FROM ROME TO ANCONA.

Habet sua fulmina Juno[16].

No such thing, however, could be found or heard of. Indeed a search after truth requires such patience, such penetration, and such learning, that it is no wonder she is so seldom got a glimpse of; whoever is diligently desirous to find her, is so perplexed by ignorance, so retarded by caution, so confounded by different explications of the same thing recurring at every turn, so sickened with silly credulity on the one hand, and so offended with pertness and pyrrhonism on the other, that it is fairly rendered impossible for one to keep clear of prejudices, while the steady resolution to do so becomes itself a prejudice.—But with regard to little follies, it is better to laugh at than lament them.

We were shewn one morning lately the spot where it is supposed St. Paul suffered decapitation; and ourCiceronepointed out to us three fountains, about the warmth of Buxton, Matlock, or Bristol water, which were said to have burst from the ground at the moment of his martyrization. A Dutch gentlemanin company, and a steady Calvinist, loudly ridiculed the tradition, called it an idle tale, and triumphantly expressed hiscertain conviction, that such an eventcould not possiblyhave ever taken place. To this assertion no reply was made; and as we drove home all together, the conversation having taken a wide range and a different turn, he related in the course of it a long Rousseau-like tale of a lady he once knew, who having the strongest possible attachment to one lover, married another upon principles of filial obedience, still retaining inviolate her passion for the object of her choice, who, adorned with every excellence and every grace, continued a correspondence with her across the Atlantic ocean; having instantly changed his hemisphere, not to give the husband disturbance; who on his part admired their letters, many of which were written inhispraise, who had so cruelly interrupted their felicity. Seeing some marks of disbelief in my countenance, he begun observing, in an altered tone of voice, thatcommonandvulgarminds might hold such events to be out of possibility, and such sentiments to be out of nature, but it was only because they wereabovethecomprehensionand beyondthe reach of people educated in large and corrupt capitals, Paris, Rome, or London, to think true. Now was not some share of good breeding (best learned in great capitals perhaps) necessary to prevent one from retorting upon such an orator—that it was more likely nature should have been permitted to deviate in favour of Paul the apostle of Jesus Christ, than of a fat inhabitant of North Zealand, no way distinguished from the mass of mankind?

But we have been called to pass some moments on the Cælian hill; and see theChiesa di San Gregorio, interesting above all others to travellers who delight in the vestiges of Pagan Rome: as, having been built upon a Patrician’s house, it still to a great degree retains the form of one; while to the scholar who is pleased with anecdotes of ecclesiastical history, the days recur when the stone chair they shew us, contented the meek and venerable bishop of Rome who sate in it, while his gentle spirit sought the welfare of every Christian, and refused to persecute even the benighted and unbelieving Jews; opposing only the arms of piety and prayer, to the few enemies his transcendent excellence had raisedhim. His picture here is considered as a master-piece of Annibale Caracci; and it is strange to think that the trial-pieces, as they are called, should be erroneously treated of in the Carpenteriana: when speaking of the contention between the two scholars, to decide which the master sent for an old woman, Monsieur de Carpentier tells us the dispute lay between Domenichino and Albano—a gross mistake; as it was Guido, not Albano, who ventured to paint something in rivalry with Domenichino, relative to St. Andrew and his martyrdom; and these trial-pieces produced from her the same preference given by every spectator who has seen them since; for when Caracci (unwilling to offend either of his scholars, as both were men of the highest rank and talents) enquired ofherwhatshethought of Guido’s performance?—“Indeed,” replied the old woman, “I have never yet looked at it, so fully has my mind been occupied by the powers shewn in that of Domenichino.”

Thevecchiais here at Rome the common phrase when speaking of your only female servant, a person not unlike an Oxford or Cambridge bed-maker in appearance; and muchamazed was I two days ago at the answer ofourvecchia, when curiosity prompted me to ask her age:—“O, Madam, I am a very aged woman,” was the reply, “and have two grandchildren married; I am forty-two years old,poveretta me!” I told an Italian gentleman who dined with us what Caterina had said, and begged him to ask thelaquais de place, who waited on us at table, a similar question. He appeared a large, well-looking, sturdy fellow, about thirty-eight years old; but said he was scarce twenty-two; that he had been married six years, and had five children. How old was your wife when you met?—“Thirteen, Sir,” answered Carlo: so all is kept even at least; for if they end life sooner than in colder climates, they begin it earlier it is plain.

