In reading Niebuhr’s letters from Italy, we must always bear in mind that they are written by one of warm and somewhat irascible temper, and who has a standard of moral excellence which would be thought of a most inconvenient altitude by the people of any country in Europe. He is honest as the day, but open to receive very sudden and much too strong impressions. We must also look at the date of his letters, and ask ourselves what changes may have taken place since Niebuhr wrote. With these precautions, they will be found to convey many very instructive hints. From his first entrance into Italy to the last hour of his residence, he expresses the same opinion of the low standard of intellectual culture amongst its educated classes. Whilst he is yet at Florence, he writes thus:—
“My preconceived opinion of the scholars and higher classes in Italy has proved perfectly correct, as I was convinced would be the case, because I possessed sufficient data to form an accurate idea of them. I have always allowed the existence of individual exceptions, as regards erudition; but even in these cases, there is not that cultivation of the whole man which we demand and deem indispensable. I have become acquainted with two or three literary men of real ability; but, in the first place, they are old men, who have only a few years longer to live; and when they are gone, Italy will be, as they say themselves, in a state of barbarism; and, in the second, they are like statues wrought to be placed in a frieze on the wall—the side turned towards you is of finished beauty, the other unhewn stone. They are much what our scholars may have been sixty or eighty years ago. No one feels himself a citizen....
“The three genuine and intellectual scholars of my acquaintance, Morelli, Garatoni, and Fontana, are all ecclesiastics. They are, however, only ecclesiastics by profession, for I have not found in them the slightest trace either of a belief in the dogmas of Catholicism, or of the pietism which you meet with in Germany. When an Italian has once ceased to be a slave of the Church, he never seems to trouble his head about such matters at all. Metaphysical speculations are utterly foreign to his nature, as they were to the old Romans. Hence the vacuity of mind which has become general since the suppression of freedom, except in the case of those who find a sphere of action in writing literary and historical memoirs. Their public men are immeasurably behind the Germans in knowledge and cultivation.”
What matter for reflection there is here, the reader will not need our assistance to point out. Let those who censure Protestantism for the spirit of speculation it is connected with, either as cause or effect, consider how important a part that speculative tendency plays in sustaining the intellectual activity of a people.
When Niebuhr arrives at Rome, the picture that he draws is still darker. Even the antiquities of the city seem to have given him little pleasure; he was more disturbed at what had been taken away than gratified by the little that remained. Then, although he well knew that the life of an ambassador at Rome could not be free from restraint and interruption, yet the courtly formalities he was compelled to observe were far more vexatious than he had anticipated. Housekeeping, too, perplexed him. Things were dear, and men not too honest. “Without a written agreement nothing can be done.” In a letter to Savigny, he writes thus:—
“Rome has no right to its name; at most, it should be called New Rome. Not one single street here goes in the same direction as the old one; it is an entirely foreign vegetation that has grown up on a part of the old soil, as insignificant and thoroughly modern in its style as possible, without nationality, without history. It is very characteristic that the really ancient and the modern city lie almost side by side.
“There are nowhere any remains of anything that it was possible to remove. The ruins all date from the time of the emperors; and he who can get up an enthusiasm about them, must at least rank Martial and Sophocles together.... St Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, and the Loggie, are certainly splendid; but even St Peter’s is disfigured internally by the wretched statues and decorations.... Science is utterly extinct here. Of philologists, there is none worthy of the name except the aged De Rossi, who is near his end. The people are apathetic.
“This, then, is the country and place in which my life is to be passed! It is but a poor amends that I can get from libraries, and yet my only hope is from the Vatican. That we may be crossed in every way, this is closed till the 5th of November, and to have it opened sooner is out of the question; in other respects, all possible facilities have been promised me by the Pope himself, Cardinal Gonsalvi, Monsignor Testi, and the Prefect of the library, Monsignor Baldi. This last is now engaged in printing, at his own cost, a work on which he has expended six hundred scudi, without hope of receiving any compensation for it. It is on seventeen passages in the Old Testament, in which he has found the cross mentioned by name.... At Terni, I found the old art of land-surveying still extant: I rode along what was probably an ancient ‘limes,’ found the ‘rigor,’ and the ‘V. Pedes.’ I shall go there again, if I live till next autumn. It is a charming place. There are at least fifty houses in the town, among them one very large, which date from the Roman times, and which have never yet been observed or described by any traveller. Several of the churches are Roman private houses. If one could but discover in Rome anything like this! I long inexpressibly to have it for my burial-place. Everything is ancient in Terni and its neighbourhood—even the mode of preparing the wine. Oh to have been in Italy five hundred years ago!”
One of the most agreeable topics mentioned in the period of his biography, is the interest Niebuhr took in the new school of German art then springing up at Rome. Every one, from prints and engravings, if from no other source, is now acquainted with the works of Cornelius, Overbeck, Veit, Schadow, and others. They were then struggling with all the usual difficulties of unemployed and unrecognised genius. Niebuhr neither possessed, nor affected to possess, any special knowledge of art, but he was delighted with the genuine enthusiasm of his fellow-countrymen; he kindled in their society; he was persuaded of their great talent, and exerted whatever influence he possessed in obtaining for them some high employment. He wished that the interior of some church or other public building should be placed at their disposal, to decorate it with suitable paintings. The scattered notices that we find here of these artists we pass over very unwillingly, but we must necessarily confine ourselves to the course of our narrative.
By his first wife, Niebuhr had no family. His second, Gretchen as she is affectionately called—and who, we may observe in passing, is described as equally amiable, though not quite so intellectual or cultivated as the first—brought him several children, one son and three daughters. The birth of his son, April 1817, was an event which gave him the keenest delight, and kindled in all their fervour his naturally ardent affections. It was the first thing, we are told, that really dispelled the melancholy that fell on him after the loss of his Milly. It is curious and touching to note how he mingled up his reminiscences of his first wife with this gift brought him by the second. Writing to Madame Hensler, he says:—