A Year in Europe

But it is from the Janiculan Hill, on the other side of the Tiber, that one gets the most comprehensive view of the city. Among other things that take the eye from that commanding point there are three hills which may be said to epitomize the history of Rome: on the east the Palatine, where, as its name intimates, the palaces of the Cæsar's stood, representing the culmination of the glory of pagan Rome; on the west, the Vatican, where, as its name suggests, a prophet ought to dwell, though I fear he does not, and where St. Peter's, with its "insolent opulence of marble" and its colossal apotheosis of the popedom, represents the culmination of the glory of papal Rome; and, immediately in front, in the centre of the city, the Quirinal, where Victor Emmanuel's royal house stands, representing the new government of free and united Italy. From his windows in the Quirinal Palace, the King can look across the intervening city to the windows of that other palace where the relentless foe of his government lives, that vast, luxurious "prison" of the Vatican, with its eleven thousand rooms, the largest palace in the world, with its museums and libraries filled with priceless treasures, and with its extensive gardens and grounds.

Zola has pointed out how persistent, through all these three periods of Rome's history, has been that passion for cyclopean building, the "blossoming of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and ruinous luxury." First, the pagan emperors set the pace, and of their work we may take the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla as specimens.

"The Colosseum. Ah! that colossus, only one-half or so of which has been destroyed by time as with the stroke of a mighty scythe, it rises in its enormity and majesty like a stone lacework, with hundreds of empty bays agape against the blue of heaven! There is a world of halls, stairs, landings and passages, a world where one loses one's self amid the death-like silence and solitude. The furrowed tiers of seats, eaten into by the atmosphere, are like shapeless steps leading down into some old extinct crater, some natural circus excavated by the force of the elements in indestructible rock. The hot suns of eighteen hundred years have baked and scorched this ruin, which has reverted to a state of nature, bare and golden-brown like a mountain side, since it has been stripped of its vegetation, the flora which once made it like a virgin forest. And what an evocation when the mind sets flesh and blood and life again on all that dead osseous framework, fills the circus with the ninety thousand spectators which it could hold, marshals the games and the combats of the arena, gathers a whole civilization together, from the emperor and the dignitaries to the surging plebeian sea, all aglow with the agitation and brilliancy of an impassioned people, assembled under the ruddy reflection of the giant purple velum. And then, yet further on the horizon, were other cyclopean ruins, the Baths of Caracalla, standing there like relics of a race of giants long since vanished from the world: halls extravagantly and inexplicably spacious and lofty; vestibules large enough for an entire population; a frigidarium, where five hundred people could swim together; a tepidarium and a calidarium on the same proportions, born of a wild craving for the huge; and then the terrific massiveness of the structures, the thickness of the piles of brick-work, such as no feudal castle ever knew; and, in addition, the general immensity which makes passing visitors look like lost ants; one wonders for what men, for what multitudes, this monstrous edifice was reared. To-day you would say a mass of rocks in the rough thrown from some height for building the abode of Titans."

Then the Popes, when they came to power, followed this pagan example, moved by the same spirit of conquest, the same human vanity, the same passionate desire to set their names on imperishable walls, and, after dominating the world, to leave behind them indestructible traces, tangible proofs of their passing glory, eternal edifices of bronze and marble, to attest that glory till the end of time. "Among the illustrious popes there has not been one that did not seek to build, did not revert to the traditions of the Cæsars, eternizing their reigns in stone and raising temples for resting-places, so as to rank among the gods. Ever the same passion for terrestrial immortality has burst forth: it has been a battle as to who should leave the highest, most substantial, most gorgeous monument; and so acute has been the disease that those who, for lack of means and opportunity, have been unable to build, and have been forced to content themselves with repairing, have, nevertheless, desired to bequeath the memory of their modest achievements to subsequent generations by commemorative marble slabs engraved with pompous inscriptions. These slabs are to be seen on every side; not a wall has ever been strengthened but some pope has stamped it with his arms, not a ruin has been restored, not a palace repaired, not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the work with his Roman and pagan title of 'Pontifex Maximus.' [19] It is a haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute passion for domination, and that desire for terrestrial glory which wrought the triumph of Catholicism in scorn of the humble and pure, the fraternal and simple ones of the primitive church, one may well ask whether Rome has ever been Christian at all."

