Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks Part 6

March 26th.--Yesterday, between twelve and one, our whole family went to the Villa Ludovisi, the entrance to which is at the termination of a street which pa.s.ses out of the Piazza Barberini, and it is no very great distance from our own street, Via Porta Pinciana. The grounds, though very extensive, are wholly within the walls of the city, which skirt them, and comprise a part of what were formerly the gardens of Sall.u.s.t.

The villa is now the property of Prince Piombini, a ticket from whom procured us admission. A little within the gateway, to the right, is a casino, containing two large rooms filled with sculpture, much of which is very valuable. A colossal head of Juno, I believe, is considered the greatest treasure of the collection, but I did not myself feel it to be so, nor indeed did I receive any strong impression of its excellence. I admired nothing so much, I think, as the face of Penelope (if it be her face) in the group supposed also to represent Electra and Orestes. The sitting statue of Mars is very fine; so is the Arria and Paetus; so are many other busts and figures.

By and by we left the casino and wandered among the grounds, threading interminable alleys of cypress, through the long vistas of which we could see here and there a statue, an urn, a pillar, a temple, or garden-house, or a bas-relief against the wall. It seems as if there must have been a time, and not so very long ago,--when it was worth while to spend money and thought upon the ornamentation of grounds in the neighborhood of Rome. That time is past, however, and the result is very melancholy; for great beauty has been produced, but it can be enjoyed in its perfection only at the peril of one's life. . . . . For my part, and judging from my own experience, I suspect that the Roman atmosphere, never wholesome, is always more or less poisonous.

We came to another and larger casino remote from the gateway, in which the Prince resides during two months of the year. It was now under repair, but we gained admission, as did several other visitors, and saw in the entrance-hall the Aurora of Guercino, painted in fresco on the ceiling. There is beauty in the design; but the painter certainly was most unhappy in his black shadows, and in the work before us they give the impression of a cloudy and lowering morning which is likely enough to turn to rain by and by. After viewing the fresco we mounted by a spiral staircase to a lofty terrace, and found Rome at our feet, and, far off, the Sabine and Alban mountains, some of them still capped with snow. In another direction there was a vast plain, on the horizon of which, could our eyes have reached to its verge, we might perhaps have seen the Mediterranean Sea. After enjoying the view and the warm sunshine we descended, and went in quest of the gardens of Sall.u.s.t, but found no satisfactory remains of them.

One of the most striking objects in the first casino was a group by Bernini,--Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great ability. There are some works in literature that bear an a.n.a.logy to his works in sculpture, when great power is lavished a little outside of nature, and therefore proves to be only a fashion,--and not permanently adapted to the tastes of mankind.

March 27th.--Yesterday forenoon my wife and I went to St. Peter's to see the pope pray at the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. We found a good many people in the church, but not an inconvenient number; indeed, not so many as to make any remarkable show in the great nave, nor even in front of the chapel. A detachment of the Swiss Guard, in their strange, picturesque, harlequin-like costume, were on duty before the chapel, in which the wax tapers were all lighted, and a prie-dieu was arranged near the shrine, and covered with scarlet velvet. On each side, along the breadth of the side aisle, were placed seats, covered with rich tapestry or carpeting; and some gentlemen and ladies--English, probably, or American--had comfortably deposited themselves here, but were compelled to move by the guards before the pope's entrance. His Holiness should have appeared precisely at twelve, but we waited nearly half an hour beyond that time; and it seemed to me particularly ill-mannered in the pope, who owes the courtesy of being punctual to the people, if not to St. Peter. By and by, however, there was a stir; the guard motioned to us to stand away from the benches, against the backs of which we had been leaning; the spectators in the nave looked towards the door, as if they beheld something approaching; and first, there appeared some cardinals, in scarlet skull-caps and purple robes, intermixed with some of the n.o.ble Guard and other attendants. It was not a very formal and stately procession, but rather straggled onward, with ragged edges, the spectators standing aside to let it pa.s.s, and merely bowing, or perhaps slightly bending the knee, as good Catholics are accustomed to do when pa.s.sing before the shrines of saints. Then, in the midst of the purple cardinals, all of whom were gray-haired men, appeared a stout old man, with a white skull-cap, a scarlet, gold-embroidered cape falling over his shoulders, and a white silk robe, the train of which was borne up by an attendant. He walked slowly, with a sort of dignified movement, stepping out broadly, and planting his feet (on which were red shoes) flat upon the pavement, as if he were not much accustomed to locomotion, and perhaps had known a twinge of the gout. His face was kindly and venerable, but not particularly impressive. Arriving at the scarlet-covered prie-dieu, he kneeled down and took off his white skull-cap; the cardinals also kneeled behind and on either side of him, taking off their scarlet skull-caps; while the n.o.ble Guard remained standing, six on one side of his Holiness and six on the other. The pope bent his head upon the prie-dieu, and seemed to spend three or four minutes in prayer; then rose, and all the purple cardinals, and bishops, and priests, of whatever degree, rose behind and beside him. Next, he went to kiss St. Peter's toe; at least I believe he kissed it, but I was not near enough to be certain; and lastly, he knelt down, and directed his devotions towards the high altar. This completed the ceremonies, and his Holiness left the church by a side door, making a short pa.s.sage into the Vatican.

