Nobody who visited the great Exhibition of 1862 will have failed to observe and admire two pieces of sculpture which the most competent critics declared to be second to none, even if they were equalled by any of those there collected together. The author of ‘Roba di Roma,’ the foreign and fantastical name of a very English and sensible book, might have placed upon its title-page, had it so pleased him, “by the author of ‘Cleopatra’ and the ‘Lybyan Sybil,’” and the advertisement would have been no bad one; for everybody who had admired the sculptor’s beautiful statues would have been curious to see if he were as clever with the pen as he was cunning with the chisel. Mr Story, however, was above seeking any such side-wind of popularity, and proposed allowing his literary labours to stand upon their own merits. This they are well able to do. As pleasant reading, his book at once takes its place in the foremost rank of its class, whilst the information it contains gives it a more solid and permanent value than can be attained by a work intended for mere amusement. Without being in any degree a guide-book, it contains a vast deal which every visitor to Rome would be glad to find in one. There exists a series of Red Books, much more generally studied than the Blue ones, and with which every Englishman is familiar who pushes his Continental explorations beyond Paris. Unequal in degree of merit, the Briton abroad yet can ill do without the worst of them. Amongst the best must be reckoned that for Rome—a work performed conscientiously and con amore by a genial and accomplished citizen of the world, to whom the Eternal City has become almost a second patria. But the very best of handbooks cannot exhaust its subject, when that subject is Rome; and so we counsel every visitor to the papal capital to associate with his Murray Mr Story’s ‘Roba.’
“Every Englishman,” says this gentleman, “carries a Murray for information and a Byron for sentiment, and finds out by them what he is to know and feel at every step. Pictures and statues have been staled by copy and description, until everything is stereotyped, from the Dying Gladiator, with his ‘young barbarians all at play,’ down to the Beatrice Cenci, the Madame Touson of the shops, that haunts one everywhere with her white turban and red eyes. Every ruin has had its score of immortelles hung upon it. The soil has been almost overworked by antiquarians and scholars, to whom the modern flower was nothing, but the antique brick a prize. Poets and sentimentalists have described to death what the antiquaries have left, and some have done their work so well that nothing remains to be done after them. All the public and private life of the ancient Romans, from Romulus to Constantine, is perfectly well known. But the common life of the modern Romans—the games, customs, and habits of the people—the everyday of to-day—has been only touched upon here and there,—sometimes with spirit and accuracy, as by Charles M‘Farlane; sometimes with grace, as by Hans Christian Andersen; and sometimes with great ignorance, as by Jones, Brown, and Robinson, who see through the eyes of their courier and the spectacles of their prejudices. There may be, among the thousands of travellers that annually winter at Rome, some to whom the common out-door pictures of modern Roman life would have a charm as special as the galleries and antiquities, and to whom a sketch of many things, which wise and serious travellers have passed by as unworthy their notice, might be interesting.”
This last reflection suggested itself to Mr Story as he drove into Rome, somewhat more than six years ago, on his third visit to that capital, which has been his residence ever since; and, as he is evidently a man who likes to carry out a good idea, he at once commenced to hoard his observations for future use and public benefit. The impression made upon us by his two copious volumes is, that they have been composed con amore, and at perfect leisure—conditions eminently conducive to success in authorship. That Mr Story loves Rome he need not tell us; his attachment is manifest in his pages. Who, indeed, that has dwelt there long enough to fall under its fascination, does not love it and desire to return thither? Everybody would fain visit Rome, but those only who have been there can fully appreciate the charm it exercises. There are places whose attractions imagination is apt to overcolour, and which consequently disappoint on near acquaintance; but if there be persons who thus find Rome fall short of their expectations, they usually are wise enough to keep it to themselves, and so avoid the charge of extravagance. Doubtless those whose mind, education, and previous pursuits and studies enable them fully to appreciate and enjoy the treasures of art, and of classical and historical associations there heaped up, are few