And, finally, the new government of Victor Emmanuel, for a time at least, was caught in the same current, infected with the same mania for building that seems to exhale from the very soil of the Eternal City. As the popes had not become masters of Rome without feeling impelled to rebuild it in their passion to rule over the world, so young Italy, "yielding to the hereditary madness of universal domination, had in its turn sought to make the city larger than any other, erecting whole districts for people who never came." But, fortunately for Italy, the old idea was not unmixed with newer and better ones. Their first delirious outburst of huge building operations has been explained as "a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were sanitary requirements to be dealt with; the city needed to be cleansed of all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what abominable putrescence the City of the Popes, the Roma sporca which artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked even the most primitive arrangements, the public thoroughfares were used for all purposes, noble ruins served as store-places for sewage, the princely palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were perfect manure beds, which fostered frequent epidemics. Thus, vast municipal works were absolutely necessary; the question was one of health and life itself. And in much the same way it was only right to think of building houses for the new comers who would assuredly flock into the city. There had been a precedent at Berlin, whose population, after the establishment of the German Empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of thousands. In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for, as the new centre of national life, the city would necessarily attract all the vis viva of the provinces. And at this thought pride stepped in; the fallen government of the Vatican must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendor she would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the imperial or the papal city." We need not follow the melancholy story of this delusion. The boom had a disastrous collapse, and the city was left full of vast, pretentious, flimsy, deserted palaces. The best thing about them is that they are perishable. The lesson, happily, was not lost on the men of the new order in Italy, and they seem at last to have extricated themselves from the toils of that miasmatic megalo-mania. The government is sane, sound, conservative, proceeding with care and deliberation in its upbuilding of the country, understanding the meaning of the proverb that "Rome was not built in a day," and it has already given the country more security and prosperity than it has enjoyed for many, many centuries. If it can continue to maintain itself against the priests, there is undoubtedly a bright future before Italy.

But can it maintain itself against the priests? I think so. Yet a man would be blind indeed who could not see their number, power and activity. Rome swarms with them. Speaking of the incredible number of cassocks that one encounters in the streets, Zola says: "Ah! that ebb and flow; that ceaseless tide of black gowns and frocks of every hue! With their processions of students ever walking abroad, the seminaries of the different nations would alone suffice to drape and decorate the streets, for there are the French and the English all in black, the South Americans in black with blue sashes, the North Americans in black with red sashes, the Poles in black with green sashes, the Greeks in blue, the Germans in red, the Scots in violet, the Romans in black or violet or purple, the Bohemians with chocolate sashes, the Irish with red lappets, the Spaniards with blue cords, to say nothing of all the others with broidery and bindings and buttons in a hundred different styles. And, in addition, there are the confraternities, the penitents, white, black, blue and gray, with sleeveless frocks and capes of different hue, gray, blue, black or white. And thus, even nowadays, papal Rome at times seems to resuscitate, and one can realize how tenaciously and vigorously she struggles on in order that she may not disappear in the cosmopolitan Rome of the new era." Yes, Italy will escape from the clutches of the papacy, but she will have to work. There must be no relaxation of vigilance or energy on her part—or on ours. For this multitude of young priests from every part of the world spells menace for other lands besides Italy.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Only three or four blocks from our hotel stands the Church of the Cappuccini, which contains one of the most gruesome sights in Rome, the celebrated cemetery of the Cappuccini monks, the soil of which was brought from Jerusalem. All Roman Catholic cemeteries have a peculiarly melancholy aspect. They have none of that gentle beauty which is so characteristic of our cemeteries, where the grass grows green under the open sky or great trees cast their peaceful shade over "God's acre." But this is the most weird and ghastly of them all. There are four recesses or chapels underneath the church, the pillars and pilasters of which are made of thigh-bones and skulls, the architectural ornaments being represented by the joints of the spine, and the more delicate tracery by the smaller bones of the human frame. "The summits of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if they were wrought most skillfully in bas-relief. There is no possibility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect.... On some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use of that particular head-piece, died on such a day and year; but vastly the greater number are piled up undistinguishably into the architectural design.... In the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit or stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in life.... Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that it deserves. There is no disagreeable scent, such as might have been expected from the decay of so many holy persons, in whatever odor of sanctity they may have taken their departure. The same number of living monks would not smell half so unexceptionably." So Hawthorne says, and I have spared my readers the most disagreeable parts of his description.