Yet such things seem strange tous; so do a thousand which occur in these warm countries in the commonest life. Brick floors, for example, with hangings of a dirty printed cotton, affording no bad shelter for spiders, bugs, &c.; a table in the same room, encrusted withverd antique, very fine and worthy of Wilton house; with some exceeding goodcopies of the finest pictures here at Rome; form the furniture of our present lodging: and now we have got the little casement windows clean to look at it, I pass whole hours admiring, even in the copy, our glorious descent from the cross, by Daniel de Volterra; which to say truth loses less than many a great performance of the same kind, because its merits consist in composition and design; and as sentiment, not style, is translatable, so grouping and putting figures finely together can be easier transmitted by a copy, than the meaner excellencies of colouring and finishing. Homer and Cervantes may be enjoyed by those who never learned their language, at least to a great degree; while a true taste of Gray’s Odes or Martial’s Epigrams has been hitherto found exceedingly difficult to communicate. It would, however, be cruel to deny the merit of colouring to Daniel de Volterra’s descent from the cross, only because being painted in fresco it has suffered so terribly by time and want of care, but it is now kept covered, and they remove the curtain when any body desires to contemplate its various beauties.

The church of Santa Maria Maggiore has been too long unspoken of, rich as it is with the first gold torn from the unfortunate aborigines of America; a present from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to the Pope, in return for that permission he had given them to exert and establish their sanguinary sway over those luckless nations. One pillar from the temple of Peace is an ill-adapted ornament to this edifice, built nearly in the form of an ancientbasilica; and with so expensive a quantity of gilding, that it is said two hundred and fifty thousand pounds were expended on one chapel only, which is at last inferior in fame and beauty tocappella Corsini; in riches and magnificence tocappella Borghese, where an amethyst frame of immense value surrounds the names, in gold cypher, of our blessed Saviour and his Mother, the ground of which is of transparent jasper, and cannot be matched for elegance or perfection, being at least four feet high (the tablets I mean), and three feet wide. But to this Borghese family, I am well persuaded, it would be a real fatigue to count the wealth which they enjoy.

Villa Pamphili is a lovely place, or might be made so; but laying out pleasure grounds is not the forte of Italian taste. I never saw one of them, except Lomellino of Genoa, who had higher notions of a garden than what an opera scene affords; and that is merely a range of trees in great pots with gilded handles, and rows of tall cypresses planted one between every two pots, all straight over against each other in long lines; with an octangular marble bason to hold water in the middle, covered for the most part with a thick green scum.

At Villa Pamphili is a picture of Sanctorius, who made the weighing balance spoken of by Addison in the Spectator; it was originally contrived for the Pamphili Pope. And here is an old statue of Clodius profaning the mysteries of the Bona Dea, as we read in the Roman history. And here are camels working in the park like horses: we found them playing about at their leisure when we were at Pisa, and at Milan they were shewed for a show; so little does one state of Italy connect with another. These three cities cannot possibly be much further from each other than London, York, and Exeter; yet the manners differentirely, and what is done in one place is not known at all in the other. It must be remembered that they are all separate states.

At the Farnesini palace our amusements were of a nature very contrary to this; but every place produces amusement when one is willing to be pleased. After looking over the various and inestimable productions of art contained there, we came at last to the celebrated marriage of Alexander’s Roxana; where, say some of the books of description, the world’s greatest hero is represented by Europe’s greatest painter. Some French gentlemen were in our company, and looking steadily at the picture for a while, one of them exclaimed, “A la fin voila ce qui est vrayment noble; cet Alexandre là; il paroit effectivement le roy de France même[17].”

The Spada palace boasts Guercino’s Dido, so disliked by the critics, who say she looks spitted; but extremely esteemed by those that understand its merit in other respects. There is also the very statue kept at this palace, at the feet of which Cæsar fell when he was assassinated at the capitol: those who shew itnever fail to relate his care to die gracefully; which was likewise the last desire that occupied Lucretia’s mind: Augustus too, justly considering his life as scenical, desired theplauditsof his friends at its conclusion: and even Flavius Vespasian, a plain man as one should think during a pretty large portion of his existence, wished at last todie like an emperor. That this statue of Pompey should have been accidentally found with the head lying in one man’s ground and the body in another, is curious enough: a rage for appropriation gets the better of all the love of arts; so the contending parties (like the sisters in David Simple, with their fine-worked carpet) fairly severed the statue, and took home each his half; the proprietor of this palace meanwhile purchased the two pieces, stuck them once more together, and here they are.—Pity but the sovereign had carried both off for himself.—Pius Sextus however is not so disposed: he has had a legacy left him within these last years, to the prejudice of some nobleman’s heirs; who loudly lamentedtheir fate, andhis tyrannywho could take advantage, as they expressed it, of their relation’s caprice.The Pope did not give it them back, because they behaved so ill, he said; but neither did he seize what was left him, by dint of despotic authority;he went to lawwith the family for it, which I thought a very strange thing;and lost his cause, which I thought a still stranger.