compared to the visitors who form but an imperfect and superficial estimate of what they behold, and who soon are glad to fall back upon less intellectual pleasures. Of these there is no lack. Agreeable society, pleasant promenades, carnival diversions—theatres which, if not uniformly good, at least are sufficiently attractive to audiences which go as much to talk as to listen—the vicinity of a picturesque country, tempting to excursions, which may be compressed into a day or extended to weeks, according as one keeps within the present limits of the Papal territory, or stretches out into Umbria, to Terni and Narni, Perugia and Spoleto,—these varied resources and advantages combine to make Rome delightful, at least in winter and spring, to almost every class of visitors. Considering how many who have visited it have also written about it, it seems scarcely possible, at this time, for anybody to fill seven hundred close pages with matter relating to it without becoming prolix. That, however, is a reproach no one can address to Mr Story. His work shows extensive reading, happily made use of, close observation, and the eye of a true artist. It admits of a broad division into two parts—one of these comprising solely what he himself has seen, heard, and thought; the other including much for which he is indebted to many books, studied to good purpose. As a specimen of the last-named portion, we may cite the chapter entitled “The Colosseum”—the romantic chronicle of that marvellous structure. Its opening is a good specimen of the author’s vivid, rapid manner of placing before us pictures painted in words:—
“Of all the ruins in Rome, none is at once so beautiful, so imposing, and so characteristic as the Colosseum.[[4]] Here throbbed the Roman heart in its fullest pulses. Over its benches swarmed the mighty population of the centre city of the world. In its arena, gazed at by a hundred thousand eager eyes, the gladiator fell, while the vast velarium trembled as the air was shaken by savage shouts of ‘Habet,’ and myriads of cruel hands, with upturned thumbs, sealed his unhappy fate. The sand of the arena drank the blood of African elephants, lions, and tigers—of Mirmilli, Laqueatores, Retiarii, and Andabatæ—and of Christian martyrs and virgins. Here emperor, senators, knights, and soldiers, the lowest populace and the proudest citizens, gazed together on the bloody games, shouted together as the favourite won, groaned together fiercely as he fell, and startled the eagles sailing over the blue vault above with their wild cries of triumph. Here might be heard the trumpeting of the enraged elephant, the savage roar of the tiger, the peevish shriek of the grave-rifling hyena; while the human beasts above, looking on the slaughter of the lower beasts beneath, uttered a wilder and more awful yell. Rome—brutal, powerful, bloodthirsty, imperial Rome—built in its days of pride this mighty amphitheatre, and, outlasting all its works, it still stands, the best type of its grandeur and brutality. What St Peter’s is to the Rome of to-day, is the Colosseum to the Rome of the Cæsars. The baths of Caracalla, grand though they be, sink into insignificance beside it. The Cæsars’ palaces are almost level with the earth. Over the pavement where once swept the imperial robes now slips the gleaming lizard; and in the indiscriminate ruins of those splendid halls the contadino plants his potatoes, and sells for a paul the oxidised coin which once may have paid the entrance fee to the great amphitheatre. The golden house of Nero is gone. The very Forum where Cicero delivered his immortal orations is all but obliterated, and antiquarians quarrel over the few columns that remain. But the Colosseum still stands; despite the assault of time and the work of barbarians it still stands, noble and beautiful in its decay—yes, more beautiful than ever.”
[4]. We preserve Mr Story’s orthography, which, although unusual, is doubtless correct. “The name Colosseum, or Coliseum as it is improperly called, seems to have been derived from its colossal proportions, and not, as has been supposed by some writers, from a colossal statue of one of the emperors placed within it” (‘Roba,’ i. 222). A correspondent of the ‘Athenæum’ (7th February 1863) says that, “in volume II. of the ‘Lives of the Roman Empresses,’ p. 50 (Edit. Naples, 1768), there is a note which gives the reason why the correct orthography is Colosseum. Referring to the completion of the great amphitheatre by Titus, the note has the following: ‘Nel mezzo del Anfiteatro si sorgeva una grande statua rappresentante Nerone, chiamata il Colosso di Nerone, da cui quel luogo prese il nome di Colosseo.’” Mr Story remarks that the present name is comparatively modern, and first occurs in the writings of the venerable Bede. To the ancient Romans the Colosseum was known as the Amphiteatrum Flavium.
