LXV.
“What come ye for to see?” It is a wider question than was intended on its first ironical utterance, and many answers are always ready. A medical ignoramus of ability was asked if there was any danger. His answer was, “That depends on the event.” So it is in museum life; the majority know nothing of what they go to see, and what they do see depends on the event. But the specialists know exactly what go they for to see; and I am one of these. Relying on presumptive evidence, if a “Sir Leighton,” as the French would say, goes to Rome, it may be for to make a study of painted eyes, in some ten or a dozen galleries, to determine whether black, brown, or blue predominates. If a “Sir Boehm” goes to Rome, it may be for to inspect the lost head and legs of a Farnesian Hercules. If a “Sir Barry” goes to Rome, it is for to examine which of the stones in the Palazzo di Venezia were stolen by a pope from the Coliseum, and which were honestly got. However, we have no “Sir Barry” nowadays; premiers do not build houses, so that they do not baronetize architecture in lieu of fees. They take physic; they stand in need of bulletins when, on the eve of an unpleasant debate, a strong voice is weak. Being ourselves of physic and a little deaf, a clergyman once bawled into our best ear, in a voice so thunderous yet so piercing that had it been a prayer it might almost have been heard in heaven, “Doctor! can you give me something to strengthen my voice?”
Premiers are perfect artists in the baronetizing line; nay, they can even chisel a peer in invisible gold. A president of a royal academy, of a royal society, of a royal college of surgeons or physicians, fills a genteel trade; rank fits him well.
An oculist, if a premier has bad eyes and is going blind, may, like other professionals, be ennobled; but an aurist and a dentist, there is something in these—it is hard to say what—that does not ennoble well, which shows how greater are eyes than ears or teeth.
If a premier is not a teetotaler, he makes lords out of brewers, and yet not out of distillers, whose images are quite as golden. He does not mind it being thought that he takes a glass of pale ale, but whisky—that would not do.
All these industries, like myself, go to Rome chiefly on their own business. But what a wonderful crowd there is flocking there to see all that is left—the fragments of Cæsar’s lost compositions.
We business men, when we have found all we want, go the round; it is like walking through the street, looking at everybody, sometimes stopping to speak.
We meet a picture, a statue, a vase, an arch, a column, a palace, as we might do a friend; but those who undertake to see all might as well undertake to read the two or three billion letters that pass through the post-office in a year.