The gates of the avenues by which access is had to the gardens are closed soon after sundown. No one is allowed to walk there after dark, or remain there overnight. But theatres and other places of amusement are open in the evening, the best operatic and dramatic entertainments being reserved for Sunday night. We wearied soon of the bustle and gayety of such Sabbath afternoons. We could not shut out from our apartment the strains that seduced thought away from the books we would fain study. The tramp and hum of the street were well-nigh as bewildering. In the beginning, to avoid this—afterward, from love of the place and the beauty and quiet that reign there, like the visible benediction of the All-Father—we fell into the practice of driving out every week to the Protestant Cemetery.
Boy was always one of the carriage-party. The streets were a continual carnival to him on this, the Christian’s Lord’s Day, being alive with mountebanks and strolling musicians. Behind the block in which were our apartments was an open square, where a miniature circus was held at least one Sabbath per month, it was said, for the diversion of the boy-prince who is now the heir-apparent. In view of the fact that our heir-apparent was to be educated for Protestant citizenship in America, we preferred for him, as for ourselves, Sabbath meditations among the tombs to the divers temptations of the town—temptations not to be shunned except by locking him up in a windowless closet and stuffing his ears with cotton. The route usually selected, because it was quietest on the holiday that drew the populace elsewhere, granted us peeps at many interesting objects and localities.
In the vestibule of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin is the once-noted Bocca della Verità, or Mouth of Truth—a round, flat wheel, like an overgrown grindstone set on edge, a gaping mouth in the centre. The first time we visited it (it was not on the Sabbath) the Average Briton was before us, and affably volunteered an explanation of the rude mask.
“You see, when a fellah was suspected of perjury—false swearing, you know—he was brought heah and made to put his harnd in those—ah!—confoundedly beastly jaws; when, if he had lied or—ah!—prevaricated, you know, the mouth would shut upon his harnd, and, in short, bit it off! The truth was, I farncy, that there was a fellah behind there with a sword or cleaver, or something of that kind, you know.”
Across the church square, which is adorned by a graceful fountain, often copied in our country, is a small, circular Temple of Vesta, dating back to the reign of Vespasian, if not to Pompey’s time. It is a tiny gem of a ruin, if ruin it can be called. The interior is a chapel, lighted by slits high in the wall. A row of Corinthian columns, but one of them broken, surrounds it; a conical tiled roof covers it. This heathen fane is a favorite subject with painters and photographers. Near it is a much older building—the Temple of Fortune—erected by Servius Tullius, remodeled during the Republic. Other houses have been built into one side, and the spaces between the Ionic columns of the other three been filled in with solid walls to make a larger chamber. It is a church now, dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt.
An alley separates this from the House of Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes. The marble or stucco coating has peeled away from the walls, but, near the eaves are fragments of rich sculpture. The Latin inscription over the doorway has reference to the honors and might of the ancient owners. Beyond these there is not a symptom of beauty or grandeur about the ugly, rectangular homestead. The Tiber rolls near, and its inundations have had much to do with the defacement of the lower part of the house. The suspension-bridge which crosses the slow yellow waters at this point, rests at one end upon piers built by Scipio Africanus. From this bridge—the Ponte Rotto—the pampered body of Heliogabalus was thrown into the river. Further down the stream are the foundations of other piles, which have withstood current and freshet for two thousand years. We always paused when opposite these. Boy knew the point, and never wearied of hearing and telling—
“How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.”
Upon the thither bank were mustered the hosts who made Lars Porsenna “a proud man” “upon the trysting-day.”
“There lacked not men of prowess,