Imagine the Florentines proud of their Palazzo Vecchio, with its mighty tower on the pavement; imagine the Venetians proud of a once Doge’s palace, the magnificent court where it was with only a wall or two standing, and the giant’s staircase, like Goliath, in the dust!
There are some old words that one likes better than the new ones: the name of the gate, now del Popolo, does not, to me, sound so æsthetically as Flaminia, its ancient name! Yet it took centuries to turn the one into the other for the worst, with the patriotic intention of being for the best! The popes do not pretend to be Cæsars, like the latter-day Napoleon, with his Dutch physiognomy; but they have now and then done their best to rebuild. Pius VII., so heavily handicapped by the Corsican parvenu, did much to lay the saddened ghost of Cæsarean times, by beautifying the Piazza del Popolo. Through him, Augustus might have looked on it again with composure. Its semicircular form, its fountains, its statues, would pacify the imperial rebuilder.
From the Porta del Popolo to the Capitol is a line ending in a steep ascent, one of the seven hills, the Capitoline: this long street is the backbone of Rome, from which its ribs more or less radiate. It is not gigantic with a broad stride, like the Via Larga (now Cavoura) at Florence; it is not beautiful, like the Genoese Via Nuova; it is more of a Bond Street, but a long one, with some fine buildings, and, as all long streets should be, it is cut in half by a good big square, the Piazza Colonna. Here we stumble against a column, look up, and for a minute or two we are in ancient Rome. It was set up by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, a man of fight, in order that his victories might not be forgotten. Its inside is hollow, except that it has steps up it, nearly two hundred—for we always count. We go up these steps, full of the Roman sensation, when, lo, and behold! (En et ecce! as Marcus Aurelius would now say with a stare), St. Paul has got up before us; has been turned into bronze, and gilded! Still there is something in it; he has made conquests over the Germans better than those of Marcus, so we may let him stay at the top, and be thankful; odd as it seems.
The obelisk which we come upon in the square of Monte Clitorio, was brought to Rome by Augustus, as Cleopatra’s Needle was brought to London by Sir Erasmus Wilson, Kt., F.R.C.S.; the one set up in the Campus Martius, the other on the Thames Embankment. That of Augustus got buried, and by a sort of lucky miracle was raised again by the sixth of the Pius popes.
But now stop a little longer than usual: this is the Palazzo Doria Pamfili.
One wants all the time to get up to the top of the Capitoline Hill; so, seeing a tremendous flight of steps, one goes upstairs. The things stuck in one’s way to arrest one’s progress towards the square at the top are first of all two lions. These, notwithstanding they are created out of black granite, and are therefore really dumb animals, unlike live lions, spout water at you, by way of making themselves heard: and this Keats should have done into the public ear, instead of letting his name be writ in the water itself.
But even now we cannot leave the last step to the Campidoglio; we are arrested by Castor and Pollux, two giants. We then look with much interest to see what sort of horses theirs were, and they rise in our estimation, tall as they are already, when we find that their nags are of the true Arab breed, thick-necked and straight-backed, not a bit like the flesh and blood abnormals of Newmarket Heath.
The Campidoglio is a fine square, and one has at least the satisfaction of feeling that the hill it surmounts is a part of ancient Rome. But where is the old Temple of Jupiter? we ask.
No answer.
However, here is something Roman: it is the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius—a survival.