And now with regard to the present state of morals at Rome, one must not judge from staring stories told one; it is like Heliogabalus’s method of computing the number of his citizens from the weight of their cobwebs. It is wonderful to me the people are no worse, where no methods are taken to keep them from being bad.
As to the society, I speak not from myself, for I saw nothing of it; some English liked it, but more complained. Wanting amusement, however, can be no complaint, even without society, in a city so pregnant with wonders, so productive of reflections; and if the Roman nobles are haughty, who can wonder; when one sees doors of agate, and chimney-pieces of amethyst, one can scarcely be surprised at the possessors pride, should they in contempt turn their backs upon a foreigner, whom they are early taught to consider as the Turks consider women, creatures formed for their use only, or at best amusement, and devoted to certain destruction at the hour of death. With such principles, the hatred and scorn they naturally feel for a protestant will easily swell into superciliousness, or burst out into arrogance, the moment it is unrestrained by the necessity of forms among the rich, and the desire of pillage in the poor.
But I shall be glad now to exchange lapis lazuli for violets, and verd antique for green fields. Here are more amethysts about Rome than lilacs; and the laburnum which at this gay season adorns the environs of London, I look for in vain about the Porta del Popolo. The proud purple tulip which decorates the ground hereabouts, opposed to the British harebell, is Italy and England again; but the harebell by cultivation becomes a hyacinth, the tulip remains where it began. We are now at the 16th of April, yet I know not how or why it is, although the oaks, young, small, and straggling as they are, have the leaves come out all broad and full already, though the fig is bursting out every day and hour, and the mulberry tree, so tardy in our climate, that I have often been unable to see scarcely a bud upon them even in May, is here completely furnished. Apple trees are yet in blossom round this city, and the few elms that can be found, are but just unfolding. Common shrubs continue their wintry appearance, and in the general look of spring little is gained. The hedges now of Kent and Surrey are filled with fragrance I am sure, and primroses in the remoter provinces torment the sportsmen with spoiling the drag on a soft scenting morning; while limes, horse-chesnuts, &c. contribute to produce an effect not so inferior to that fostered by Italian sunshine, as I expected to find it.
Why the first breath of far-distant summer should thus affect the oak and fig, yet leave the elm and apple as with us, the botanists must tell; few advances have been made in vegetation since we left Naples, that is certain; the hedges were as forward near Pozzuoli two full months ago. And here are no China oranges to be bought; no, nor a cherry or strawberry to be seen, while every man of fashion’s table in London is covered with them; and all the shops of Covent-garden and St. James’s-street hang out their luxurious temptations of fruit, to prove the proximity of summer, and the advantages of industrious cultivation. Our eating pleased me more at every town than this; where however a man might live very well I believe for sixpence a-day, and lodge for twenty pounds a-year; and whoever has no attachment to religion, friends, or country, no prejudices to plague his neighbours with, and no dislike to take the world as it goes, for six or seven years of his life, may spend them profitably at Rome, if either his business or his pleasure be made out of the works of art; as an income of two, or indeed one hundred pounds per annum, will purchase a man more refined delights of that kind here, than as many thousands in England: nor need he want society at the first houses, palaces one ought to call them, as Italians measure no man’s merit by the weight of his purse; they know how to reverence even poverty, and soften all its sorrows with an appearance of respect, when they find it unfortunately connected with noble birth. His own country folk’s neglect, as they pass through, would indeed be likely enough to disturb his felicity, and lessen the kindness of his Roman friends, who having no idea of a person’s being shunned for any other possible reason except the want of a pedigree, would conclude that his must be essentially deficient, and lament their having laid out so many caresses on an impostor.
The air of this city is unwholesome to foreigners, but if they pass the first year, the remainder goes well enough; many English seem very healthy, who are established here without even the smallest intention of returning home to Great Britain, for which place we are setting out to-morrow, 19th April 1786, and quit a town that still retains so many just pretences to be styled the first among the cities of the earth; to which almost as many strangers are now attracted by curiosity, as were dragged thither by violence in the first stage of its dominion, impelled by superstitious zeal in the second. The rage for antiquities now seems to have spread its contagion of connoisseurship over all those people whose predecessors tore down, levelled, and destroyed, or buried under ground their statues, pictures, every work of art; Poles, Russians, Swedes, and Germans innumerable, flock daily hither in this age, to admire with rapture the remains of those very fabrics which their own barbarous ancestors pulled down ten centuries ago; and give for the head of a Livia, a Probus, or Gallienus, what emperors and queens could not then use with any efficacy, for the preservation of their own persons, now grown sacred by rust, and valuable from their difficulty to be decyphered. The English were wont to be the only travellers of Europe, the only dupes too in this way; but desire of distinction is diffused among all the northern nations, and our Romans here have it more in their power, with that prudence to assist them which it is said they do not want, if not to conquer their neighbours once again, at least to ruin them, by dint of digging up their dead heroes, and calling in the assistance of their old Pagan deities, now useful to them in a new manner, and ever propitious to this city, although
Enlighten’d Europe with disdain
Beholds the reverenc’d heathen train,
Nor names them more in this her clearer day,
Unless with fabled force to aid the poet’s lay.
R. Merry.