I am very glad I have seen the pope, because now he may be crossed out of the list of sights to be seen. His proximity impressed me kindly and favorably towards him, and I did not see one face among all his cardinals (in whose number, doubtless, is his successor) which I would so soon trust as that of Pio Nono.

This morning I walked as far as the gate of San Paolo, and, on approaching it, I saw the gray sharp pyramid of Caius Cestius pointing upward close to the two dark-brown, battlemented Gothic towers of the gateway, each of these very different pieces of architecture looking the more picturesque for the contrast of the other. Before approaching the gateway and pyramid, I walked onward, and soon came in sight of Monte Testaccio, the artificial hill made of potsherds. There is a gate admitting into the grounds around the hill, and a road encircling its base. At a distance, the hill looks greener than any other part of the landscape, and has all the curved outlines of a natural hill, resembling in shape a headless sphinx, or Saddleback Mountain, as I used to see it from Lenox. It is of very considerable height,--two or three hundred feet at least, I should say,--and well ent.i.tled, both by its elevation and the s.p.a.ce it covers, to be reckoned among the hills of Rome. Its base is almost entirely surrounded with small structures, which seem to be used as farm-buildings. On the summit is a large iron cross, the Church having thought it expedient to redeem these shattered pipkins from the power of paganism, as it has so many other Roman ruins. There was a pathway up the hill, but I did not choose to ascend it under the hot sun, so steeply did it clamber up. There appears to be a good depth of soil on most parts of Monte Testaccio, but on some of the sides you observe precipices, bristling with fragments of red or brown earthenware, or pieces of vases of white unglazed clay; and it is evident that this immense pile is entirely composed of broken crockery, which I should hardly have thought would have aggregated to such a heap had it all been thrown here,--urns, teacups, porcelain, or earthen,--since the beginning of the world.

I walked quite round the hill, and saw, at no great distance from it, the enclosure of the Protestant burial-ground, which lies so close to the pyramid of Caius Cestius that the latter may serve as a general monument to the dead. Deferring, for the present, a visit to the cemetery, or to the interior of the pyramid, I returned to the gateway of San Paolo, and, pa.s.sing through it, took a view of it from the outside of the city wall.

It is itself a portion of the wall, having been built into it by the Emperor Aurelian, so that about half of it lies within and half without.

The brick or red stone material of the wall being so unlike the marble of the pyramid, the latter is as distinct, and seems as insulated, as if it stood alone in the centre of a plain; and really I do not think there is a more striking architectural object in Rome. It is in perfect condition, just as little ruined or decayed as on the day when the builder put the last peak on the summit; and it ascends steeply from its base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it would hardly afford foothold to a bird. The marble was once white, but is now covered with a gray coating like that which has gathered upon the statues of Castor and Pollux on Monte Cavallo. Not one of the great blocks is displaced, nor seems likely to be through all time to come. They rest one upon another, in straight and even lines, and present a vast smooth triangle, ascending from a base of a hundred feet, and narrowing to an apex at the height of a hundred and twenty-five, the junctures of the marble slabs being so close that, in all these twenty centuries, only a few little tufts of gra.s.s, and a trailing plant or two, have succeeded in rooting themselves into the interstices.

It is good and satisfactory to see anything which, being built for an enduring monument, has endured so faithfully, and has a prospect of such an interminable futurity before it. Once, indeed, it seemed likely to be buried; for three hundred years ago it had become covered to the depth of sixteen feet, but the soil has since been dug away from its base, which is now lower than that of the road which pa.s.ses through the neighboring gate of San Paolo. Midway up the pyramid, cut in the marble, is an inscription in large Roman letters, still almost as legible as when first wrought.

I did not return through the Paolo gateway, but kept onward, round the exterior of the wall, till I came to the gate of San Sebastiano. It was a hot and not a very interesting walk, with only a high bare wall of brick, broken by frequent square towers, on one side of the road, and a bank and hedge or a garden wall on the other. Roman roads are most inhospitable, offering no shade, and no seat, and no pleasant views of rustic domiciles; nothing but the wheel-track of white dust, without a foot path running by its side, and seldom any gra.s.sy margin to refresh the wayfarer's feet.

