised if to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries.
CHAPTER IV. THE ROMAN PEOPLE.
“Senatus Populusque Romanus.” The phrase sounds strangely, in my ears, like the accents of an unknown language or the burden of a half-forgotten melody. In those four initial letters there seems to me always to lie embodied an epitome of the world’s history—the rise and decline and fall of Rome. On the escutcheons of the Roman nobles, the S.P.Q.R. are still blazoned forth conspicuously, but where shall we look for the realities expressed by that world-famed symbol? It is true, the Senate is still represented by a single Senator, nominated by the Pope, who drives in a Lord Mayor’s state coach on solemn occasions; and regularly, on the first night of the opera season, sends round ices, as a present to the favoured occupants of the second and third tiers of boxes at the “Apollo.” This gentleman, by all the laws of senatorial succession,
is the undoubted heir and representative of the old Roman Senate, who sat with their togas wrapped around them, waiting for the Gaul to strike; but alas, the “Populus Romanus” has left behind him neither heir nor descendant.
Yet surely, if anything of dead Rome be still left in the living city, it should be found in the Roman people. In the Mystères du Peuple of Eugêne Sue, there is a story, that to the Proletarian people, the sons of toil and labour, belong genealogies of their own, pedigrees of families, who from remote times have lived and died among the ranks of industry. These fabulous families, I have often thought, should have had their home in the Eternal City. Amongst the peasants that you meet, praying in the churches, or basking in the sun-light, or toiling in the deadly Campagna plains, there must be some, who, if they knew it, descend in direct lineage from the ancient “Plebs.” It may be so, or rather it must be so; but of the fact there is little outward evidence. You look in vain for the characteristic features of the old Roman face, such as you behold them when portrayed in ancient statues. The broad low brow, the depressed skull, the protruding under-jaw, and the
thin compressed lips, are to be seen no longer. Indeed, though I make the remark with the fear of the artist-world before my eyes, I should hardly say myself, that the Romans of the present day were a very handsome race; and of their own type they are certainly inferior both to Tuscans and Neapolitans. The men are well formed and of good height, but not powerful in build or make, and their features are rather marked than regular. As for the women, when you have once perceived that hair may be black as coal and yet coarse as string, that bright sparkling eyes may be utterly devoid of expression, and that an olive complexion may be deepened by the absence of washing, you grow somewhat sceptical as to the reality of their vaunted beauty. All this, however, is a matter of personal taste, about which it is useless to express a decided opinion. I must content myself with the remark, that the Roman peasantry as depicted, year after year, on the walls of our academy, bear about the same resemblance to the article provided for home consumption, as the ladies in an ordinary London ball-room bear to the portraits in the “Book of Beauty.” The peasants’ costumes too, like the smock-frocks and
scarlet cloaks of Old England, are dying out fast. On the steps in the “Piazza di Spagna,” and in the artists’ quarter above, you see some score or so of models with the braided boddices, and the head-dresses of folded linen, standing about for hire. The braid, it is true, is torn; the snow-white linen dirt-besmeared, and the brigand looks feeble and inoffensive, while the hoary patriarch plays at pitch and toss: but still they are the same figures that we know so well, the traditional Roman peasantry of the “Grecian” and the “Old Adelphi.” Unfortunately, they are the last of the Romans. In other parts of the city the peasants’ dresses are few and far between; the costume has become so uncommon, as to be now a fashionable dress for the Roman ladies at Carnival time and other holiday festivals. On Sundays and “Festas” in the mountain districts you can still find real peasants with real peasants’ dresses; but even there Manchester stuffs and cottons are making their way fast, and every year the old-fashioned costumes grow rarer and rarer. A grey serge jacket, coarse nondescript-coloured cloth trousers, and a brown felt hat, all more or less ragged and dusty, compose the ordinary dress of the Roman working man. Female dress, in
any part of the world, is one of those mysteries which a wise man will avoid any attempt to explain; I can only say, therefore, that the dress of the common Roman women is much like that of other European countries, except that the colours used are somewhat gayer and gaudier than is common in the north.
Provisions are dear in Rome. Bread of the coarsest and mouldiest quality costs, according to the Government tariff, by which its price is regulated, from a penny to three halfpence for the English pound. Meat is about a third dearer than in London, and clothing, even of the poorest sort, is very high in price. On the other hand, lodgings, of the class used by the poor, are cheap enough. There is no outlay for firing, as even in the coldest weather (and I have known the temperature in Rome as low as eight degrees below freezing-point), even well-to-do Romans never think of lighting a fire; and then, in this climate, the actual quantity of victuals required by an able-bodied labourer is far smaller than in our northern countries, while, from the same cause, the use of strong liquors is almost unknown. Tobacco too, which is all made up in the Papal factories and chiefly grown in the