We have just been to see his gardens; they are poor things enough; and the device of representing Vulcan’s cave with the Cyclops, inwater-works, was more worthy of Ireland than Rome! Monte Cavallo is however a palace of prodigious dignity; the pictures beyond measure excellent; his collection of china-ware valuable and tasteful, and there are two Mexican jars that can never be equalled.

Villa Albani is the most dazzling of any place yet however; and the caryatid pillars the finest things in it, though replete with wonders, and distracting with objects each worthy a whole day’s attention. Here is an antique list of Euripides’s plays in marble, as those tell me who can read the Greek inscriptions; I lose infinite pleasure every day, for want of deeper learning. Pillars not only ofgiall’ antique, but ofpaglia[18], which no house but this possesses, amaze and delightindocti doctiquethough; the Vatican itself cannot shew such: a red marble mask here, three feet and a half in diameter, is unrivalled; they tell you it is worth its own weight in louis d’ors: a canopus in basalt too; and cameos by the thousand.

Mengs should have painted a more elegant Apollo for the centre of such a gallery; but his muses make amends; the Viaggiana says they are all portraits, but I could get nobody to tell me whose. The Abbé Winckelman, who if I recollect aright lost his life by his passion forvirtù, arranged this stupendous collection, in conjunction with the cardinal, whose taste was by all his contemporaries acknowledged the best in Rome.

We were carried this morning to a cabinet of natural history belonging to another cardinal, but it did not answer the account given of it by our conductors.

What has most struck me here as a real improvement upon social and civil life, was the school of Abate Sylvester, who, upon theplan of Monsieur L’Epée at Paris, teaches the deaf and dumb people to speak, read, write, and cast accounts; he likewise teaches them the principles of logic, and instructs them in the sacred mysteries of our holy religion. I am not naturally credulous, nor apt to take payment in words for meanings; much of mylifehas been spent, and all myyouth, in the tuition of babies; I was of course less likely to be deceived; and I can safely say, that they did appear to have learned all he taught them: that appearance too, if it were no more, is so difficult to obtain, the patience required from the master is so very great, and the good he is doing to mankind so extensive, that I did not like offensively to detect the difference betweenknowinga syllogism andappearingto know it. With regard to morality, the pupils have certainly gained many præcognita. While the capital scholars were shewing off to another party, I addressed a girl who sat working in the window, and perceived that she could explain the meaning of the commandments competently well. To prove the truth, I pretended to pick a gentleman’s pocket who stood near me;peccato!said the wench distinctly; she was about ten years old perhaps: but a little boy of seven was deservedly themaster’s favourite; he really possessed the most intelligent and interesting countenance I ever saw, and when to explain the major, minor, and consequence, he put the two first together into his hat with an air of triumph, we were enchanted with him. Some one to teize him said he had red hair; he instantly led them to a picture of our Saviour which hung in the room, said it was the same colour of his, and ought to be respected.

Surely it is little to the credit of us English, that this worthy Abbé Sylvester should have a stipend from government; that Monsieur L’Epée de Paris should be encouraged in the same good work; that Mr. Braidwood’s Scotch pupils should justly engage every one’s notice—whilewe sleep!A friend in company seeing me fret at this, asked me if I, or any one else, had ever seen or heard of a person really qualified for the common duties of society by any of these professors;—“That a deaf and dumb man should understand how to discourse about the hypostatic union,” added he, “I will not desire; but was there ever known in Paris, Edinburgh, or Rome, a deaf and dumb shoemaker, carpenter, or taylor? Or did ever any watchmaker, fishmonger, or wheelwright, ever keep and willinglyemploy a deaf and dumb journeyman?”—Nobody replied; and we went on our way to see what was easier decided upon and understood—the tomb of Raphael at the Pantheon.

Among the many tours that have been written, a musical tour, an astronomical tour, &c. I wonder we have never had a sepulchral tour, making the tombs of famous men its object of attention. That Raphael, Caracci, with many more people of eminence, sleep at the Pantheon, is however but a secondary consideration; few can think of the monuments in this church, till they have often contemplated its architecture, which is so finely proportioned that on first entering you think it smaller than it really is: the pillars are enormous, the shafts all of one piece, the composition Egyptian granite; these are the sixteen which support the portico built by Agrippa; whose car, adorned with trophies and drawn by brazen horses, once decorated the pediment, where the holes formed by the cramps which fastened it are still visible. Genseric changed the gate, and connoisseurs know not where he placed that which Agrippa made: the present gate is magnificent, but does notfit the place; much of the brass plating was removed by Urban the Eighth, and carried to St. Peter’s: he was the Barberini pope; and of him the people said—

Barbarini faciunt barbara, &c.

