As the sun sets and those in carriages and on foot slowly leave the hights of the Pincio, and descend once more to the old city, you will hear, as the evening star shines brighter and brighter, the first liquid, thrilling notes of the nightingales; then as you lean over the stone parapet, dreamily looking into the dense foliage of trees and shrubs beneath you, you will feel the beauty of those lines:
Seek the nightingale's sequestered tower,
Who with her love-lorn melody
So bewitched thee in the vernal hour:
When she ceased to love, she ceased to be.
It is from the months of May to November, when travelers have left Rome, and the city is in the hands of the Romans, that your walks on the Pincio will prove something more than a mere repetition of a stroll in Baden-Baden, or a revival of ideas common to the Prado or Prater. No longer the little prettinesses of the Medicean Venus flirt by you in the nervous silks that flutter along these walks, but something nobly womanly, of a solid past, slow and stately, moves solemnly, by. We know the lives of these copies of the Venus of Milos, we know its most commonplace and vulgar attributes, but we know, too, its strength! The city of Rome holds in its women the mothers of heroes, when Providence shall withdraw the black veil now hung over their rude minds, and let in the light of knowledge. We who laugh at their sad ignorance, think what we would be without liberty—our minds enslaved, geography tabooed! Egypt is a paradise compared to Rome.
The advantages of foreign travel to an intelligent American are to teach him ... the disadvantages of living any where save in America. And though the artistic eye dwells with such loving repose on the soothing colors of Italy, and particularly on the subdued white and gray tones of Roman ruins and palaces, walls and houses, yet the owner of that artistic eye should restrain his wrath at the fiery red bricks of our own cities, for let him reflect that this color goads him on, as it doth a bull, to make valorous efforts—to do something!
Looking down from the stone balustrade of the Pincio on the piazza Popolo, we note two churches, one on either side of the Corso; their architecture is neither more nor less hideous than nine tenths of the other three hundred and odd churches of Rome; the same heavy, half-cooked look about doors and windows, suggesting cocked-hats of the largest size on the heads of dwarfs of no size at all; the same heavy scroll-work, reminding one of the work of a playful giant of a green-grocer who has made a bouquet of sausages and cabbages, egg-plants and legs of mutton, and exhibits it to a thick-headed public as a—work of art. O Roman Plebs! lay this nattering unction to your soul—we did not do that!
The history of all nations seem to indicate successive ages of grub and butterfly-life; certainly Rome has been a grub long enough. Let us hope the sun of Victor Emmanuel, the King of Gallant Men, will hasten the time when the Romans shall wing their way to the light of Liberty. These mockeries of architecture shall then stand as warning fingers to the Romans of the sad days that were; the days when mind and body were enslaved, and the grinning monkey held the dove tight-clutched in his brutal grasp. Through sword and fire public taste must pass before it is purified: the mountain-stream, dashing along with bounding steps, is clear and sparkling, but in the long stretch of level pastureland or prairie it is still and—dirty.
It may be well to descend and wander through those close and narrow streets where the waste-water of old Roman aqueducts makes green and damp the foundation stories of gloomy houses, and where the carefully-nurtured traveler sees sights of smoked interiors, dirt and rubbish in the streets, that terrify him; but let him remember that in the worst of these kennels the inhabitants have never forgotten that they had a Past, and the 'I am a Roman Citizen!' still rings in their ears, eats into their hearts, and is at their tongue's end. Monsieur About was in Rome when Caper was there; he saw these Romans through Napoleonic spectacles: while one foot was trying to stamp on Antonelli gently, the other was daintily ascending the shining steps leading to the temple of Gallic fame. He is impressed with the idea that the Romans are hangers-on of hangers-on to patricians, from which we are to infer, if the patricians are ever hung, there will be a heavy weight to their feet!
Rocjean, one afternoon, after a walk on the Pincio, was returning to his studio, when, as he descended to the Via Babuino, he met a Roman artist named Attonito, who cultivated the English.
'Ow arr you toe-day, my dear?' he asked Rocjean.
'Quite well, except a slight attack of bad English, from which I hope to recover in a few minutes.'