April 3d.--A few days ago we visited the studio of Mr. ------, an American, who seems to have a good deal of vogue as a sculptor. We found a figure of Pocahontas, which he has repeated several times; another, which he calls "The Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish," a figure of a smiling girl playing with a cat and dog, and a schoolboy mending a pen. These two last were the only ones that gave me any pleasure, or that really had any merit; for his cleverness and ingenuity appear in homely subjects, but are quite lost in attempts at a higher ideality. Nevertheless, he has a group of the Prodigal Son, possessing more merit than I should have expected from Mr. ------, the son reclining his head on his father's breast, with an expression of utter weariness, at length finding perfect rest, while the father bends his benign countenance over him, and seems to receive him calmly into himself. This group (the plaster-cast standing beside it) is now taking shape out of an immense block of marble, and will be as indestructible as the Laoc.o.o.n; an idea at once awful and ludicrous, when we consider that it is at best but a respectable production. I have since been told that Mr. ------ had stolen, adopted, we will rather say, the att.i.tude and idea of the group from one executed by a student of the French Academy, and to be seen there in plaster. (We afterwards saw it in the Medici Casino.)

Mr. ------ has now been ten years in Italy, and, after all this time, he is still entirely American in everything but the most external surface of his manners; scarcely Europeanized, or much modified even in that. He is a native of ------, but had his early breeding in New York, and might, for any polish or refinement that I can discern in him, still be a country shopkeeper in the interior of New York State or New England. How strange! For one expects to find the polish, the close grain and white purity of marble, in the artist who works in that n.o.ble material; but, after all, he handles club, and, judging by the specimens I have seen here, is apt to be clay, not of the finest, himself. Mr. ------ is sensible, shrewd, keen, clever; an ingenious workman, no doubt; with tact enough, and not dest.i.tute of taste; very agreeable and lively in his conversation, talking as fast and as naturally as a brook runs, without the slightest affectation. His naturalness is, in fact, a rather striking characteristic, in view of his lack of culture, while yet his life has been concerned with idealities and a beautiful art. What degree of taste he pretends to, he seems really to possess, nor did I hear a single idea from him that struck me as otherwise than sensible.

He called to see us last evening, and talked for about two hours in a very amusing and interesting style, his topics being taken from his own personal experience, and shrewdly treated. He spoke much of Greenough, whom he described as an excellent critic of art, but possessed of not the slightest inventive genius. His statue of Washington, at the Capitol, is taken precisely from the Plodian Jupiter; his Chanting Cherubs are copied in marble from two figures in a picture by Raphael. He did nothing that was original with himself To-day we took R-----, and went to see Miss ------, and as her studio seems to be mixed up with Gibson's, we had an opportunity of glancing at some of his beautiful works. We saw a Venus and a Cupid, both of them tinted; and, side by side with them, other statues identical with these, except that the marble was left in its pure whiteness.

We found Miss ------ in a little upper room. She has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful; frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side-pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came forward to greet us. She withdrew one hand, however, and presented it cordially to my wife (whom she already knew) and to myself, without waiting for an introduction. She had on a shirt-front, collar, and cravat like a man's, with a brooch of Etruscan gold, and on her curly head was a picturesque little cap of black velvet, and her face was as bright and merry, and as small of feature as a child's. It looked in one aspect youthful, and yet there was something worn in it too.

There never was anything so jaunty as her movement and action; she was very peculiar, but she seemed to be her actual self, and nothing affected or made up; so that, for my part, I gave her full leave to wear what may suit her best, and to behave as her inner woman prompts. I don't quite see, however, what she is to do when she grows older, for the decorum of age will not be consistent with a costume that looks pretty and excusable enough in a young woman.

Miss ------ led us into a part of the extensive studio, or collection of studios, where some of her own works were to be seen: Beatrice Cenci, which did not very greatly impress me; and a monumental design, a female figure,--wholly draped even to the stockings and shoes,--in a quiet sleep. I liked this last. There was also a Puck, doubtless full of fun; but I had hardly time to glance at it. Miss ------ evidently has good gifts in her profession, and doubtless she derives great advantage from her close a.s.sociation with a consummate artist like Gibson; nor yet does his influence seem to interfere with the originality of her own conceptions. In one way, at least, she can hardly fail to profit,--that is, by the opportunity of showing her works to the throngs of people who go to see Gibson's own; and these are just such people as an artist would most desire to meet, and might never see in a lifetime, if left to himself. I shook hands with this frank and pleasant little person, and took leave, not without purpose of seeing her again.