He was a poet however, and could make epigrams himself; there is a very fine edition of his poems printed at Paris under the title ofMaffei Barberini Poemata; and such was his knowledge of Greek literature, that he was called the Attic bee. The drunken faun asleep at Palazzo Barberini, by some accounted the first statue in Rome, we owe wholly to his care in its preservation.

But the Pantheon must not be quitted till we have mentioned its pavement, where the precious stones are not disposed, as in many churches, without taste or care, apparently by chance; here all is inlaid, so as to enchant the eye with its elegance, while it dazzles one with its riches: the black porphyry, in small squares, disposed in compartments, and inscribed as one may call it in pavonazzino perhaps; the red, bounded by serpentine; the granites, in giallantique, have an undescribable effect; no Florence table was ever so beautiful: nor can we here regret the caryatid pillars said by Pliny to have graced this temple in his time; while the four prodigious columns, two of Egyptian granite, two of porphyry, still remain, and replace them so very well. Montiosius, who sought for the pillars said by Pliny to have been placed by Diogenes, an Athenian architect, as supporters of this temple, relates however, that in the year 1580 he saw four of them buried in the ground as high as their shoulders: but it does not seem a tale much attended to; though I confess my own desire of digging, as he points out the place so exactly, on the right hand side of the portico. The best modern caryatids are in the old Louvre at Paris, done by Goujon; but those of Villa Albani are true antiques, perfect in beauty, inestimable in value.

The church that now stands where a temple to Bacchus was built,fuori delle mura, engaged our attention this morning. Nothing can be fresher than the old decorations in honour of this jocund deity; the figures of men andwomen carrying grapes, oxen drawing barrels, &c. all the progress of a gay and plenteous vintage; a sacrifice at the end. I forget to whom the church is now dedicated, butit isa church; and from under it has been dug up a sarcophagus, all of one piece of red porphyry, which represents on its sides a Bacchanalian triumph; the coffin is nine feet long, and the Pope intends removing it to the Vatican, as a companion to that of Scipio Æmilianus, found a few months ago; his name engraven on it, and his bones inside. Before the proper precautions could be taken however,theywere flung away by mistaken zeal and prejudice; but an Englishman, say they, who loves an unbeliever, got possession of atooth: meantime the ashes of the emperor Adrian, who, as Eusebius tells us, set up the figure of a swine on the gates of Bethlehem, built a temple in honour of Venus, on Mount Calvary; another to Jupiter, upon the hill whence our Saviour ascended into heaven in sight of his disciples;—hisashes are kept in a gilt pine-apple, brought from Castle St. Angelo, and preserved among other rarities in the Pope’s musæum. So poor Scipio’s remains needed not to have been treated worsethanhis, as we know not how good a Christian he might have made, had he lived but 150 years later: we are sure that he was a wise and a warlike man; that he fulfilled the scriptures unwittingly by burning Carthage; and that he protected Polybius, whom he would scarcely suffer out of his sight.

After looking often at the pictures of St. Sebastian, I have now seen his church founded by Constantine: he lies here in white marble, done by Bernini; and here are more marvellous columns.—I am tired of looking out words to express their various merits.

The catacombs attract me more strongly; here, and here alone, can one obtain a just idea of the melancholy lives, and dismal deaths, endured by those who first dared at Rome to profess a religion inoffensive and beneficial to all mankind. San Filippo Neri has his body somewhat distinguished from the rest of these old pious Christians, among whom he lived to a surprising age, making a cave his residence. Relics are now dug up every day from these retreats, and venerated as having once belonged to martyrs murdered for their early attachment to a belief nowhappily displayed over one quarter of the world, and making daily progress in another not discovered when those heroic mortals died to attest its truth. There is however great danger of deception in digging out the relics, these catacombs having been in Trajan’s time made a burial-place for slaves; and such it continued to be during the reign of those Roman emperors who despised rather than persecuted the new religion in its infancy. The consciousness of this fact should cure the passion many here shew for relics, the authenticity of which can never be ascertained. Those shewn to the people in St. Peter’s church one evening in the holy week, all came from here it seems; and loudly do our Protestant travellers exclaim at their idolatry who kneel during the exposure; though for my life I cannot see how the custom isidolatrous. He who at the moment a dead martyr’s robe is shewn him, begs grace of God to follow that great example, is certainly doing no harm, or in any wise contradicting the rules of our Anglican church, whose collects for every saint’s day express a like supplication for power to imitate that saint’s good example;if once they worship the relics indeed, it were better they were burned; and to say true, they should not be exposed without a sermon explaining their use, lest vulgar minds might be unhappily misled to mistake the real end of their exposure, and profanely substitute the creature for the Creator. Meanwhile no one has a right to ridicule the love of what once belonged to a favourite character, who has ever felt attachment to a dead friend’s snuff-box, or desire of possessing Scipio Æmilianus’s tooth.