The allusion in his last sentence is one which is justified by the olfactory organs of every visitor to Rome. The vices which were encouraged in the magnificent baths of the emperors, and which have given the word bagnio an evil signification the world over, "found their reaction in the impression of the early Christians that uncleanliness was a virtue, an impression which is retained by several of the monastic orders to the present day." We sometimes weary of the superabundant advertisements of the different kinds of soap in the advertising pages of our monthly magazines. But what a wholesome sign it is! And what a difference it marks between us and the average Italian! And what a field for their business would be opened to Mr. Pears and the rest if only the monks would adopt the view that "cleanliness is next to godliness," and that, therefore, soap might be regarded as a sort of means of grace!

Mark Twain once described what he would say, if he were a native of Italy, and had been on a visit to the United States, and had come back to the Campagna for the purpose of telling his Italian countrymen what he had seen in America: "One hardly ever sees a minister of the gospel going around there in his bare feet, with a basket, begging for subsistence. In that country the preachers are not like our mendicant orders of friars—they have two or three suits of clothing, and they wash sometimes."... "I saw common men and common women who could read; I even saw small children of common country people reading from books; if I dared think you would believe it, I would say they could write, also.... I saw real glass windows in the houses of even the commonest people. Some of the houses are not of stone, nor yet of bricks; I solemnly swear they are made of wood. Houses there will take fire and burn, sometimes—actually burn entirely down, and not leave a single vestige behind. I could state that for a truth upon my death-bed. And, as a proof that the circumstance is not rare, I aver that they have a thing which they call a fire-engine, which vomits forth great streams of water, and is kept always in readiness, by night and by day, to rush to houses that are burning. You would think one engine would be sufficient, but some great cities have a hundred; they keep men hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing but put out fires. [20]... In that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he is damned; he cannot buy salvation with money for masses. There is really not much use in being rich there. Not much use as far as the other world is concerned, but much, very much, use as concerns this; because there, if a man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and can become a legislator, a governor, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an ass he is—just as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great places, even though sometimes they are born noble idiots. There, if a man be rich, they give him costly presents, they ask him to feasts, they invite him to drink complicated beverages; but if he be poor and in debt, they require him to do that which they term to 'settle.'... In that country you might fall from a third-story window three several times and not mash either a soldier or a priest.... Jews there are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs.... They never have had to run races naked through the public streets against jackasses to please the people in carnival time; there they never have been driven by the soldiers into a church every Sunday for hundreds of years to hear themselves and their religion especially and particularly cursed." [21]

While I have Mark Twain in hand, I will make two more quotations from him, and then dismiss him for good. Looking from the dome of St. Peter's upon the building which was once the Inquisition, he says: "How times are changed, between the older ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It was for a lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the victims limb from limb, and made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, when the holy Mother Church became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant Inquisition, and pointed to the blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him—first by twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their flesh with pincers—red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The true religion, properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive, also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more."

Speaking of a mosaic group at the side of the Scala Santa which represents the Saviour, St. Peter, Pope Leo, St. Silvester, Constantine and Charlemagne, he says: "Peter is giving the pallium to the Pope, and a standard to Charlemagne. The Saviour is giving the keys to St. Silvester, and a standard to Constantine. No prayer is offered to the Saviour, who seems to be of little importance anywhere in Rome; but an inscription below says, 'Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and victory to King Charles.' It does not say, 'Intercede for us, through the Saviour, with the Father, for this boon,' but 'Blessed Peter, give it us.'

