THE COLOSSEUM, ROME.
Resistance was of short duration. The national flag was soon unfurled from the dome of the Pantheon and from that day Rome has been the home of the king, the capital of United Italy. The Rome of that period (1870) was described as a city of “sunless alleys,” and “a thousand evil smells mixed up with fragrance of rich incense, diffused from as many censers; everywhere a cross, and nastiness at the foot of it.” “The city is filled,” the writer continues, “with a gloom and languor that depress it beyond any depth of melancholic sentiment that can elsewhere be known.” One-seventh of the city was occupied by convents and monasteries. Rome at that time had a population of 216,000 souls, more than half of whom could neither read nor write! This, then, is Catholicism—ignorance clothed in rags, living in poverty, walking in filth, praying to saints and bowing to an ambitious Pope! If this be religion, the less I have of it the more I congratulate myself. For centuries the city belonged to the church, and it is natural to suppose that Popery created for itself an atmosphere that was most congenial to its own spirit. Ignorance is the handmaid of Popery. Indeed, a man to be a good Catholic must be ignorant. He may, perchance, be legally learned, he may be thoroughly versed in the laws of logic and language; but to be a devout Romanist he must at least be ignorant of the Bible. As civilization advances, as the light of God’s truth becomes more widely diffused and the warmth of His Spirit more generally felt, darkness will flee away, truth will be revealed in its purity, and Christ, Christ the Lord, will be elevated to the position which the Papal world of to-day assigns to Peter.
Great changes have been wrought in Rome within the last seventeen years. A number of the streets have been broadened and straightened and others are being worked on. Most of them now, though still narrow, are well paved and clean. The population has increased to 350,000, sixty schools have been established with 550 teachers and 25,000 pupils. Most of the improvements and inventions of the age have been introduced into the city, a healthy trade with the outside world has been established, and last, and greatest, the gospel of Christ has again been brought to these people. The populace welcome these changes.
Victor Emmanuel, who died ten years ago, is called the father of his country; and his son, the present king, is the idol of Italy. The Pope and the king are at enmity. Each is jealous of the other. The king is fast gaining favor. Papacy must go.
Now, turning from the moral, I must tell you something about the physical appearance of the city at present. Of course every one knows that Rome is situated on seven hills, that it is divided into two parts by the river Tiber and that it is surrounded by a massive wall thirty feet high and sixteen miles long.
Let us now go into the midst of the city and take our stand on the Capitoline Hill. From there we can easily “view the landscape o’er.” Beneath us, as we stand on this elevation, the city spreads wide away in all directions. We look out over a sea of red-tile roofs, above which rise hundreds of imposing palaces, of tall and stately mansions. Of church spires and cathedral towers there is no end. Yonder to the south is the Mausoleum of Augustus, a huge circular building with a low, flat dome of glass. After death the emperor was burnt. His ashes, which were here laid to rest, have long since been scattered to the four winds of heaven and the mausoleum is now used as a theatre. There, too, in the same direction, but beyond the Tiber, is the tomb of Hadrian, looking like an old castle perched high upon an uplifted rock. The unscrupulous Italians of the present have no respect for the dead of ancient days. Their desecrating hands have turned this tomb into a military stronghold—a citadel. What is fame? Once upon a time Augustus ruled the world. To-day the populace assemble in his mausoleum; there they wildly clap their hands, and, stretching their mouths from ear to ear, they shout aloud and grin like apes as they see the vile actor dancing over Caesar’s ashes. Hadrian, once adored as a God, is no longer respected. The half-paid soldiers of to-day have entered his very tomb; there they fight, drink and curse and play cards. If they could find it they would use his skull as a soup-dish or a billiard ball, and his thigh bones they would use for drum-sticks or as mallets to crack nuts! “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”
Turning our eyes in a northwest direction, we see the Antonine column rising majestically above the red roofs. In close proximity to this column, we see the circular dome of that world-renowned Pantheon “looking heavenward with its ever open eye.” We leave the Capitoline Hill for a few minutes while we go to visit the Pantheon. It commands our respect. It was built almost a half century before the angel host visited the shepherds upon the plains of Bethlehem, and yet it is as perfect to-day as though it had been finished yesterday. It looks as if it might stand until Gabriel comes. It is the noblest structure that the old Romans bequeathed to posterity. Its massive walls and solid, which are twenty feet thick, rise to an immense height, and yet the dome, broad as it is high, towers 140 feet above the walls.
The portico (110 feet wide and 45 feet deep) is borne by sixteen Corinthian columns of granite, thirteen feet in circumference and forty feet high.