But the best effort to excite temporary devotion, and commemorate sacred seasons, was the illuminated cross upon Good Friday night, depending from the high dome of St. Peter’s church; where its effect upon the architecture is strangely powerful, so large are the masses both of light and shade; whilst the sublime images raised in one’s mind by its noble simplicity and solitary light, hover before the fancy, and lead recollection round through a thousand gloomy and mysterious passages, with no unsteady pace however, while she follows the rays which beam from the Redeemer’s cross. Being obliged indeed to gowith company to these solemnities, takes off from their effect, and turns imagination into another channel, disagreeably enough, but it must be so; where there is a thing to be seen every one will go to see it, and that which was intended to produce sensations of gladness, gratitude, or wonder, endsin being a show. The consciousness of this fact only kept me from wishing to see the Duomo di Milano, or the cathedral of Canterbury illuminated just so, with lamps placed in rows upon a plain wooden cross; which surely would have, upon those old Gothic structures, an unequalled effect as to the forming of light and shadow.

But let us wish for any thing now rather than afine sight. I am tired with the very worda sight; while the Jesuits church here at Rome, with the figure of St. Ignatius all covered with precious stones, with bronze angels by Bernini, and every decoration that money can purchase and industry collect, rather dazzles than delights one, I think.

The Italians seem to find out, I know not why, that it is a good thing the Jesuits are gone; though they steadily endeavour to retain those principles of despotism which it was theirpeculiar province to inspire and confirm, and whilst all men must see that the work of education goes on worse in other hands. Indeed nothing can be wilder than committing youth to the tuition of monks and nuns, unless, like them, they were intended for the cloister. Young people are but too ready to find fault with their teachers, and these are given into the hands of those teachers who have a faultready found. Every christian, every moral instruction driven into their tender minds, weakens with the experience that he or she who inculcated it was a recluse; and that they who are to live in the world forsooth, must have more enlarged notions: whereas, to a Jesuit tutor, no such objection could be made; they were themselves men of the world, their institution not only permitted but obliged them to mingle with mankind, to study characters, to attend to the various transactions passing round them, and take an active part. It was indeed this spirit pushed too far, which undid and destroyed their order, so useful to the church of Rome. Connections with various nations they found best obtained by commerce, and the sweets of commerce once tasted, what body of men has been yet able to relinquish?But the principles of trade are formed in direct opposition to that spirit of subordination by which alonetheirexistence could continue; and it is unjust to charge any single event or person with the dissolution of a body, incompatible with that state of openness and freedom to which Europe is hastening. Incorporated societies too carry, like individuals, the seeds of their own destruction in their bosoms;

As man perhaps the moment of his breathReceives the lurking principle of death;The young disease, which must subdue at length,Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

As man perhaps the moment of his breath

Receives the lurking principle of death;

The young disease, which must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

Every warehouse opened in every part of Europe, every settlement obtained abroad, facilitated their undoing, by loosening the band which tied them close together. Extremes can never keep their distance from each other, while human affairs trot but in a circle; and surely no stronger proof of that position can be found, than the sight of Quakers in Pensylvania, and Jesuits in Paraguay, who lived with their converted Indian neighbours, alike in harmony, and peace, and love.

We have been led to reflections of this sort by a view of girls portioned here at Rome once a year, some for marriage and others for a nunnery; the last set were handsomest and fewest, and the people I converse with say that every day makes almost visible diminution in the number of monks and nuns. I know not, however, whether Italy will go on much the better for having so few convents; some should surely be left, nay somemustbe left in a country where it is not possible for every man to obtain a decent livelihood by labour as in England: no army, no navy, very little commerce possible to the inland states, and very little need of it in any; little study of the law too, where the prince or baron’s lips pronounce on the decision of property; what must people do where so few professions are open? Can theyallbe physicians, priests, or shopkeepers, where little physic is taken, and few goods bought? There are already more clergy than can live, and I saw anabatewith thepetit colletat Lucca, playing in the orchestra at the opera for eighteen pence pay. Let us be all contented with the benefits received from heaven, and let us learn better than to set upself, whether nation or individual, as a standardto which all others must be reduced; while imitation is at last but meanness, and each may in his own sphere serve God and love his neighbours, while variety renders life more pleasing.Quod sis esse velis[19], is an admirable maxim, and surely no self-denial is necessary to its practice; while God has kindly given to Italians a bright sky, a penetrating intellect, a genius for the polite and liberal arts, and a soil which produces literally, as well as figuratively, almost spontaneous fruits. He has bestowed on Englishmen a mild and wholesome climate, a spirit of application and improvement, a judicious manner of thinking to increase, and commerce to procure, those few comforts their own island fails to produce. The mind of an Italian is commonly like his country, extensive, warm, and beautiful from the irregular diversification of its ideas; an ardent character, a glowing landscape. That of an Englishman is cultivated, rich, and regularly disposed; a steady character, a delicious landscape.