"In all seriousness—without meaning to be frivolous, without meaning to be irreverent, and, more than all, without meaning to be blasphemous—I state, as my simple deduction from the things I have seen and the things I have heard, that the Holy Personages rank thus in Rome:

"First. 'The Mother of God'—otherwise the Virgin Mary.

"Second. The Deity.

"Third. Peter.

"Fourth. Some twelve or fifteen canonized popes and martyrs.

"Fifth. Jesus Christ the Saviour (but always an infant in arms).

"I may be wrong in this—my judgment errs often, just as is the case with other men's—but it is my judgment, be it good or bad.

"Just here I will mention something that seems curious to me. There are no 'Christ's Churches' in Rome, and no 'Churches of the Holy Ghost,' that I can discover. There are some four hundred churches, but about a fourth of them seem to be named for the Madonna and St. Peter. There are so many named for Mary that they have to be distinguished by all sorts of affixes, if I understand the matter rightly. Then we have churches of St. Louis, St. Augustine, St. Agnes, St. Calixtus, St. Lorenzo in Lucina, St. Lorenzo in Damaso, St. Cecilia, St. Athanasius, St. Philip Neri, St. Catherine, St. Dominico, and a multitude of lesser saints whose names are not familiar in the world—and away down, clear out of the list of the churches, comes a couple of hospitals; one of them is named for the Saviour and the other for the Holy Ghost!"

But we have allowed this clean, shrewd, racy American with his biting satire and his outspoken common sense, to lead us far away from our subject. Let us come back to the Church of the Cappuccini. For, besides its horrible cemetery, it contains another object of great interest, though of a very different character, viz., Guido's great picture of the Archangel Michael trampling upon the devil. The devil's face is said to be a portrait of Pope Innocent X., against whom the painter had a spite. It is not for the purpose of describing the picture that I refer to it, for I am not competent to do that, but for the purpose of quoting the animadversions of another American writer upon the custom of concealing this picture and others of special interest in Romish churches with closely drawn curtains, requiring the presence of an attendant to unveil them and the bestowment of a fee by the visitor. "The churchmen of Italy make no scruple of sacrificing the very purpose for which a work of sacred art has been created, that of opening the way for religious sentiment through the quick medium of sight, by bringing angels, saints and martyrs down visibly upon earth—of sacrificing this high purpose, and, for aught they know, the welfare of many souls along with it, to the hope of a paltry fee. Every work by an artist of celebrity is hidden behind a veil, and seldom revealed, except to Protestants, who scorn it as an object of devotion, and value it only for its artistic merit."

The same author (Hawthorne), speaking of the terrible lack of variety in the subjects of the great Italian masters, says a quarter part, probably, of any large collection of pictures consists of Virgins and infant Christs.... Half of the other pictures are Magdalens, Flights into Egypt, Crucifixions, etc. "The remainder of the gallery comprises mythological subjects, such as nude Venuses, Ledas, Graces, and, in short, a general apotheosis of nudity.... These impure pictures are from the same illustrious and impious hands that adventured to call before us the august forms of apostles and saints, the Blessed Mother of the Redeemer, and her Son, at his death, and in his glory, and even the awfulness of him to whom the martyrs, dead a thousand years ago, have not dared to raise their eyes. They seem to take up one task or the other—the disrobed woman whom they call Venus, or the type of highest and tenderest womanhood in the mother of the Saviour—with equal readiness, but to achieve the former with far more satisfactory success. If an artist sometimes produced a picture of the Virgin possessing warmth enough to excite devotional feelings, it was probably the object of his earthly love, to whom he thus paid the stupendous and fearful homage of setting up her portrait to be worshipped, not figuratively as a mortal, but by religious souls in their earnest aspirations towards divinity. And who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael, or receive any of his Virgins as heaven-descended likenesses, after seeing, for example, the "Fornarina" of the Barberini Palace, and feeling how sensual the artist must have been to paint such a brazen trollop of his own accord, and lovingly? Would the Blessed Mary reveal herself to his spiritual vision, and favor him with sittings alternately with that type of glowing earthliness, the Fornarina?"

