"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
As for the evening illumination, it was just as I remember it on two former occasions, separated from this and from each other by long intervals. A magical and unique spectacle it certainly is, with the well-known change from the paper lanterns to the flaring lampions. Costly is it of human labor, and perilous to human life. And when I remembered that those employed in it receive the sacrament beforehand, in order that imminent death may not find them out of a state of grace, I thought that its beauty did not so much signify.
We have a dome, too, in Washington. The Genius of Liberty poises on its top; the pediment below it is adorned with the emblems of honest thrift and civic prosperity. May that dome perish ere it be lit at the risk of human life, and lit, like this, to make the social darkness around it more evident by its momentary aureole.
WORKS OF ART.
Enough of shows. Galleries and studios are better. Rome is rich in both, and with a sort of studious contentment, one embraces one's Murray, picks out the palace that unfolds its art treasures to-day, and travels up the stairs, and along the marble corridors, to wonderful suites of apartments, in which the pasteboard programmes lie about waiting for you, while the still drama of the pictures acts itself upon the thronged wall, yourself their small public, and they giving their color-eloquence, whether any one gives heed or not.
They are precious, the Colonna, Doria, Sciarra, Borghese, and we have seen them. We have picked out our old favorites, and have carried the neophytes before them, saying, "I saw this, dear, before you were born." But this past, whose reflex fold inwraps us, does not exist for the neophytes, who look at it as out of a moment's puzzle, and then conclude to begin their own business on their own responsibility, without any reference to these outstanding credits of ours.
Of the pictures it is little useful to speak. Your description enables no one to see them, and the narration of the feelings they excite in you is as likely to be tedious as interesting to those who cultivate feelings of their own. Copies and engravings have done here what you cannot do, and the best subjects are familiar to art students and lovers in all countries. A little sigh of pleasure may be allowed you at this, your third sight of the Francias, the Raphaels, Titian's Bella, Claude's landscapes, and the scientific Leonardo's heavily-labored heads and groups. But do not therefore put the trumpet to your lips, and blow that sigh across the ocean, to claim the attention of ears that invite the lesson for the day. The lesson for this day is not written on canvas, and though it may be read everywhere in the world, you will scarcely find its clearest type in Rome.
And here, perhaps, I may as well carry further the philosophizing which I began a week ago with regard to the objects and resources of Roman life, and their compatibility with the thoughts and pursuits most dear and valuable to Americans.
Art is, of course, the only solid object which an American can bring forward to justify a prolonged residence in Rome. Art, health, and official duty, are among the valid reasons which bring our countrymen abroad. Two of these admit of no argument. The sick have a right, other things permitting, to go where they can be bettered; a duty perhaps, to go where the sum of their waning years and wasting activities admits of multiplication. Those who live abroad as ministers and consuls have a twofold opportunity of benefiting their country. If honest and able, they may benefit her by their presence in foreign lands; if unworthy and incompetent, by their absence from home. But our artists are those whose expatriation gives us most to think about. They take leave of us either in the first bloom or in the full maturity of their powers. The ease of living in Southern Europe, the abundance of models and of works of art, the picturesque charms of nature and of scenery, detain them forever from us, and, save for an abstract sentiment, which itself weakens with every year, the sacred tie of country is severed. Its sensibilities play no part in these lives devoted to painting and modelling.
Now, an eminent gift for art is an exceptional circumstance. He who has it weds his profession, leaves father and mother, and goes where his slowly-unfolding destiny seems to call him. Against such a course we have no word to say. It presents itself as a necessary conclusion to earnest and noble men, who love not their native country less, but their votive country more. Of the first and its customs they would still say,—