I must not quit Rome however without a word of Angelica Kauffman, who, though neither English nor Italian, has contrived tocharm both nations, and shew her superior talents both here and there. Beside her paintings, of which the world has been the judge, her conversation attracts all people of taste to her house, which none can bear to leave without difficulty and regret. But a sight of the Santa Croce palace, with its disgustingJob, and the man in armour so visibly horror-striken, puts all painters but Salvator Rosa for a while out of one’s head. This master’s works are not frequent, though he painted with facility. I suppose he is difficult to imitate or copy, so what we have of him isoriginal. There are too many living objects here in Job’s condition, not to render walking in the streets extremely disagreeable; and though we are told there are seventeen markets in Rome, I can find none, theforum boariumbeing kept alike in all parts of the city for ought I see; butchers standing at their shop doors, which are not shut nor the shop cleaned even on Sundays, while blood is suffered to run along the kennels in a manner very shocking to humanity. Mr. Greatheed made me remark that the knife they use now, is the same employed by the old Romans in cutting up thesacrificed victim; and there are in fact ancient figures in many bas-reliefs of this town, which represent the inferior officers, orpopæ, with a priest’s albe reaching from their arms and tucked up tight, with the sacrificing knife fastened to it, exactly as the modern butcher wears his dress. The apron was calledlimus, and there was a purple welt sewed on it in such a manner as to represent a serpent:

Velati limo, et verbenâ tempora vincti[20];

which Servius explains at length, but gives no reason for the serpentine form, by some people exalted, particularly Mr. Hogarth, as nearly allied to the perfection of all possible grace. This looks hypothetical, but when the map of both hemispheres displayed before one, shews that the Sun’s path forms the same line, called by pre-eminence Ecliptic, we will pardon their predilection in its favour.

But it is time to take leave of thisRoma triumphans, as she is represented in one statue with a weeping province at her foot,sobeautiful! it reminded me of Queen Eleanor and fair Rosamond. The Viaggiana sent me to look for many things I should not have found withoutthat instructive guide, particularly the singular inscription on Gaudentius the actor’s tomb, importing that Vespasian rewarded him with death, but thatKristus, for so Christ is spelt, will reward him with a finer theatre in heaven. He was one of our early martyrs it appears, and an altar tohimwould surely be now more judiciously placed at a play-house door than one to good St. Anthony, under whose protection the theatre at Naples is built; with no great propriety it must be confessed, when that Saint, disgusted by the levities of life, retired to finish his existence, far from the haunts of man, among the horrors of an unfrequented desert. So has it chanced however, that by many sects of Christians, the player and his profession have been severely reprobated; Calvinists forbid them their walls as destructive to morality, while Romanists, considering them as justly excommunicated, refuse them the common rites of sepulture. Scripture affords no ground for such severity. Dr. Johnson once told me that St. Paul quoted in his epistles a comedy of Menander; and I got the librarian at Venice to shew me the passage marked as a quotation in one of the old editions: it is thena fair inference enough that the apostle could never have prohibited to his followers the sight of plays, when he cited them himself; they were indeed more innocent than any other show of the days he lived in, and if well managed may be always made subservient to the great causes of religion and virtue. The passage cited was this:

Evil communication corrupts good manners.

And now with regard to the present state of morals at Rome, one must not judge from staring stories told one; it is like Heliogabalus’s method of computing the number of his citizens from the weight of their cobwebs. It is wonderful to me the people are no worse, where no methods are taken to keep them from being bad.