How profound a calm has now replaced the rush and roar of conflict! You walk down to the Colosseum on one of those soft sunny mornings common in Rome in the early months of the year, and you find it kept by two or three French sentries, and untenanted save by as many dilapidated ciceroni, who crawl out of their secret recesses as you enter the arena, and vie with each other for the honour of conducting you over the mighty remains, in which, as Mr Story happily expresses it, “Nature has healed over the wounds of time with delicate grasses and weeds.” The last time we visited the Colosseum, the drummers of a French regiment were out for practice in its immediate vicinity, startling the echoes of the wondrous old edifice with a diabolical clatter of stick against sheepskin. Saw-sharpening, or the simultaneous tuning of one hundred and fifty fiddles, is hardly more vexatious to the nerves than the discordant rub-a-dub of a dozen squads of apprentice drummers, pounding their instruments with a deafening disregard to harmony. Persons are differently affected by the Colosseum, Mr Story assures us—some with horror, some with sentiment, some with statistics. Persons who go there on drum-practice days are doubtless affected with a vehement desire to get out of earshot. Apart from the unpleasant nature of the noise, it, and the sight of its originators, are destructive of the day-dreams to which solitude and quiet in that great dilapidated structure are so eminently favourable. Most persons will admit that nothing in Rome has impressed them so strongly as the Colosseum. A German writer has said that the Americans are particularly affected by it, more so than most Europeans; and if this be the case, it is doubtless attributable to the striking contrast the tourist from beyond the Atlantic finds between those ruins of a mighty past and the upstart edifices of his own bran-new country. The Americans, it is said, were the first to light up the Colosseum with Bengal fires. A number of Germans, artists and others, attempted it with torches on a dark winter night, but the means were insufficient: the torches, although numerous, struggled in vain to dispel the deep nocturnal gloom which seemed condensed in the giant ruin. The attempt, however, gave the idea to the Americans, who quickly found the money for something on a grander scale; and the Roman pyrotechnists, who are first-rate in skill and experience, produced an illumination with coloured fires which drew out to the Colosseum not only the forestieri but the Romans themselves, usually very careless of the sights the foreigners most run after. Since then such illuminations have become comparatively common, and have been witnessed by most persons who have remained any time in Rome. The effect is very striking, and should be seen once, just as one goes to see the statuary at the Vatican by torchlight; but, for both, the preference will generally be given to daylight, and also, as regards the Colosseum, to moonlight. For the best description of its appearance when lighted in this last-named manner, Mr Story refers us to a book entitled, ‘Rome and its Rulers,’ by that impartial Irish M.P., Mr John Francis Maguire, who, when in the Pope’s dominions, was so peculiarly fortunate as to find there nothing which was not in the highest degree admirable and praiseworthy. Truly a book “in which many things are scented with rose-water,” as Mr Story remarks, and which may also justly be said to abound in moonshine. Of this latter commodity, as collected in the Colosseum, the eloquent Maguire thus discourses:—
“The moon was slowly pursuing her way up the blue sky, and gradually rising, foot by foot, to the height of the unbroken wall of the building, now and then peeping in through arch or window.... Patiently we awaited the higher elevation and full splendour of the chaste Dian, enjoying each new effect as she sported with the venerable ruin, and imparted to its grim antiquity a youthful flush—mocking but delightful illusion.”
Nothing can be more striking than this picture of the moon going up-stairs at a steady, composed pace, fearful, probably, of losing breath by speed, and occasionally pausing at a hole in the wall to squint through it at her Hibernian admirer. But your thoroughpaced Irish or British Ultramontane is very liable to lunar influences when he gets to Rome; and if he chance to be in Parliament, or in a position to make his voice heard in his own country, he is apt to have his head completely turned by the interested attentions shown to him in the highest quarters. We have happened more than once to see gentlemen of that class, devoted supporters of the Pope, by the influence of whose Irish adherents they had been carried into Parliament, arrive in Rome during the recess to seek materials for their speeches in the approaching session. They stay but a short time, and generally know no Italian and little French, but that is a very trifling drawback. They find countrymen amongst the immediate friends and daily visitors of his Holiness, are made much of at the Vatican, are crammed to their hearts’ content with carefully-prepared statistics and fabulous facts, and depart convinced, or seeming to be so, that they have a thorough knowledge of the state of the country, and that all that has been said about Papal misrule is sheer malignant invention. They are taken to see the prisons, and find them far better and more humane in their arrangements than those they looked into as they passed through Piedmont. Of course they do. In Piedmont there is little attempt at concealment. Whatever its faults, the Government there does not take much pains to appear better than it is. In Rome the confiding M.P. sees the model prisons—those kept for inspection. Does he imagine he has seen those where political prisoners are confined? Surely Messrs Maguire, Hennessey, Bowyer, and