Within a few days, there have been many pilgrims in Rome, who come hither to attend the ceremonies of holy week, and to perform their vows, and undergo their penances. I saw two of them near the Forum yesterday, with their pilgrim staves, in the fashion of a thousand years ago. . . . . I sat down on a bench near one of the chapels, and a woman immediately came up to me to beg. I at first refused; but she knelt down by my side, and instead of praying to the saint prayed to me; and, being thus treated as a canonized personage, I thought it inc.u.mbent on me to be gracious to the extent of half a paul. My wife, some time ago, came in contact with a pickpocket at the entrance of a church; and, failing in his enterprise upon her purse, he pa.s.sed in, dipped his thieving fingers in the holy water, and paid his devotions at a shrine. Missing the purse, he said his prayers, in the hope, perhaps, that the saint would send him better luck another time.

April 10th.--I have made no entries in my journal recently, being exceedingly lazy, partly from indisposition, as well as from an atmosphere that takes the vivacity out of everybody. Not much has happened or been effected. Last Sunday, which was Easter Sunday, I went with J----- to St. Peter's, where we arrived at about nine o'clock, and found a mult.i.tude of people already a.s.sembled in the church. The interior was arrayed in festal guise, there being a covering of scarlet damask over the pilasters of the nave, from base to capital, giving an effect of splendor, yet with a loss as to the apparent dimensions of the interior. A guard of soldiers occupied the nave, keeping open a wide s.p.a.ce for the pa.s.sage of a procession that was momently expected, and soon arrived. The crowd was too great to allow of my seeing it in detail; but I could perceive that there were priests, cardinals, Swiss guards, some of them with corselets on, and by and by the pope himself was borne up the nave, high over the heads of all, sitting under a canopy, crowned with his tiara. He floated slowly along, and was set down in the neighborhood of the high altar; and the procession being broken up, some of its scattered members might be seen here and there, about the church,--officials in antique Spanish dresses; Swiss guards, in polished steel breastplates; serving-men, in richly embroidered liveries; officers, in scarlet coats and military boots; priests, and divers other shapes of men; for the papal ceremonies seem to forego little or nothing that belongs to times past, while it includes everything appertaining to the present. I ought to have waited to witness the papal benediction from the balcony in front of the church; or, at least, to hear the famous silver trumpets, sounding from the dome; but J----- grew weary (to say the truth, so did I), and we went on a long walk, out of the nearest city gate, and back through the Janiculum, and, finally, homeward over the Ponto Rotto. Standing on the bridge, I saw the arch of the Cloaca Maxima, close by the Temple of Vesta, with the water rising within two or three feet of its keystone.

The same evening we went to Monte Cavallo, where, from the gateway of the Pontifical Palace, we saw the illumination of St. Peter's. Mr. Akers, the sculptor, had recommended this position to us, and accompanied us thither, as the best point from which the illumination could be witnessed at a distance, without the incommodity of such a crowd as would be a.s.sembled at the Pincian. The first illumination, the silver one, as it is called, was very grand and delicate, describing the outline of the great edifice and crowning dome in light; while the day was not yet wholly departed. As ------ finally remarked, it seemed like the glorified spirit of the Church, made visible, or, as I will add, it looked as this famous and never-to-be-forgotten structure will look to the imaginations of men, through the waste and gloom of future ages, after it shall have gone quite to decay and ruin: the brilliant, though scarcely distinct gleam of a statelier dome than ever was seen, shining on the background of the night of Time. This simile looked prettier in my fancy than I have made it look on paper.

After we had enjoyed the silver illumination a good while, and when all the daylight had given place to the constellated night, the distant outline of St. Peter's burst forth, in the twinkling of an eye, into a starry blaze, being quite the finest effect that I ever witnessed. I stayed to see it, however, only a few minutes; for I was quite ill and feverish with a cold,--which, indeed, I have seldom been free from, since my first breathing of the genial atmosphere of Rome. This pestilence kept me within doors all the next day, and prevented me from seeing the beautiful fireworks that were exhibited in the evening from the platform on the Pincian, above the Piazza del Popolo.

On Thursday, I paid another visit to the sculpture-gallery of the Capitol, where I was particularly struck with a bust of Cato the Censor, who must have been the most disagreeable, stubborn, ugly-tempered, pig-headed, narrow-minded, strong-willed old Roman that ever lived. The collection of busts here and at the Vatican are most interesting, many of the individual heads being full of character, and commending themselves by intrinsic evidence as faithful portraits of the originals. These stone people have stood face to face with Caesar, and all the other emperors, and with statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and poets of the antique world, and have been to them like their reflections in a mirror.

It is the next thing to seeing the men themselves.

We went afterwards into the Palace of the Conservatori, and saw, among various other interesting things, the bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, who sit beneath her dugs, with open mouths to receive the milk.