As to the society, I speak not from myself, for I saw nothing of it; some English liked it, but more complained. Wanting amusement, however, can be no complaint, even without society, in a city so pregnant with wonders, so productive of reflections; and if the Roman nobles are haughty, who can wonder; when one sees doors of agate, andchimney-pieces of amethyst, one can scarcely be surprised at the possessors pride, should they in contempt turn their backs upon a foreigner, whom they are early taught to consider as the Turks consider women, creatures formed for theiruseonly, or at bestamusement, and devoted to certain destruction at the hour of death. With such principles, the hatred and scorn they naturally feel for a protestant will easily swell into superciliousness, or burst out into arrogance, the moment it is unrestrained by the necessity of forms among the rich, and the desire of pillage in the poor.

But I shall be gladnowto exchange lapis lazuli for violets, and verd antique for green fields. Here are more amethysts about Rome than lilacs; and the laburnum which at this gay season adorns the environs of London, I look for in vain about the Porta del Popolo. The proud purple tulip which decorates the ground hereabouts, opposed to the British harebell, isItalyandEnglandagain; but theharebellby cultivation becomes ahyacinth, thetulipremains where it began. We are now at the 16th of April, yet I know not how or why it is, although the oaks, young, small,and straggling as they are, have the leaves come out all broad and full already, though the fig is bursting out every day and hour, and the mulberry tree, so tardy in our climate, that I have often been unable to see scarcely a bud upon them even in May, is here completely furnished. Apple trees are yet in blossom round this city, and the few elms that can be found, are but just unfolding. Common shrubs continue their wintry appearance, and in the general look of spring little is gained. The hedges now of Kent and Surrey are filled with fragrance I am sure, and primroses in the remoter provinces torment the sportsmen with spoiling the drag on a soft scenting morning; while limes, horse-chesnuts, &c. contribute to produce an effect not so inferior to that fostered by Italian sunshine, as I expected to find it.

Why the first breath of far-distant summer should thus affect the oak and fig, yet leave the elm and apple as with us, the botanists must tell; few advances have been made in vegetation since we left Naples, that is certain; the hedges were as forward near Pozzuoli two full months ago. And here are no China oranges to be bought; no, nor a cherry or strawberry to be seen, while every man offashion’s table in London is covered with them; and all the shops of Covent-garden and St. James’s-street hang out their luxurious temptations of fruit, to prove the proximity of summer, and the advantages of industrious cultivation. Our eating pleased me more at every town than this; where however a man might live very well I believe for sixpence a-day, and lodge for twenty pounds a-year; and whoever has no attachment to religion, friends, or country, no prejudices to plague his neighbours with, and no dislike to take the world as it goes, for six or seven years of his life, may spend them profitably at Rome, if either his business or his pleasure be made out of the works of art; as an income of two, or indeed one hundred poundsper annum, will purchase a man more refined delights of that kind here, than as many thousands in England: nor need he want society at the first houses, palaces one ought to call them, as Italians measure no man’s merit by the weight of his purse; they know how to reverence even poverty, and soften all its sorrows with an appearance of respect, when they find it unfortunately connected with noble birth. His own country folk’s neglect, as they pass through, would indeedbe likely enough to disturb his felicity, and lessen the kindness of his Roman friends, who having no idea of a person’s being shunned foranyotherpossible reasonexcept the want of a pedigree, would conclude thathismust be essentially deficient, and lament their having laid out so many caresses on an impostor.

The air of this city is unwholesome to foreigners, but if they pass the first year, the remainder goes well enough; many English seem very healthy, who are established here without even the smallest intention of returning home to Great Britain, for which place we are setting out to-morrow, 19th April 1786, and quit a town that still retains so many just pretences to be styled the first among the cities of the earth; to which almost as many strangers are now attracted by curiosity, as were dragged thither by violence in the first stage of its dominion, impelled by superstitious zeal in the second. The rage for antiquities now seems to have spread its contagion of connoisseurship over all those people whose predecessors tore down, levelled, and destroyed, or buried under ground their statues, pictures, every work of art;Poles, Russians, Swedes, and Germans innumerable, flock daily hither in this age, to admire with rapture the remains of those very fabrics which their own barbarous ancestors pulled down ten centuries ago; and give for the head of aLivia, aProbus, orGallienus, what emperors and queens could not then use with any efficacy, for the preservation of their own persons, now grown sacred by rust, and valuable from their difficulty to be decyphered. The English were wont to be the only travellers of Europe, the only dupes too in this way; but desire of distinction is diffused among all the northern nations, and our Romans here have it more in their power, with that prudence to assist them which it is said they do not want, if not toconquertheir neighbours once again, at least toruinthem, by dint of digging up their dead heroes, and calling in the assistance of their old Pagan deities,nowuseful to them in anewmanner, and ever propitious to this city, although

Enlighten’d Europe with disdainBeholds the reverenc’d heathen train,Nor names them more in this her clearer day,Unless with fabled force to aid the poet’s lay.R. Merry.

