Ladies find in the pretty silk Roman sashes and ribbons, woven, I believe, by girls on antiquated small looms in the shops where they are sold, another species of attraction.
Other shops, again, are devoted to the sale of bronze and marble copies, on a small scale, of statues, heads, and ruins, particularly columns in the Forum and elsewhere; and some have small alabaster or Roman marble copies of sculptures, though for such articles Florence is the greater mart. Other shops sell copies of celebrated paintings. The visitor, therefore, has very little difficulty, if possessed of time, inclination, and money, in making a good collection to take home of objects of virtu, or, at least, of what will give a pleasing recollection of what one has seen in Old Rome.
But what one sees in Rome can only give the faintest idea of what it was when mistress of the world. In place of being confined to the comparatively circumscribed limits of the walls, a space which at present it only partially covers, the city, besides being composed of high, many-storied houses, like those in the Old Town of Edinburgh, extended for miles over the Campagna, and that perhaps very densely. Instead of a population now of scarcely a quarter of a million, the population then is thought to have greatly exceeded that of London at the present day. Indeed, some have not hesitated to state it at as high a figure as 14,000,000, while others, more moderate in their calculations, have placed it at from 4,000,000 to 6,000,000. But whatever it may have been (for this is a questio vexata), it was many times what it has now become. Then consider the magnificent multiplicity of its buildings and decorations. For, besides 700 temples[37] and other structures of whose number no record perhaps exists, there were in ancient Rome at one time, 31 theatres, 11 amphitheatres (and we have seen the scale upon which these erections were constructed), 48 obelisks, 66 ivory statues, 82 equestrian statues, 3785 bronze statues, 1352 fountains, 2091 prisons, 9025 baths, 17,097 palaces. Then keep in view that this was all during a period when classic taste prevailed, and everything, as the remains now left testify, was in the utmost perfection of art, and sometimes of the most wonderful magnificence. Keep also in view that thousands of Roman citizens were then of immense opulence, one evidence of which was that they were possessed of crowds of slaves, some of them having as many as 10,000 or even 20,000; and think what pomp and style must have been kept up in the 17,000 palaces of Rome, surging out upon its 360 spacious streets and its countless minor vias, and one approaches to an idea of the superb grandeur of the great city; in the presence of which it does make us feel small to think, that while we lavish millions on war, we cannot so much as, at the hundredth part of the cost of one of our little wars, build and complete a single temple in the perfection of the ancients, seeing we have the National Monument on the Calton Hill, so bravely begun, in a condition calculated merely to expose the indifference to high art with which the British nation is afflicted. But we cannot be sorry for the fall of Rome, and only should take warning from it, because its power was built up on military force, and its riches were got, not by the successful prosecution of peaceful pursuits, but by the conquest and plunder and the subjection of other nations.
Nor can we any more deplore that modern Rome is now shorn of the prestige it enjoyed while the Popes were once all-potent. Strangers can no longer be gratified by the sight of priestly pageants and papal shows. But let us be thankful that, as the Pope hides his head, the civil power has risen; and now, in place of persecution, torture, and death for those who would not bow the knee to a corrupted religion, the Inquisition—that cruel, hateful instrument of religious intolerance and priestly tyranny—is at an end, and every one can worship God within the walls of Rome as his conscience dictates, none daring to make him afraid. The only strange reflection[38] which arises is, that while so many in England, where education prevails and people should know better, are allowing themselves to be drawn back again into the trammels of Rome, the people of Rome and of Italy, with all their ignorance, are shaking off a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear, and rejoicing to be free.
We had been nine days in Rome, and before seeing it further, thought it advisable to take a run to Naples, and rest in that locality, for so much sight-seeing was fatiguing. During even this short time we had done a great deal, and the break of going away operated, as it were, as a first visit, preliminary to a further investigation upon our second visit of what then became to us in a manner as familiar old friends. Even in both our visits, made out of the common motive of curiosity, and with no higher aims, we could only consider we had examined things in a most superficial way, leaving besides a great deal that was unexplored. It is often said that even a whole winter in Rome is inadequate to do justice to its sights. In a single forenoon we have been to as many as a dozen different places. We entered Rome with the idea that it would be the first and only visit of a lifetime. We left it with the feeling that we had only seen enough to make it more easy for us to comprehend the subject at home, so that some years later we might all return to investigate it together in greater detail, or with more perfect acquaintance with what we had to see, to know, and to think about. Alas! how little did we then anticipate that that future day, to one of us at least, whose hopes were bright and whose enjoyment of all was deep and thorough, would never come!
XIII.
NAPLES, POMPEII, SORRENTO.
It proved a very wet morning in Rome on the day we had settled to go to Naples (for it can rain in Rome remarkably well); but we had taken our rooms at a hotel in Naples, and were packed and ready to go, and accordingly left, arriving at the station at half-past eight for the train leaving at 9.20, and were not a bit too soon. The traveller has to hang on for his turn to get his luggage weighed and to purchase his railway tickets; and after these operations were accomplished, and admission was at last accorded to the salle-d’attente (for none, according to the evil custom which keeps ladies hanging about on their feet, can enter previously), we had but a few minutes to wait in that apartment until the doors were opened and announcement made that passengers might now hurry to the train.