As one becomes familiar, Ancient and Modern Rome, at first so painfully and discordantly jumbled together, are drawn apart to the mental vision. One sees where objects and limits anciently wore; the superstructures vanish, and you recognize the local habitation of so many thoughts. When this begins to happen, one feels first truly at ease in Rome. Then the old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the emperors, drunk with blood and gold, the warriors of eagle sight and remorseless beak, return for us, and the togated procession finds room to sweep across the scene; the seven hills tower, the innumerable temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once more.
Ah! how joyful to see once more this Rome, instead of the pitiful, peddling, Anglicized Rome, first viewed in unutterable dismay from the coupé of the vettura,—a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses, cheating chambermaids, vilest valets de place, and fleas! A Niobe of nations indeed! Ah! why, secretly the heart blasphemed, did the sun omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown fell beneath his ray? Thank Heaven, it is possible to wash away all this dirt, and come at the marble yet.
Their the later Papal Rome: it requires much acquaintance, much thought, much reference to books, for the child of Protestant Republican America to see where belong the legends illustrated by rite and picture, the sense of all the rich tapestry, where it has a united and poetic meaning, where it is broken by some accident of history. For all these things—a senseless mass of juggleries to the uninformed eye—are really growths of the human spirit struggling to develop its life, and full of instruction for those who learn to understand them.
Then Modern Rome,—still ecclesiastical, still darkened and damp in the shadow of the Vatican, but where bright hopes gleam now amid the ashes! Never was a people who have had more to corrupt them,—bloody tyranny, and incubus of priestcraft, the invasions, first of Goths, then of trampling emperors and kings, then of sight-seeing foreigners,—everything to turn them from a sincere, hopeful, fruitful life; and they are much corrupted, but still a fine race. I cannot look merely with a pictorial eye on the lounge of the Roman dandy, the bold, Juno gait of the Roman Contadina. I love them,—dandies and all? I believe the natural expression of these fine forms will animate them yet. Certainly there never was a people that showed a better heart than they do in this day of love, of purely moral influence. It makes me very happy to be for once in a place ruled by a father's love, and where the pervasive glow of one good, generous heart is felt in every pulse of every day.
I have seen the Pope several times since my return, and it is a real pleasure to see him in the thoroughfares, where his passage is always greeted as that of the living soul.
The first week of November there is much praying for the dead here in the chapels of the cemeteries. I went to Santo Spirito. This cemetery stands high, and all the way up the slope was lined with beggars petitioning for alms, in every attitude find tone, (I mean tone that belongs to the professional beggar's gamut, for that is peculiar,) and under every pretext imaginable, from the quite legless elderly gentleman to the ragged ruffian with the roguish twinkle in his eye, who has merely a slight stiffness in one arm and one leg. I could not help laughing, it was such a show,—greatly to the alarm of my attendant, who declared they would kill me, if ever they caught me alone; but I was not afraid. I am sure the endless falsehood in which such creatures live must make them very cowardly. We entered the cemetery; it was a sweet, tranquil place, lined with cypresses, and soft sunshine lying on the stone coverings where repose the houses of clay in which once dwelt joyous Roman hearts,—for the hearts here do take pleasure in life. There were several chapels; in one boys were chanting, in others people on their knees silently praying for the dead. In another was one of the groups in wax exhibited in such chapels through the first week of November. It represented St. Carlo Borromeo as a beautiful young man in a long scarlet robe, pure and brilliant as was the blood of the martyrs, relieving the poor who were grouped around him,—old people and children, the halt, the maimed, the blind; he had called them all into the feast of love. The chapel was lighted and draped so as to give very good effect to this group; the spectators were mainly children and young girls, listening with ardent eyes, while their parents or the nuns explained to them the group, or told some story of the saint. It was a pretty scene, only marred by the presence of a villanous-looking man, who ever and anon shook the poor's box. I cannot understand the bad taste of choosing him, when there were frati and priests enough of expression less unprepossessing.
I next entered a court-yard, where the stations, or different periods in the Passion of Jesus, are painted on the wall. Kneeling before these were many persons: here a Franciscan, in his brown robe and cord; there a pregnant woman, uttering, doubtless, some tender aspiration for the welfare of the yet unborn dear one; there some boys, with gay yet reverent air; while all the while these fresh young voices were heard chanting. It was a beautiful moment, and despite the wax saint, the ill-favored friar, the professional mendicants, and my own removal, wide as pole from pole, from the positron of mind indicated by these forms, their spirit touched me, and. I prayed too; prayed for the distant, every way distant,—for those who seem to have forgotten me, and with me all we had in common; prayed for the dead in spirit, if not in body; prayed for myself, that I might never walk the earth
"The tomb of my dead self";
and prayed in general for all unspoiled and loving hearts,—no less for all who suffer and find yet no helper.
Going out, I took my road by the cross which marks the brow of the hill. Up the ascent still wound the crowd of devotees, and still the beggars beset them. Amid that crowd, how many lovely, warm-hearted women! The women of Italy are intellectually in a low place, but—they are unaffected; you can see what Heaven meant them to be, and I believe they will be yet the mothers of a great and generous race. Before me lay Rome,—how exquisitely tranquil in the sunset! Never was an aspect that for serene grandeur could vie with that of Rome at sunset.