True, Hawthorne proceeds at once to weaken the force of this criticism somewhat by referring to the throng of spiritual faces, innocent cherubs, serene angels, pure-eyed madonnas, and "that divinest countenance in the Transfiguration"—all of which we owe to Raphael's marvellous brush. But the criticism above quoted is sound. And that Hawthorne himself saw how little such "sacred art" had availed to lift the representatives of this kind of worship out of gross sensualism, let the following passage witness: "Here was a priesthood, pampered, sensual, with red and bloated cheeks, and carnal eyes. With apparently a grosser development of animal life than most men, they were placed in an unnatural relation with woman, and thereby lost the healthy, human conscience that pertains to other human beings, who own the sweet household ties connecting them with wife and daughter. And here was an indolent nobility, with no high aims or opportunities, but cultivating a vicious way of life, as if it were an art, and the only one which they cared to learn. Here was a population, high and low, that had no genuine belief in virtue; and if they recognized any act as criminal, they might throw off all care, remorse and memory of it, by kneeling a little while at the confessional, and rising unburdened, active, elastic and incited by fresh appetite for the next ensuing sin."

Of course all the priests are not such as above described, as Eugene Sue has endeavored to show in the character of Gabriel in The Wandering Jew, and Victor Hugo in the character of the good bishop in Les Miserables, and Marie Corelli in the character of the good Cardinal Bonpre in The Master Christian. Hawthorne simply describes the prevailing type. Let it be observed, too, that he is speaking of the priests in Italy, not of those in America, among whom we are glad to believe there is a much larger proportion of good men. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the present Premier of Italy has himself stated publicly, in a passage which I have quoted in Chapter XXIX., that there has been some improvement, at least in the outward conduct of the clergy, since the overthrow of the papal government, and that the immorality of the priests and cardinals is not so shamelessly flaunted in Rome as it used to be under the popes.

On the 20th of September, 1870, the Italian army entered Rome, after a slight resistance. This event, which marked the downfall of the temporal power of the papacy, the unification of Italy, and the establishment of religious liberty under the enlightened and progressive government of Victor Emmanuel, is properly commemorated in the name of a handsome street, Via Venti Settembre, which extends from the Porta Pia, where the army entered, to the Quirinal Palace, where the King resides. Appropriately placed on a street which thus commemorates the establishment of civil and religious freedom in Italy, are several of the Protestant churches, which for the last thirty years have caused a pure river of water of life to flow once more through Rome as in the days when the great Apostle of the Gentiles preached there the kingdom of God, and taught the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, none forbidding him.

At No. 7 on this high and pleasant street we find a tall, clean, handsome building, standing well back from the street, with a spacious, green yard in front, the whole occupying a portion of what were once the gardens of the Barberini Palace. A neat notice-board on the high iron picket fence informs us that this attractive building is the Presbyterian Church, and that the pastor is the Rev. J. Gordon Gray, D. D.

When you enter the church on Sunday morning, a few minutes before eleven o'clock, you find it filled with a congregation of exceptionally intelligent people, mostly English-speaking residents in Rome and English-speaking visitors from every part of the world, including many Christians of other denominations besides our own—for it does not take visitors in Rome long to find out how strong and wholesome is the spiritual nourishment here furnished, how broad-minded and large-hearted the minister is, and how surely he declares the whole counsel of God, without ever a syllable that can offend any of those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. If you return in the afternoon, as you will do if you are wise, and as everybody does, in fact, after hearing him once, you will find the house full again, and, while you will see no splendid pageant, no rows of bishops and archbishops in purple and lace and furs, no robing and disrobing, no intoned service in Latin, no choral responses from high and gilded choir loft, no clouds of incense filling the air—you will hear the old sweet gospel in all its pristine purity—you will see the great apostle and his friends before you, instinct with life and love and zeal, as the minister lectures, with astonishing fullness and accuracy of information and sympathetic understanding, on Roman Sites which can be identified with St. Paul's Sojourn Here, The Saints of Cæsar's Household in the light of the Columbaria, The Site and probable incidents of Paul's Roman Trial, The First Martyrdoms and the probable Site of Nero's Circus, Paul's Two Years in his Hired House, Paul's Travels and Labors between his First and Second Roman Imprisonments, The Closing Years of Paul's Ministry, The Jews in Rome in Paul's Time—and you will hear things that make for the peace of your soul and for your upbuilding on your most holy faith as he expounds The Chief Elements of Paul's Teaching; Christ in Early Christian Art as found in the Roman Catacombs; The State after Death, Prayers to the Dead, and Prayers for the Dead, in the light of the testimony of the Roman Catacombs; The Place and Efficacy of the Sacraments in the light of the testimony of the Roman Catacombs; and The Ministry in the Early Church of the Catacombs.