On Friday, we all went to see the Pope's Palace on the Quirinal. There was a vast hall, and an interminable suite of rooms, cased with marble, floored with marble or mosaics or inlaid wood, adorned with frescos on the vaulted ceilings, and many of them lined with Gobelin tapestry; not wofully faded, like almost all that I have hitherto seen, but brilliant as pictures. Indeed, some of them so closely resembled paintings, that I could hardly believe they were not so; and the effect was even richer than that of oil-paintings. In every room there was a crucifix; but I did not see a single nook or corner where anybody could have dreamed of being comfortable. Nevertheless, as a stately and solemn residence for his Holiness, it is quite a satisfactory affair. Afterwards, we went into the Pontifical Gardens, connected with the palace. They are very extensive, and laid out in straight avenues, bordered with walls of box, as impervious as if of stone,--not less than twenty feet high, and pierced with lofty archways, cut in the living wall. Some of the avenues were overshadowed with trees, the tops of which bent over and joined one another from either side, so as to resemble a side aisle of a Gothic cathedral. Marble sculptures, much weather-stained, and generally broken-nosed, stood along these stately walks; there were many fountains gushing up into the sunshine; we likewise found a rich flower-garden, containing rare specimens of exotic flowers, and gigantic cactuses, and also an aviary, with vultures, doves, and singing birds. We did not see half the garden, but, stiff and formal as its general arrangement is, it is a beautiful place,--a delightful, sunny, and serene seclusion.

Whatever it may be to the pope, two young lovers might find the Garden of Eden here, and never desire to stray out of its precincts. They might fancy angels standing in the long, glimmering vistas of the avenues.

It would suit me well enough to have my daily walk along such straight paths, for I think them favorable to thought, which is apt to be disturbed by variety and unexpectedness.

April 12th.--We all, except R-----, went to-day to the Vatican, where we found our way to the Stanze of Raphael, these being four rooms, or halls, painted with frescos. No doubt they were once very brilliant and beautiful; but they have encountered hard treatment since Raphael's time, especially when the soldiers of the Constable de Bourbon occupied these apartments, and made fires on the mosaic floors. The entire walls and ceilings are covered with pictures; but the handiwork or designs of Raphael consist of paintings on the four sides of each room, and include several works of art. The School of Athens is perhaps the most celebrated; and the longest side of the largest hall is occupied by a battle-piece, of which the Emperor Constantine is the hero, and which covers almost s.p.a.ce enough for a real battle-field. There was a wonderful light in one of the pictures,--that of St. Peter awakened in his prison, by the angel; it really seemed to throw a radiance into the hall below. I shall not pretend, however, to have been sensible of any particular rapture at the sight of these frescos; so faded as they are, so battered by the mischances of years, insomuch that, through all the power and glory of Raphael's designs, the spectator cannot but be continually sensible that the groundwork of them is an old plaster wall.

They have been scrubbed, I suppose,--brushed, at least,--a thousand times over, till the surface, brilliant or soft, as Raphael left it, must have been quite rubbed off, and with it, all the consummate finish, and everything that made them originally delightful. The sterner features remain, the skeleton of thought, but not the beauty that once clothed it.

In truth, the frescos, excepting a few figures, never had the real touch of Raphael's own hand upon them, having been merely designed by him, and finished by his scholars, or by other artists.

The halls themselves are specimens of antique magnificence, paved with elaborate mosaics; and wherever there is any wood-work, it is richly carved with foliage and figures. In their newness, and probably for a hundred years afterwards, there could not have been so brilliant a suite of rooms in the world.

Connected with them--at any rate, not far distant--is the little Chapel of San Lorenzo, the very site of which, among the thousands of apartments of the Vatican, was long forgotten, and its existence only known by tradition. After it had been walled up, however, beyond the memory of man, there was still a rumor of some beautiful frescos by Fra Angelico, in an old chapel of Pope Nicholas V., that had strangely disappeared out of the palace, and, search at length being made, it was discovered, and entered through a window. It is a small, lofty room, quite covered over with frescos of sacred subjects, both on the walls and ceiling, a good deal faded, yet pretty distinctly preserved. It would have been no misfortune to me, if the little old chapel had remained still hidden.

We next issued into the Loggie, which consist of a long gallery, or arcade or colonnade, the whole extent of which was once beautifully adorned by Raphael. These pictures are almost worn away, and so defaced as to be untraceable and unintelligible, along the side wall of the gallery; although traceries of Arabesque, and compartments where there seem to have been rich paintings, but now only an indistinguishable waste of dull color, are still to be seen. In the coved ceiling, however, there are still some bright frescos, in better preservation than any others; not particularly beautiful, nevertheless. I remember to have seen (indeed, we ourselves possess them) a series of very spirited and energetic engravings, old and coa.r.s.e, of these frescos, the subject being the Creation, and the early Scripture history; and I really think that their translation of the pictures is better than the original. On reference to Murray, I find that little more than the designs is attributed to Raphael, the execution being by Giulio Romano and other artists.