Co., are not so credulous as that. The Vatican is far too knowing not to ease the consciences of its advocates. Why should they be reduced to the cruel alternative of silence or of speaking in opposition to what they know to be fact? In the Roman prisons there are rooms set apart for favoured prisoners, who there enjoy light and air, and are well fed and treated. Mr Maguire was delighted with the Prison of San Michele, where, “instead of gloom, horror, and noisome dungeons, I beheld a large, well-lighted, well-ventilated, and (could such a term be properly applied to any place of confinement) cheerful-looking hall.” He goes on to talk of “the bright sun streaming in; the superior size and arrangement of the cells,” &c. &c. Mr Story, who dwells a good deal on the subject of Roman and Neapolitan prisons (as the latter were under the Bourbons), and supplies various documents justificatory of the view which he and every unbiassed and rightly-informed person cannot do otherwise than take of them, refers to the well-known Casanova case—that of an unfortunate young Italian who, on his return from a residence in America, was arrested at Viterbo on the sole ground that he had no passport, and subjected to the most barbarous treatment in the Carcere Nuovo at Rome. Thence he was transferred to Naples, and, after a captivity of five or six years, was released by the arrival of Garibaldi. “Oh, Mr Maguire,” exclaims the author of the ‘Roba,’ “did you never suspect that if you had the mischance to be a poor Italian without parents or passport, instead of a member of Parliament, you might have been shown into other rooms than the ‘Salone dei Preti?’ Via!” Why should Mr Maguire trouble himself with such inconvenient suspicions? He and those who resemble him seek their information in the highest quarter—namely, from the Government; and having, beforehand, an excellent opinion of that Government, they cannot think of suspecting it of fraud or misstatement. Moreover he might find in Rome countrymen of his own, and possibly even some Englishmen, ready to support him in the belief that everything is for the best under the pious and enlightened rule of Antonelli. There are always a few bitter Irish bigots and zealous British perverts to be met with in the Papal capital, prompt to deny the existence of abuses, and to extol the excellent working of the priest-government under which the unfortunate Romans groan. They are made much of by the Monsignori, and graciously received by the Pope; and occasionally they find means of making some sort of demonstration which may be magnified in partisan journals into that of an important section of the British residents in Rome. It was an insignificant clique of this kind which, about two years ago, scandalised their countrymen in that capital by waiting upon Francis II. of Naples with expressions of sympathy and good wishes.
The author of the ‘Roba,’ who does not dislike a good-natured hit at his own countrymen’s peculiarities, is amusing with respect to their criticisms of the Colosseum, the Campagna, and other principal features of Rome and its environs. One young lady told him she thought the Colosseum “pretty, but not so pretty as Naples;” and a gentleman was of opinion that it was less well built than the custom-house in his native city, of which the correct lines, sharp angles, and whitewashed superficies were doubtless more grateful to his view than the ruins whose abundance constitutes one of Rome’s chief charms. There are people who would be more struck with the excellent workmanship and first-rate bricks of the tall modern scarp which supports a part of the Colosseum that threatened to crumble away, than they would be with its ruined arches, its broken travertine blocks, its time-worn cornices and flower-draped benches, or than with the lovely ruins of Caracalla’s baths, concerning which Mr Story quotes Shelley, whilst himself describing them with much poetry of expression, and a warm perception of the beautiful. “Come with me,” he says, “to the massive ruins of Caracalla’s baths—climb its lofty arches and creep along the broken roofs of its perilous terraces. Golden gorses and wallflowers blaze there in the sun, out of reach; fig-trees, whose fruit no hand can pluck, root themselves in its clefts; pink sweetpeas and every variety of creeping vetch here bloom in perfection; tall grasses wave their feathery plumes out on dizzy and impracticable ledges; and nature seems to have delighted to twine this majestic ruin with its loveliest flowers. Sit here, where Shelley wrote the ‘Prometheus Unbound,’ and look out over the wide-stretching Campagna.” And if you have with you, as you ought to have, when wandering over those giddy arches and broken platforms, the second volume of ‘Roba di Roma,’ turn to page 97, and read its accomplished author’s graphic and glowing description of the view thence obtained. Unfortunately not all his countrymen possess the same feeling for the beautiful in nature—not all can find a charm in a time-stained marble block, moss-mantled and weed-entwined. To one of Mr Story’s countrymen the Colosseum was simply “an ugly, pokerish place,” whilst another was chiefly struck by its circular form, and a third by the advantages it offered for love-making—this last being a recommendation, doubtless, but one that can hardly have been reckoned upon by the original designers of the edifice. One gentleman (we need not ask from which side of the Atlantic) was liberal enough to say, “I do not object, sir, to the carnival at Rome;” and Mr Story assures us that he knows several who are equally indulgent to the Colosseum and to St Peter’s. He grieves to admit that English and Americans too often speak ill of the Campagna, which seems to him, he declares, the most beautiful and touching in its interest of all places he has ever seen; but