Surely never was Christian workman better adapted to his work than Dr. Gray. The sturdy frame, the massive head, the clear eye, the kindly voice, the genial manner, the transparent sincerity, and the ready sympathy of the man, invite one's confidence from the first, and the longer you know him the more you value him for his rare combination of strength and tenderness, and for his wisdom, piety and learning. We had the good fortune to hear his sermon on the eighteenth anniversary of the formation of his pastorate in Rome, in which he reviewed the history of his church during those eighteen years, and the years immediately preceding, and the growth of Protestantism in Rome since the downfall of the papacy—and a deeply interesting discourse it was. It lifted one's hopes for the future of Italy. Undoubtedly the day is breaking over the darkness which has so long lain like a pall over this lovely land.

A good man is known by his prayers. There is a fullness, propriety and fervor about Dr. Gray's public prayers that are seldom equalled. The homesick stranger, with the wide ocean between him and his native land—the professional man wavering in health and doubtful as to the future—the stricken widow, who has lost her husband by the sudden stroke of death—as well as those who bear the usual burdens of the human heart, find themselves strangely comforted and cheered, strangely relieved of their toils and cares and anxieties and fears, strangely upborne and strengthened, as this man of God pours from a sympathetic heart the needs of his people into the ear of him who careth for us. Among the usual petitions on Sunday morning there is invariably one for the King of England and the royal family, the President of the United States, and the King and Queen of Italy. We had two reminders on the 22nd of February that it was Washington's birthday: one was the flags hanging out at the American Embassy, and the other was Dr. Gray's prayer of thanksgiving for the character and services of Washington. He never forgets anything.

Yet his activities are multifarious. His resourcefulness, adequacy and strength have long since made him the real dean of the fine force of Protestant ministers in Rome. His advice is sought by them, and by all manner of visitors to Rome, on all manner of subjects. He is deeply interested in the matter of excavating the house of Priscilla and Aquila, the Apostle Paul's friends, on the Aventine, and hopes to raise the necessary funds and have that done—a valuable service to archæological and biblical learning. He ought by all means to be allowed to find time to publish a volume on The Apostle Paul in Rome. Dr. Gray is another of the many good gifts of Scotland to the world, and, like Dr. Alexander Whyte, of Edinburgh, and other eminent Scotchmen, is an Aberdeen man. They are some of the Aberdonians who almost tempt us at times to agree with the Aberdeen man of whom our good Scotch physician in Rome told me the other day, who said, "Tak' awa' Aberdeen and sax miles around it, and what would you have left?"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Even when confining myself to this one line, I have found no opportunity to give you any description of the Appian Way, over the paving-stones of which the Apostle Paul entered Rome in 56 A. D. (Acts xxviii. 14-16); or of the Pyramid of Cestius, still standing beside the road, just outside the gate which now bears the apostle's name—a sepulchral monument upon which his eyes must have rested for a moment as he passed out to his own execution—"Among the works of man, that pyramid is the only surviving witness of the martyrdom of St. Paul"; or of the Catacombs, those vast labyrinths of subterranean galleries, the aggregate length of which is estimated at nearly six hundred miles, so that if placed end to end they would extend the whole length of Italy—where the bodies of thousands of the early Christians were laid in full hope of the resurrection; or of the bronze statue of St. Peter in the great cathedral, the extended foot of which has been largely worn away by the kisses of Roman Catholic devotees—the figure which, on the occasion of Pope Leo's Jubilee, our party saw dressed up in a mitre and pontifical robes; or of Houdon's marvellous statue of St. Bruno in the Church of St. Maria degli Angeli, of which Clement XIV., the Pope who is supposed to have died of poison administered by the Jesuits, in 1774, used to say, "He would speak, if the rule of his order did not forbid it"; or of the statue of that other Bruno who now stands in the Campo de' Fiori, on the spot where he was burnt as a heretic in 1600 for his advocacy of the Copernican system.

