LETTER XIX.
Ruins of Rome.—The Holy Week.—Music and Illuminations.
Trinità de’ Monti, April.
“What are the pleasures that I enjoy at Rome?” you ask. They are so many, that my mind is brimful of a sort of glowing satisfaction, mingled with tearful associations. Besides all that Rome itself affords of delightful to the eye and imagination, I revisit it as the bourne of a pious pilgrimage. The treasures of my youth lie buried here.
The sky is bright—the air impregnated with the soft odours of spring—we take our books and wile away the morning among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, or the Coliseum. From the shattered walls of the former, the view over the city and the Campagna is very beautiful. The Palatine is near at hand, and majestic ruins guide the eye to where the golden palace spreads its vast extent. These ruins, chiefly piles of brick—remnants of massive walls or lofty archways—may not be beautiful in themselves; but overgrown with parasites and flowering shrubs, they are grouped in so picturesque a manner among broken ground and dark gigantic trees—the many towers of the city gathering near—the distant hills on the clear horizon, with clouds just resting in scattered clusters on the tops, and the sky above, deeply blue—that the whole scene is delightful to feel, as well as look at.
There is one view from the Coliseum that I am never tired of contemplating. Ascending to the second range of arches, and looking from the verge towards the tomb of Cestius—in the foreground is the Temple of Venus, the Palatine Mount, and the ruins of the Forum—the country, varied by woods and hills and ruins, is spread beyond—the tomb of Cestius, gleaming at a distance, is a resting place for the eye—and various trees seem placed expressly to give the scene the air of a landscape sitting for its picture—all grace and smiles and radiance.
The Forum used to be, long, long ago, before I ever saw it, a broken space of ground, with an avenue through the Campo Vacino leading to the Coliseum, with triumphal arches and tall columns half-buried in the soil. Now the excavations are considerable. I have heard painters lament that the picturesque beauty has been spoilt; but as its appearance, such as time and neglect had left it, is changed, it is as well to complete the task of excavation. Much has been done since I was here last, and workmen are in constant employ. I wish you could see the chief among them. Imagine an Indian file of fifty old men in the last stage of decrepitude, grey-headed, bent-shouldered, and feeble-legged, each rolling a small wheelbarrow, creeping along so slow, and yet that extreme slowness appearing an exertion for them.
From the Forum we ascended the hill of the Capitol, and, with some trouble, got the custode, and mounted the tower of the Campidoglio. We looked round, and fancied how, from this height, the patricians and consuls of Old Rome watched the advance of marauding parties that wound out from the ravines of the hills, or whose spears and helmets glittered above the brow of the Janicular hill; and the cry of the Sabines, or fiercer and more terrible, of the Gauls, made the populace gather in the Forum below, and give their names to be inscribed as soldiers for instant fight. The Tiber glitters in the distance, and Soracte rising from out the plain,
“Heaves like a long-swept wave, about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing.”[[34]]
I never look at the ridge of Sant’ Oreste, (as it is now called,) but these lines, which so admirably paint it, come into my mind.