he pillories a Frenchman who ventures to despise it. The confident Gaul had just come up from Naples, and was asked if he had seen the grand old temples at Pæstum. “Oui, monsieur,” was his answer, “j’ai vu le Peste. C’est un pays détestable; c’est comme la Campagne de Rome.” Detestable enough, no doubt, says Story, after the fine military landscape that surrounds Paris; “where low bounding hills are flattened like earthworks and bastions, and stiff formal poplars are drawn up in squares and columns on the wide parade of its level and monotonous plains. It is also a peculiarity of the Frenchman that he underrates everybody and everything except himself and his country.” Mr Story is too much in love with the Campagna not to be jealous of its fame. It is quite certain that, with many, this is not so good as it deserves. People who have not explored it are apt to picture it to themselves as a desolate tract, affording pasturage but little wood, and exhaling fever from every cleft in its soil. When once they have driven and ridden or walked (for much cannot be done on wheels) over its varied and picturesque surface, and seen it in the fresh springtime, when its green copses and hedges scent the air, and its sward is diapered with wild-flowers innumerable, many of which are amongst the choice ones of our English gardens, they are lost in astonishment at the beauty of the tract that surrounds Rome. Our own original notion of the Campagna was based on a picture of a dreary expanse, over which the first shades of night were spreading, chasing thence the last deep red glow of sunset; whilst in the centre of the melancholy, treeless plain, a peasant lad, in goat-skin breeks and elf-locks, and suffering, apparently, under a severe attack of jaundice, tended a herd of pallid cattle, which gave one the idea of having just risen from the straw of sickness in some bovine fever hospital. How different this unprepossessing picture was from the reality need not be told to any who have taken the trouble to visit the vicinity of Rome, instead of limiting their daily exercise (as some of the visitors to that city most unwisely, both as regards health and enjoyment, are prone to do) to the small but agreeable garden on the Pincian Hill, and to the more extensive and certainly most delightful grounds of the Villas Borghese, Doria Pamphili, Albani, and other residences of the Roman princes. It would be tedious to enumerate even the half of the charming rides which are to be had within twenty miles of Rome, and which, it must be owned, the younger portion of the floating British population, both male and female, generally make the most of during the early spring months, much more to their own pleasure and benefit than to those of the unfortunate hacks the Roman livery-stable keepers annually provide for the use of the forestieri. A regard for truth compels us also to declare that it is not the male portion of the English at Rome that those Campagna Rosinantes would, could they speak their minds, most object to carry. Rome—whose climate, by the by, has been thought by some to be generally more favourable to women than to men—seems to give our fair countrywomen strength and endurance for an amount of horse exercise they would seldom take in England. Acting upon the principle put into their mouths by ‘Punch,’ “He’s a hoss, and he must go,” they may be seen daily urging their hired chargers across the plain, and performing their twenty-five or thirty miles, chiefly at a canter, to and from the various points of attraction, noted sites, favourite picnic spots, and the like, in the neighbourhood of Rome, and coming in, glowing with health, to dance half the night or more at the numerous pleasant parties given there during the first three or four months of every year. There used to be a subscription pack of hounds in Rome, but the sport was put a stop to, a few seasons ago, in consequence of a young member of the Roman aristocracy having broken his neck over a small ditch. Thereupon Pio Nono forbade the sport, which was considered rather hard upon the English, who, as heretics, might surely have been allowed to fracture themselves to any extent without causing much pain to his Holiness; and, indeed, this feeling was so general, that some were rather inclined to attribute the interdiction to Cardinal Antonelli’s sympathy with the foxes. However that may have been, there was no obtaining a revocation of the edict, and the hounds were sold—to be re-purchased, perhaps, at a future day, when the White Cross of Savoy shall have replaced the Cross Keys on the pinnacles of a liberated Rome. The loss was a great one, however, to the English; and even many of the Italians deplored the stoppage of the mita, as they called “the meet,” which, however, with most of the foreigners (that is to say, of the non-English), was little more than a pretext for picnics and flirtations. Mr Story, with a few humorous touches, gives us an excellent idea of the modus operandi:—
“The hounds bay and the hunt sweeps off in the distance—now lost to sight, and now emerging from the hollows. The volunteers soon begin to return, and are seen everywhere straggling about over the slopes. The carriages move on, accompanying, as they can, the hunt by the road, till it strikes across the country and is lost. The sunshine beats on the mountains that quiver in soft purple; larks sing in the air; Brown, Jones, and Robinson ride by the side of the carriages as they return, and Count Silinini smiles, talks beautiful Italian, and says, ‘Yas.’ He is a guardia nobile, and comes to the house twice a week if there are no balls, and dances with Marianne at all the little hops. Signor Somarino pays his court meanwhile to Maria, who calls him Prince, emphasising the title when she meets her friends the Goony Browns. And so the hunting picnic comes back to Rome.”