I have been able to say nothing of the remains of Classical Rome, such as the palaces of the Cæsars, the Arch of Titus—with its bas-reliefs of the golden candle-stick and other treasures from the Temple at Jerusalem, which were borne among the spoils of that Emperor's triumph—the monuments of the Forum, the Column of Trajan, the tomb of Hadrian, the much lauded equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline Hill, the immensely impressive Pantheon, and the majestic statue of Pompey, at the foot of which Julius Cæsar was assassinated.

I have not been able even to mention such masterpieces of sculpture as the Dancing Faun, the Dying Gaul—"butchered to make a Roman holiday"—the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, the Young Augustus, and scores of others, or such paintings as Guido's "Aurora," Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," and the scarcely less wonderful creations of Botticelli, Titian and Domenichino.

I have had to pass unnoticed such tempting details as the Tarpeian Rock, the site of the bridge which Horatius kept in the brave days of old, the walls of the Paedagogium under the Palatine cliff, where a school boy had drawn, for the encouragement of his successors, a sketch of an ass turning a corn-mill, with the superscription in Latin, "Work, little donkey, as I have worked, and it will profit thee"; the famous Keyhole View of St. Peter's from the Aventine, and many others, for which I must refer you to other books.

Besides the books on Rome, such as Hare's Walks, and Hawthorne's Marble Faun, to which I have tried to introduce my readers by appetizing quotations from time to time in former letters, I must mention also Dennie's Pagan Rome, Story's Roba di Roma, Mrs. Ward's Eleanor (which contains the best descriptions of the wonderful scenery around Lake Nemi), and the standard works of Professor Lanciani. These are much better for home reading, and even for reading on the spot, than the guide books. In a sumptuously bound and profusely illustrated copy of Lanciani's New Tales of Old Rome, which was presented to me by a friend last Christmas, I find a criticism of the well-known passage in which Lord Mahon refers to the fact that the last of the Stuarts, the Old Pretender, his wife, and his two sons, are buried in St. Peter's, and where, Lord Mahon says, "a stately monument from the chisel of Canova has since risen to the memory of James III., Charles III., and Henry IX., kings of England, names which an Englishman can scarcely read without a smile or a sigh." Lanciani says, "Lord Mahon could have saved both his smiles and his sighs if he had simply read with care the epitaph engraved on the monument, which says: 'To James III., son of James II., King of Great Britain, to Charles Edward, and Henry, Dean of the Sacred College, Sons of James III., the last of the Royal House of Stuart.'" This is the only statement, so far as I have observed, in Professor Lanciani's writings which is not scrupulously fair. That the criticism is not perfectly fair is clear from the very inscription which he cites, where the Old Pretender is twice called James III.; from the inscription on the tomb of his wife, close at hand, where she is called "Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland"; from the fact that the canopy under which the body of the Old Pretender lay in state at Rome for five days, crowned, sceptred, and in royal robes, was inscribed, "Jacobus, Magnæ Britanniæ Rex, Anno MDCCLXVI."; and from the fact, stated by Lanciani himself in the same volume, that when Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, died, Cardinal York, his brother, proclaimed himself the legitimate sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland, under the name of Henry IX. Lord Mahon was substantially correct.

St. Peter's is a peculiarly appropriate place of sepulture for the line of tyrannical kings who tried so hard to fasten the yoke of Romanism upon Great Britain. They went to their own place. England and Scotland will do well to remember that the same forces which the Stuarts represented, and which endangered their liberties then, still constitute the gravest menace to the true freedom of their island empire.