Escaping from these forlorn splendors, we went into the sculpture-gallery, where I was able to enjoy, in some small degree, two or three wonderful works of art; and had a perception that there were a thousand other wonders around me. It is as if the statues kept, for the most part, a veil about them, which they sometimes withdraw, and let their beauty gleam upon my sight; only a glimpse, or two or three glimpses, or a little s.p.a.ce of calm enjoyment, and then I see nothing but a discolored marble image again. The Minerva Medica revealed herself to-day. I wonder whether other people are more fortunate than myself, and can invariably find their way to the inner soul of a work of art. I doubt it; they look at these things for just a minute, and pa.s.s on, without any pang of remorse, such as I feel, for quitting them so soon and so willingly. I am partly sensible that some unwritten rules of taste are making their way into my mind; that all this Greek beauty has done something towards refining me, though I am still, however, a very st.u.r.dy Goth. . . . .

April 15th.--Yesterday I went with J----- to the Forum, and descended into the excavations at the base of the Capitol, and on the site of the Basilica of Julia. The essential elements of old Rome are there: columns, single, or in groups of two or three, still erect, but battered and bruised at some forgotten time with infinite pains and labor; fragments of other columns lying prostrate, together with rich capitals and friezes; the bust of a colossal female statue, showing the bosom and upper part of the arms, but headless; a long, winding s.p.a.ce of pavement, forming part of the ancient ascent to the Capitol, still as firm and solid as ever; the foundation of the Capitol itself, wonderfully ma.s.sive, built of immense square blocks of stone, doubtless three thousand years old, and durable for whatever may be the lifetime of the world; the Arch of Septimius, Severus, with bas-reliefs of Eastern wars; the Column of Phocas, with the rude series of steps ascending on four sides to its pedestal; the floor of beautiful and precious marbles in the Basilica of Julia, the slabs cracked across,--the greater part of them torn up and removed, the gra.s.s and weeds growing up through the c.h.i.n.ks of what remain; heaps of bricks, shapeless bits of granite, and other ancient rubbish, among which old men are lazily rummaging for specimens that a stranger may be induced to buy,--this being an employment that suits the indolence of a modern Roman. The level of these excavations is about fifteen feet, I should judge, below the present street, which pa.s.ses through the Forum, and only a very small part of this alien surface has been removed, though there can be no doubt that it hides numerous treasures of art and monuments of history. Yet these remains do not make that impression of antiquity upon me which Gothic ruins do. Perhaps it is so because they belong to quite another system of society and epoch of time, and, in view of them, we forget all that has intervened betwixt them and us; being morally unlike and disconnected with them, and not belonging to the same train of thought; so that we look across a gulf to the Roman ages, and do not realize how wide the gulf is. Yet in that intervening valley lie Christianity, the Dark Ages, the feudal system, chivalry and romance, and a deeper life of the human race than Rome brought to the verge of the gulf.

To-day we went to the Colonna Palace, where we saw some fine pictures, but, I think, no masterpieces. They did not depress and dishearten me so much as the pictures in Roman palaces usually do; for they were in remarkably good order as regards frames and varnish; indeed, I rather suspect some of them had been injured by the means adopted to preserve their beauty. The palace is now occupied by the French Amba.s.sador, who probably looks upon the pictures as articles of furniture and household adornment, and does not choose to have squares of black and forlorn canvas upon his walls. There were a few n.o.ble portraits by Vand.y.k.e; a very striking one by Holbein, one or two by t.i.tian, also by Guercino, and some pictures by Rubens, and other forestieri painters, which refreshed my weary eyes. But--what chiefly interested me was the magnificent and stately hall of the palace; fifty-five of my paces in length, besides a large apartment at either end, opening into it through a pillared s.p.a.ce, as wide as the gateway of a city. The pillars are of giallo antico, and there are pilasters of the same all the way up and down the walls, forming a perspective of the richest aspect, especially as the broad cornice flames with gilding, and the s.p.a.ces between the pilasters are emblazoned with heraldic achievements and emblems in gold, and there are Venetian looking-gla.s.ses, richly decorated over the surface with beautiful pictures of flowers and Cupids, through which you catch the gleam of the mirror; and two rows of splendid chandeliers extend from end to end of the hall, which, when lighted up, if ever it be lighted up, now-a-nights, must be the most brilliant interior that ever mortal eye beheld. The ceiling glows with pictures in fresco, representing scenes connected with the history of the Colonna family; and the floor is paved with beautiful marbles, polished and arranged in square and circular compartments; and each of the many windows is set in a great architectural frame of precious marble, as large as the portal of a door.