Enlighten’d Europe with disdainBeholds the reverenc’d heathen train,Nor names them more in this her clearer day,Unless with fabled force to aid the poet’s lay.

Enlighten’d Europe with disdain

Beholds the reverenc’d heathen train,

Nor names them more in this her clearer day,

Unless with fabled force to aid the poet’s lay.

R. Merry.

In our road hither we passed through what remains of Veia, once so esteemed and liked by the Romans, that they had a good mind, after they had driven Brennus back, to change the seat of empire and remove it there; but a belief in augury prevented it, and that event was put off till Constantine, seduced by beauties of situation, made the fatal change, and broke the last thread which had so long bound tight together the fasces of Roman sway. We did not taste theVinum Veientanummentioned by Martial and Horace, but trotted on to Civita Castellana, where Camillus rejected the base offer of the schoolmaster of Fescennium; a good picture of his well-judged punishment is still preserved in the Capitol.

The first night of our journey was spent at Otricoli, where I heard the cuckoo sing in a shriller sharper note than he does in England. I had never listened to him before since I left my own country, and his song alone wouldhave convinced me I was no longer in it. Porta di Fuga at Spoleta gates, commemorating poor Hannibal’s precipitate retreat after the battle of Thrasymene, may perhaps detain us a while upon this Flaminian way; it was not Titus Flaminius though, whose negotiations ruined Hannibal for ever, that gave name to the road, but Caius of the same family; they had been Flamens formerly, and were therefore called Flaminius, when drawn up by accident or merit into notice; the same custom still obtains with us: we haveDr. PriestleyandMr. Parsons.

Narni Bridge cost us some trouble in clambering, and more in disputing whether it was originally an aqueduct or a bridge—or both. It is a magnificent structure, irregularly built, the arches of majestic height, but all unequal. There was water enough under it when I was there to take off the impropriety apparent to many of turning so large an arch over so small a stream. Yet notwithstanding that the river was much swelled by long continuance of the violent rains which lately so overflowed the city of Rome, assisted by the Tyber, that people went about the streets in boats, notwithstandingthe snows tumbled down from the surrounding mountains, must have much increased the quantity, and lowered the colour of the river:—We found it evennowyellow with brimstone, and well deserving the epithet ofsulphureous Nar.

The next day’s drive carried us forward to Terni, where a severe concussion of the earth suffered only three nights since, kept all the little town in terrible alarm; the houses were deserted, the churches crowded, supplications and processions in every street, and people singing all night to the Virgin under our window.

Well! the next morning we hired horses for our gentlemen; a little cart, not inconvenient at all, for my maid and me; and scrambled over many rocks to view the far-famed waterfall, through a sweet country, pleasingly intersected with hedges and planted with vines; the ground finely undulated, and rising by gradations of hill till the eye loses itself among the lofty Appenines; surly as they seem, and one would think impervious; but against human art and human ambition, the boundary of rocks and roaring seas lift their proud heads in vain. Man rendersthem subservient to his imperial will, and forces them to facilitate, not impede his dominion; while ocean’s self supports his ships, and the mountain yields marble to decorate his palace.

This is however no moment and no place to begin a panegyric upon the power of man, and of his skill to subjugate the works of nature, where the people are trembling at its past, and dreading its future effects.

The cascade we came to see is formed by the fall of a whole river, which here abruptly drops into the Nar, from a height so prodigious, and by a course so unbroken, that it is difficult to communicate, so as to receive the idea: for no eye can measure the depth of the precipice, such is the tossing up of foam from its bottom; and the terrible noise heard long before one arrives so stunned and confounded all my wits at once, that many minutes passed before I observed the horror in our conductors, who coming with us, then first perceived how the late earthquake had twisted the torrent out of its proper channel, and thrown it down another neighbouring rock, leaving the original bed black and deserted, as a dismal proof of the concussion’s force.

One of our English friends who had visited Schaffhausen, made no difficulty to prefer this wonderful cascade to the fall of the Rhine at that place; and what with the fissures made in the ground by recent earthquakes, the sight of propt-up cottages which fright the fancy more than those already fallen, and the roar of dashing waters driven from their destined currents by what the people here emphatically term palpitations of the earth; one feels a thousand sensations of sublimity unexcited by less accidents, and soon obliterated by real danger.

Why the inhabitants will have this tumbling river beTopino, I know not; but no suggestions of mine could make them name it Velino, as our travellers uniformly call it: for, say they,quello è il nome del sorgente[21]; and in fact Virgil’s line,

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