One other book I must mention before finishing what I have to say about the literature of this vast subject: the volume entitled Ave Roma Immortalis, by Francis Marion Crawford, son of the sculptor to whom we are indebted for the superb equestrian statue of Washington at Richmond, with its circle of illustrious Virginians in bronze. Let no one be deterred by the Latin title. The book itself is written in the most delightful English. It is not to be commended without qualification, for this prolific author who bears the name of the immortal Huguenot partisan of South Carolina, and ought by every consideration, so far as we know, to be a sturdy Protestant, has suffered somewhat in his religious faith by his Italian birth and rearing. But his book is full of good things culled from wide and discriminating reading, the feature that is really of most value in a book of travel.

But I must not forget that, while there is no limit to such a subject as Rome, there is a limit to the patience of my readers. So we will now take leave of Rome abruptly, and pass at once to Naples and its environs, where we spent the concluding days of our sojourn in Italy.

CHAPTER XXXV.

The contrast between the heavenly scenery of this bay and that awful volcano, which stands over it like an ever-present threat of destruction, reminds one of the cherubim which stood at the gate of Eden to guarantee the restoration of redeemed and glorified humanity to communion with God, along with the self-revolving sword which symbolized the certainty and terribleness of divine vengeance upon sin. But neither by the promises of his grace nor by the threat of his vengeance do these people seem to be restrained from sin. Many of them are sunk in vice. The contrast between splendor and squalor, superfluous wealth and abject poverty, which characterizes all large cities, is sharper, if possible, here than anywhere else. But it is the latter, the picturesque misery of Naples, that makes most impression upon the visitor. Some of the narrow streets, often not more than ten or twenty feet wide, are indescribably filthy, and they swarm with bareheaded, untidy women and half-naked children, yelling hucksters and pertinacious beggars, dirty monks and gowned priests. All this, and more which cannot here be set down, in one of the loveliest places on this beautiful earth.

An observant and witty friend of mine says: "The people live outdoors, and for the best of reason—they would die indoors.... Into most of the living rooms on their narrowest streets the sun never shines.... At the best, the ordinary buildings feel sepulchral, and an overcoat is to be worn here in the house, and not on the streets! Lining the sides of many, if not most of the streets, are shops or booths. They are, as far as one can see, single rooms, furnished about the door with vegetables, or meats, or maccaroni, or wine bottles, or charcoal, or bread, the rest of the room filled with beds and tables and dressers, with dishes and food, and shrines and highly-colored chromos of the saints and apostles. The children are washed and dressed in the doorways, and their heads constantly watched and investigated, much after the friendly fashion of monkeys. By the way, peddlers are forever thrusting small boxes of combs into our faces, insisting upon our buying. We have not purchased any yet—but who can tell? The people do much of their cooking in small braziers outside the doors, on the sidewalk, burning charcoal and fanning the fires with hats or aprons. They have no hesitancy about eating out of the same dish and in the public eye. Cows and goats are driven along the street and milked at the doors into glasses or bottles, which seems a fair guarantee for the milk being fresh. The calves and kids come to town, too, and take in the ways of the city, along with what they get of their mothers' milk. Women wash clothes at the public fountains, some bringing wash-boards or flat stones, some treading the clothes in tubs with their feet. From windows and balconies, on lines stretched along the streets and on cane poles that almost touch the opposite houses, the wet things drip and dry. Squads of soldiers in various uniforms pass and repass at all times of day; old women knit and rest in the doorways; vegetable and fish venders proclaim their wares in high, hard voices. At their cries baskets are let down from upper windows, and the sharpest bargains in the shrillest accents are driven in midair. If the goods are not satisfactory, down go the baskets to the sidewalk."

Of course we visited the aquarium, said to be the finest in the world, and the museum, with its two thousand mural paintings brought from Pompeii, and its collection of ancient bronzes—also the finest in the world.

But the things that interested us most were not in Naples, but around it—such as Puteoli, where, many centuries ago, on a balmy spring day like this, when the south wind was blowing softly over the sea, the Apostle Paul landed, with Luke and Aristarchus, on his way to Rome; and where the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Serapis, bearing sea-marks at various levels and having its columns perforated by lithodomites and containing imbedded shells, shows how the building, by gradual subsidence of the land, was first let down into the water, and then by volcanic upheaval lifted again to the higher level.