The apartment at the farther end of the hall is elevated above it, and is attained by several marble steps, whence it must have been glorious in former days to have looked down upon a gorgeous throng of princes, cardinals, warriors, and ladies, in such rich attire as might be worn when the palace was built. It is singular how much freshness and brightness it still retains; and the only objects to mar the effect were some ancient statues and busts, not very good in themselves, and now made dreary of aspect by their corroded surfaces,--the result of long burial under ground.

In the room at the entrance of the hall are two cabinets, each a wonder in its way,--one being adorned with precious stones; the other with ivory carvings of Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, and of the frescos of Raphael's Loggie. The world has ceased to be so magnificent as it once was. Men make no such marvels nowadays. The only defect that I remember in this hall was in the marble steps that ascend to the elevated apartment at the end of it; a large piece had been broken out of one of them, leaving a rough irregular gap in the polished marble stair. It is not easy to conceive what violence can have done this, without also doing mischief to all the other splendor around it.

April 16th.--We went this morning to the Academy of St. Luke (the Fine Arts Academy at Rome) in the Via Bonella, close by the Forum. We rang the bell at the house door; and after a few moments it was unlocked or unbolted by some unseen agency from above, no one making his appearance to admit us. We ascended two or three flights of stairs, and entered a hall, where was a young man, the custode, and two or three artists engaged in copying some of the pictures. The collection not being vastly large, and the pictures being in more presentable condition than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do; particularly a Virgin and Child by Vand.y.k.e, where two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the few pictures that there is really any pleasure in looking at. There were several paintings by t.i.tian, mostly of a voluptuous character, but not very charming; also two or more by Guido, one of which, representing Fortune, is celebrated. They did not impress me much, nor do I find myself strongly drawn towards Guido, though there is no other painter who seems to achieve things so magically and inscrutably as he sometimes does. Perhaps it requires a finer taste than mine to appreciate him; and yet I do appreciate him so far as to see that his Michael, for instance, is perfectly beautiful. . . . . In the gallery, there are whole rows of portraits of members of the Academy of St. Luke, most of whom, judging by their physiognomies, were very commonplace people; a fact which makes itself visible in a portrait, however much the painter may try to flatter his sitter. Several of the pictures by t.i.tian, Paul Veronese, and other artists, now exhibited in the gallery, were formerly kept in a secret cabinet in the Capitol, being considered of a too voluptuous character for the public eye. I did not think them noticeably indecorous, as compared with a hundred other pictures that are shown and looked at without scruple;--Calypso and her nymphs, a knot of nude women by t.i.tian, is perhaps as objectionable as any. But even t.i.tian's flesh-tints cannot keep, and have not kept their warmth through all these centuries. The illusion and lifelikeness effervesces and exhales out of a picture as it grows old; and we go on talking of a charm that has forever vanished.

From St. Luke's we went to San Pietro in Vincoli, occupying a fine position on or near the summit of the Esquiline mount. A little abortion of a man (and, by the by, there are more diminutive and ill-shapen men and women in Rome than I ever saw elsewhere, a phenomenon to be accounted for, perhaps, by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant in swaddling-clothes), this two-foot abortion hastened before us, as we drew nigh, to summon the sacristan to open the church door. It was a needless service, for which we rewarded him with two baiocchi. San Pietro is a simple and n.o.ble church, consisting of a nave divided from the side aisles by rows of columns, that once adorned some ancient temple; and its wide, unenc.u.mbered interior affords better breathing-s.p.a.ce than most churches in Rome. The statue of Moses occupies a niche in one of the side aisles on the right, not far from the high altar. I found it grand and sublime, with a beard flowing down like a cataract; a truly majestic figure, but not so benign as it were desirable that such strength should be. The horns, about which so much has been said, are not a very prominent feature of the statue, being merely two diminutive tips rising straight up over his forehead, neither adding to the grandeur of the head, nor detracting sensibly from it. The whole force of this statue is not to be felt in one brief visit, but I agree with an English gentleman, who, with a large party, entered the church while we were there, in thinking that Moses has "very fine features,"--a compliment for which the colossal Hebrew ought to have made the Englishman a bow.

Besides the Moses, the church contains some attractions of a pictorial kind, which are reposited in the sacristy, into which we pa.s.sed through a side door. The most remarkable of these pictures is a face and bust of Hope, by Guido, with beautiful eyes lifted upwards; it has a grace which artists are continually trying to get into their innumerable copies, but always without success; for, indeed, though nothing is more true than the existence of this charm in the picture, yet if you try to a.n.a.lyze it, or even look too intently at it, it vanishes, till you look again with more trusting simplicity.

