Rome, Friday, June 27, 1851.
Rome is mighty even in her desolation. I knew the world had nothing like her, and yet the impression she has made on me, at the first view, is unexpectedly great. I do not yet feel able to go wandering from one church, museum, picture or sculpture gallery to another, from morning till night, as others do: I need to pause and think. Of course, I shall leave without seeing even a tenth part of the objects of decided interest; but if I should thus be enabled to carry away any clear and abiding impression of a small part, I shall prefer this to a confused and foggy perception of a greater multiplicity of details.
That single view of the Eternal City, from the tower of the Capitol, is one that I almost wish I had given up the first day to. The entire of Rome and its inhabited suburbs lies so fully and fairly before the eye, with the Seven Hills, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Obelisks, the Pillars, the Vatican, the Castle of St. Angelo, the various Triumphal Arches, the Churches, &c., &c., around you, that it seems the best use that could be made of one day to simply move from look-out to look-out in that old tower, using the glass for a few moments and then pausing for reflection. I have half a mind thus to spend one of my three remaining days. True, the Coliseum will seem vaster close at hand, but from no point can it be seen so completely and clearly, in its immensity and its dilapidation combined, as from that. The Tarpeian Rock seems an absurd fable—its fatal leap the daily sport of infants—but in all ancient cities the same glaring discrepancy between ancient and modern altitudes is presented, and especially, we hear, at Jerusalem. The Seven Hills whereon Rome was built are all distinguishable, visible to-day; but they are undoubtedly much lower than at first, while all the intervening valleys have been filling up through centuries. Monkish traditions say that what is now the basement of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul (not the modern St. Peter's) was originally on the level of the street, and this is quite probable: though I did not so readily lubricate the stories I was told in that basement to-day of St. Peter, Paul and Luke having tenanted this basement, Paul having lived and preached here for the first two years of his residence in Rome; and when they showed me the altar at which St. Paul was wont to minister, I stopped short and didn't try to believe any more. But this soil is thickly sown with marvels and very productive.
St. Peter's, or at least its Dome, was in sight through the greater part of the last eleven or twelve miles of our journey to the city; from most other directions it is doubtless visible at a much greater distance. I have of course seen the immense structure afar off, as well as glanced at it in passing by night; but I am not yet prepared to comprehend its vast proportions. I mean to visit it last before leaving Rome, so as to carry away as unclouded an impression of it as possible.
Of the three hundred and sixty-five Churches of Rome, I have as yet visited but four, and may find time to see as many more of the most noteworthy. They seem richer in Sculpture, Porphyry, Mosaic, Carving, Tapestry, &c. than anything elsewhere well can be; but not equal in Architecture to the finest Churches in Genoa, the Cathedral at Pisa, and I think not externally to Notre Dame at Paris. Indeed, though large portions of the present Rome are very far from ruinous, and some of them quite modern and fresh-looking, yet the general Architecture of the city is decidedly inferior to that of Genoa, and I should say even to that of Leghorn. In making this comparison, I of course leave out of the account St. Peter's and the Churches of both cities, and refer mainly to private architecture, in which Rome is not transcendent—certainly not in Italy. The streets here are rather wide for an Italian city but would be deemed intolerably narrow in America.
As to Sculpture and Painting, I am tempted to say that if mankind were compelled to choose between the destruction of what is in Rome or that of all the rest in the world, the former should be saved at the expense of the latter. Adequate conception of the extent, the variety, the excellence of the works of Art here heaped together is impossible. If every house on Broadway were a gallery, the whole six miles of them (counting both sides of the street) might be filled from Rome with Pictures, Statues, &c. of decided merit.
What little I have seen does not impress me with the superiority of Ancient over Modern Art. Of course, if you compare the dozen best things produced in twenty centuries against a like number chosen from the productions of the last single century, you will show a superiority on the part of the former; but that decides nothing. The Capitoline Venus is a paragon, but there is no collection of ancient sculpture which will compare with the extensive gallery of heads by Canova alone. When benignant Time shall have done his appointed work of covering with the pall of oblivion the worse nineteen twentieths of the productions of the modern chisel, the genuine successes of the Nineteenth Century will shine out clearer and brighter than they now do. So, I trust, with Painting, though I do not know what painter of our age to place on a perilous eminence with Canova as the champion or representative of Modern as compared with Ancient Art.
It is well that there should be somewhere an Emporium of the Fine Arts, yet not well that the heart should absorb all the blood and leave the limbs destitute. I think Rome has been grasping with regard to works of Art, and in some instances unwisely so. For instance, in a single private gallery I visited to-day, there were not less than twenty decidedly good pictures by Anibal Caracci—probably twice as many as there are in all the world out of Italy. That gallery would scarcely miss half of these, which might be fully replaced by as many modern works of equal merit, whereby the gallery and Rome would lose nothing, while the world outside would decidedly gain. If Rome would but consider herself under a sort of moral responsibility to impart as well as receive, and would liberally dispose of so many of her master-pieces as would not at all impoverish her, buying in return such as could be spared her from abroad, and would thus enrich her collections by diversifying them, she would render the cause of Art a signal service and earn the gratitude of mankind, without the least prejudice to her own permanent well-being. It is in her power to constitute herself the center of an International Art-Union really worthy of the name—to establish a World's Exhibition of Fine Arts unequaled in character and beneficence. Is it too much to hope that she will realize or surpass this conception?
These suggestions, impelled by what I have seen to-day, are at all events much shorter than I could have made any detailed account of my observations. I have no qualifications for a critic in Art, and make no pretensions to the character, even had my observations been less hurried than they necessarily were. I write only for the great multitude, as ill-instructed in this sphere as I cheerfully admit myself, and who yet are not unwilling to learn what impression is made by the treasures of Rome on one like themselves.