We went down the wooden stair, a century at a step, and presently walked and talked, we seven Americans, in that elder Rome that most people know so much better than the one with St. Peter's and the Corso, because of the clinging nature of those early impressions which we construe for ourselves with painful reference to lists of exceptions. We all felt that it was a small place to have had so much to say to history, and were obliged to remind ourselves that we weren't looking at the whole of it. Poppa acknowledged that his tendency to compare it unfavourably, in spite of the verdict of history, with Chicago was checked by a smell from the Cloaca Maxima, which proved that the Ancient Romans probably enjoyed enteric and sewer gas quite as much as we do, although under names that are to be found only in dictionaries now. Mrs. Malt said the place surprised her in being so yellow—she had always imagined pictures of it to have been taken in the sunset, but now she saw that it was perfectly natural. Acting upon Mr. Malt's advice, we did not attempt to identify more than the leading features, and I remember distinctly, in consequence, that the temple of Castor had three columns standing and the temple of Saturn had eight, while of the Basilica Julia there was nothing at all but the places where they used to be. Mrs. Malt said it made her feel quite idolatrous to look at them, and for her part she couldn't be sorry they had fallen so much into decay—it was only right and proper. This launched Mr. and Mrs. Malt and my parents upon a discussion which threatened to become unwisely polemic if Emmeline had not briefly decided it in favour of Christianity.
Momma and Mrs. Malt expressed a desire above all things to see the temple and apartments of the Vestal Virgins, which Miss Callis with some surprise begged them on no account to mention in the presence of the gentlemen.
"There are some things," remarked Miss Callis austerely, "from which no respectable married lady would wish to lift the veil of the classics."
Momma was inclined to argue the point, but Miss Callis looked so shocked that she desisted.
"Perhaps, Mrs. Wick," she said sarcastically, "you intend to go to see the Baths of Caracallus!"
To which momma replied certainly not, that was a very different thing. And if I am unable to describe the Baths of Caracallus in this history, it is on account of Miss Callis's personal influence and the remarkable development of her sense of propriety.
At momma's suggestion we walked slowly all round the Via Sacra, looking steadily down at its little triangular original paving-stones, and tried to imagine ourselves the shackled captives of Scipio. If the party had not consisted so largely of Emmeline the effort might have been successful. Fragments of exhumed statuary, discoloured and featureless, stood tipped in rows along the shorn foundations and inspired in Mr. Malt a serious curiosity.
"The ancients," said Mr. Malt with conviction, "were every bit as smart as the moderns, meaning born intelligence. Look at that ear—that ear took talent. There isn't a terra-cotta factory in the United States that could turn out a better ear to-day. But they hadn't what we call gumption, they put all their capital into one line of business, and you may be sure they swamped the market. If they'd just done a little inventing now, instead—worried out the idea of steam, or gas, or electricity—why Rome might never have fallen to this day." And no one interfered with Mr. Malt's idea that the fall of Rome was a purely commercial disaster. Doubtless it was out of regard for his feelings, but he was exactly the sort of man to compel you to prove your assertion.
We found the boundaries of the first Forum of the Republic, and poppa, pacing it in a soft felt hat and a silk duster, offered a Senatorial contrast to history. He looked round him with dignity and made the gesture which goes with his most sustained oratorical flights. "I wouldn't have backed up Cato in everything," he said thoughtfully. "No. There were occasions on which I should have voted against the old man, and the little American school-boys of to-day would have had to decline 'Mugwumpus' in consequence." And at the thought of Cannæ and Trasimene the nineteenth century Senator from Illinois fiercely pulled his beard.
We turned our pilgrim feet to where the Colosseum wheels against the sky and gives up the world's eternal supreme note of splendour and of cruelty; and along the solitary dusty Appian Way, as if it were a country lane of the time we know, came a ragged Roman urchin with a basket. Under the triumphal arch of Titus, where his forefathers jeered at the Jews in manacled procession, we bargained with him for his purple plums. He had the eyes and the smile of immemorial Italy for his own, and the bones of Imperial Rome in equal inheritance, which he also wished to sell, by the way, in jagged fragments from his trouser pockets. And it linked up those early days with that particular afternoon in a curiously simple way to think that from the Cæsars to King Humbert there has never been a year without just such brown-cheeked, dark-eyed, imperfectly washed little Roman boys upon the Appian Way.