Leaving the church, we wandered to the Coliseum, and to the public grounds contiguous to them, where a score and more of French drummers were beating each man his drum, without reference to any rub-a-dub but his own. This seems to be a daily or periodical practice and point of duty with them. After resting ourselves on one of the marble benches, we came slowly home, through the Basilica of Constantine, and along the shady sides of the streets and piazzas, sometimes, perforce, striking boldly through the white sunshine, which, however, was not so hot as to shrivel us up bodily. It has been a most beautiful and perfect day as regards weather, clear and bright, very warm in the sunshine, yet freshened throughout by a quiet stir in the air. Still there is something in this air malevolent, or, at least, not friendly. The Romans lie down and fall asleep in it, in any vacant part of the streets, and wherever they can find any spot sufficiently clean, and among the ruins of temples. I would not sleep in the open air for whatever my life may be worth.

On our way home, sitting in one of the narrow streets, we saw an old woman spinning with a distaff; a far more ancient implement than the spinning-wheel, which the housewives of other nations have long since laid aside.

April 18th.--Yesterday, at noon, the whole family of us set out on a visit to the Villa Borghese and its grounds, the entrance to which is just outside of the Porta del Popolo. After getting within the grounds, however, there is a long walk before reaching the casino, and we found the sun rather uncomfortably hot, and the road dusty and white in the sunshine; nevertheless, a footpath ran alongside of it most of the way through the gra.s.s and among the young trees. It seems to me that the trees do not put forth their leaves with nearly the same magical rapidity in this southern land at the approach of summer, as they do in more northerly countries. In these latter, having a much shorter time to develop themselves, they feel the necessity of making the most of it.

But the gra.s.s, in the lawns and enclosures along which we pa.s.sed, looked already fit to be mowed, and it was interspersed with many flowers.

Sat.u.r.day being, I believe, the only day of the week on which visitors are admitted to the casino, there were many parties in carriages, artists on foot, gentlemen on horseback, and miscellaneous people, to whom the door was opened by a custode on ringing a bell. The whole of the bas.e.m.e.nt floor of the casino, comprising a suite of beautiful rooms, is filled with statuary. The entrance hall is a very splendid apartment, brightly frescoed, and paved with ancient mosaics, representing the combats with beasts and gladiators in the Coliseum, curious, though very rudely and awkwardly designed, apparently after the arts had begun to decline. Many of the specimens of sculpture displayed in these rooms are fine, but none of them, I think, possess the highest merit. An Apollo is beautiful; a group of a fighting Amazon, and her enemies trampled under her horse's feet, is very impressive; a Faun, copied from that of Praxiteles, and another, who seems to be dancing, were exceedingly pleasant to look at.

I like these strange, sweet, playful, rustic creatures, . . . . linked so prettily, without monstrosity, to the lower tribes. . . . . Their character has never, that I know of, been wrought out in literature; and something quite good, funny, and philosophical, as well as poetic, might very likely be educed from them. . . . . The faun is a natural and delightful link betwixt human and brute life, with something of a divine character intermingled.

The gallery, as it is called, on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor of the casino, is sixty feet in length, by perhaps a third as much in breadth, and is (after all I have seen at the Colonna Palace and elsewhere) a more magnificent hall than I imagined to be in existence. It is floored with rich marble in beautifully arranged compartments, and the walls are almost entirely eased with marble of various sorts, the prevailing kind being giallo antico, intermixed with verd antique, and I know not what else; but the splendor of the giallo antico gives the character to the room, and the large and deep niches along the walls appear to be lined with the same material. Without coming to Italy, one can have no idea of what beauty and magnificence are produced by these fittings up of polished marble. Marble to an American means nothing but white limestone.

This hall, moreover, is adorned with pillars of Oriental alabaster, and wherever is a s.p.a.ce vacant of precious and richly colored marble it is frescoed with arabesque ornaments; and over the whole is a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with picture. There never can be anything richer than the whole effect. As to the sculpture here it was not very fine, so far as I can remember, consisting chiefly of busts of the emperors in porphyry; but they served a good purpose in the upholstery way. There were also magnificent tables, each composed of one great slab of porphyry; and also vases of nero antico, and other rarest substance.

It remains to be mentioned that, on this almost summer day, I was quite chilled in pa.s.sing through these glorious halls; no fireplace anywhere; no possibility of comfort; and in the hot season, when their coolness might be agreeable, it would be death to inhabit them.

Ascending a long winding staircase, we arrived at another suite of rooms, containing a good many not very remarkable pictures, and a few more pieces of statuary. Among the latter, is Canova's statue of Pauline, the sister of Bonaparte, who is represented with but little drapery, and in the character of Venus holding the apple in her hand. It is admirably done, and, I have no doubt, a perfect likeness; very beautiful too; but it is wonderful to see how the artificial elegance of the woman of this world makes itself perceptible in spite of whatever simplicity she could find in almost utter nakedness. The statue does not afford pleasure in the contemplation.