Eternal City

“ Throughout all Rome, shrine and niche and sculpture, picture, monument, arch and column, speak perpetually of some interposition of unseen forces with events and circumstances in this part of life. The Eternal City in its rich and poetic symbolism is one great object lesson of the interblending of the two worlds, the natural and the spiritual. ”

“ Of the thousands of intelligent persons from all quarters of the globe who annually visit the Eternal City, how many are there who take away with them on their departure any more distinct impression of the scenes that have in the course of centuries been enacted within its walls than that it was once the seat of a secular empire which has long since passed away, and of a spiritual empire which is slowly nodding to its fall? ”

“ The Eternal City is, after all, as vital a portion of the story as are the adventures of Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, and Donatello. They could not have existed and played their parts in any other city of the world. ”

“ Empires, principalities, powers, and dominions have perished; altars and their gods have mingled with the dust; a religion which made men virtuous in peace and invincible in war has perished or been supplanted, yet the Eternal City itself remains. ”

“ The limits of the Eternal City had been turned into one great treasure-house of precious reminders of former and presages of a future greatness. The visitor to Rome or to Florence might study from the originals the choicest forms in which the art of the ancient world had expressed itself. ”

“ Do not sketches such as these revive for us all those feelings which Rome awakened in ourselves, bringing back the clime, the sky, the loneliness, the mingled feeling of grandeur and situation—the gentle melancholy with which the eternal city impresses even the least imaginative mind? ”

“ To the man who had extended the dominion of her ancient language—who had erected the trophies of philosophy and imagination in the haunts of ignorance and ferocity—whose captives were the hearts of admiring nations enchained by the influence of his song—whose spoils were the treasures of ancient genius rescued from obscurity and decay—the Eternal City offered the just and glorious tribute of her gratitude. ”

“ The high state of civilization to which this region attained, and its progress in the arts, are manifested by the architectural remains which still adorn its cities,—remains which, in elegance of design and imposing magnificence, are unequalled by even the far-famed ruins of the Eternal City. ”

“ We are in the "city of the dead." The wind sighs through the waving branches of the trees, with a mournful melody, suggestive of the place. Near by is the bustling city, but here we are surrounded only by the mute, though eloquent testimonies of man's eternal rest. ”

“ What great thing, therefore, is it for that eternal and celestial city to despise all the charms of this world, however pleasant, if for the sake of this terrestrial city Brutus could even put to death his son,—a sacrifice which the heavenly city compels no one to make? ”

“ Out of unconscious slumber into the brilliant morning and the thick activity we come. But, by-and-by, the heaving mass breaks into units, and one by one dissolves into the shadow of the night. Two cities grow up side by side—the city in which men appear, the city into which they vanish; the city whose houses and goods they possess for a little while [33] and then leave behind them, and the city whose white monuments just show us the pinnacles of their estates in the eternal world. ”

“ The early traditions of the Eternal City have so long been recounted as truth that the world is slow to give up even the least jot or tittle of them, and when they are disproved as fact, they must be told over and over again as story. ”

“ Those eternal heights hold the Double City together in an amity that breathes over both the same national look—the impression of the same national soul. In the olden time, the city gathered herself almost under the very wing of the Castle ”

“ Dead, where the blight of pagan and mediaeval superstition has eaten into the quivering tissues; it lives where the pulsing current of modernism 30 expands its shrunken arteries and bears the nourishing truth. Though eternal in tradition and colossal in material achievement, the glory of the Imperial City nevertheless rests on a foundation of perishable human ambitions, creeds, and beliefs, manifested outwardly for a time in brilliant deeds, great edifices, and comprehensive codes, but always bearing within themselves the seeds of their own decay. ”

“ The horror which lay over Metropolis was Paradise compared with the last, cruel destruction which the lump of humanity was invoking from the lowest and hottest of hells upon the city and its inhabitants. ”

“ It was as when one turns from a melancholy stroll in a decayed town or ruined city, with its crumbling and mouldering structures, its sewers choked with foulness, and its festering graveyards whose inscribed stones only vary the tale of woe and vanity and falsehood, and mounts a breezy hill in our fairest regions of yet lonely space, and gazes upon the prospect. ”

“ Though maimed, her Soul yet lives—indomitable will— The Faith, the Hope, the Spirit bold nor quake nor fire can kill. To-morrow hearts shall throb again with western enterprise, And from the ruins of to-day a city shall arise— A monument of beauty great reared by the Conquerors of Fate— The City of the Golden Gate and matchless sunset skies! ”

“ The spires shoot up into the sky—the domes tranquilly rest there—all the roofs glitter as with diamonds, all the white walls are lustrous, save where, here and there, some loftier range of buildings hangs its steadfast shadow o'er square or street, magnifying the city, by means of separate multitudes of structures, each town-like in itself, and the whole gathered together by the outward eye, and the inward imagination, worthy indeed of the name of Metropolis. ”

“ But even as it is to-day, that ghost of a city is among the world's wonders. There is the thick stone wall that goes all about the town. On its wide top the soldiers used to stand to fight in ancient days. ”

“ Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun. ”

“ So then, whether standing in the shadow of the great edifice—typical of the soaring twentieth century—or setting foot on its roof high in air, many fathoms higher in the deeps of space than where once we sat or stood, and thence gazing upon the sea of humanity beneath, or over the great city set between the two silver streams, and ever fascinating and beautiful with boyhood's memories, let us stop to recall the past. ”

“ One can easily imagine the older cities looking scornfully or pityingly down upon it, themselves secure in the grim or the delicate beauty of their age. Only once in many generations does a city rise which achieves a character, an individuality, without waiting for the lingering years to bestow it. It happens so seldom as to come almost into the realm of the miraculous. Yet to him who for the first time sees New York at night, or as the declining sun sets ten thousand roofs for the moment aflame—a miracle seems not more wonderful than this. ”

“ It has been built and burrowed from time immemorial far down underneath some great, beautiful, sunny, human metropolis, called The World Above, but of this light-crowned city those who inhabit the subterranean retreats of The Darker Realm know but little, of its happy days and doings they can but dream. ”

“ Who that has ever looked upon the strange conglomerations of architecture that line the thoroughfares of an ancient city, bearing trace of a touch from the hand of every age, from centuries far remote,—or watched the busy scenes of modern every-day life, surrounded by solemnly majestic, or quaintly grim old witnesses of our nation’s’ infancy,—but has felt the Poetry of History that lies treasured up in the chronicles of an “Old City?” ”

“ I know another, one still more strange; not the corpse, but the ghost of a city. On all sides where the fountain splashes into a marble basin, I seem to hear stories of the floating city. Yes, the fountain-streams can tell them! The billows on the shore sing of them. Over the surface of the sea there often floats a mist, that is the widow’s weeds. The sea’s bridegroom is dead; his palace and city are now a mausoleum. Dost thou know this city? ”

“ Those condemned to wear it all their life long, live in an underground city, which is accounted a wonder of the world in all the five continents. It is an architectural wonder—that is true. It is light and shining bright and a model of tidiness. It lacks nothing but the sun—and the rain—and the moon by night—nothing but the sky. That is why the children which are born there have their gnome-like faces.... Do you want to go down into this city under the earth in order the more to enjoy your dwelling which lies so high above the great Metropolis, in the light of the sky? ”

“ With him are his sister, Beata Maria, and their friends Alessandro and Anna his wife, a cluster of human flowers, full of living charm and sap, transplanted into the ‘dead city.’ But the dead city is not merely dead; it is mysteriously fraught with the power of the vanished past to control the present and the future. Its mouldering ruins are the arena of a struggle between Death and Life, in which death triumphs and life receives the mortal blow. ”

“ So you sit, like Jupiter upon Olympus, and look down from afar upon men’s life. The city is as silent as a city of the dead: from all its humming thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill. ”

“ In the towers and upper stories of the lofty buildings still standing in the heart of the city, crowds of unfortunates assembled, gazing with horror at the spectacles around them, and wringing their hands in helpless despair. ”

“ All the rest of the year the city is in that state of dull apathy, between life and death, which renders it similar to a kind of station between this world and the next — a sublime spot, a resting-place full of poetry and character, and at which Franz had already halted five or six times, and at each time found it more marvellous and striking. ”

“ It seems to be a portal to the empty sky, a door through which the traveler might pass into the infinity of space. It is, in fact, the gate of an almost deserted metropolis, a city that was built for a population of one hundred thousand and contains to-day less than six thousand souls. ”

“ And he led them away from the palace on the beautiful hill—away from all the sights and sounds that were collected together there to delight the soul of man with both bodily and intellectual enjoyment—down into the city in the valley, among the close-packed habitations of common men, congregated there to labour, and just exist, and then die. ”

“ And through it all, the light reflected from a hundred windows flashed and blazed in wondrous glory, until the city seemed a dream of unearthly splendor and fairy loveliness, in which the people moved in wonder and in awe. ”

“ These days were days of anguish to the rulers, to those who considered themselves the masters of life; each night was as long as thousands of nights, so thick was the gloom, so timidly shone the few fires scattered through the city. And then the monster city, created by the centuries, gorged with human blood, showed itself in all its shameful weakness ”

“ Before me the walls still stretched away into the distance as far as the eye could reach, completely hiding the city at those points where the ground rose, so that one would never have dreamed that just beyond those deserted ruins there could be a great metropolis, crowned with mighty buildings and inhabited by a teeming population ”

“ But above all things pass not to the hills right, for no man goes there; there away the forests are thick as night, and in their perpetual shadows are the ruins of a Hither city, a haunted fairy town to which some travellers have been, but whence none ever returned alive. ”

“ There is a City hidden in heaven, but destined, by and by to come down to earth; it rises street above street, and wall above wall, and battlement above battlement; its streets are of gold transparent as glass, its gates are of pearl, and its foundations and walls of crystal are garnished with precious stones. It is peopled by happy spirits in resurrection bodies, by star-crowned men who have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb,—by none else. ”

“ And you, father, you press your fingers upon the little blue metal plate near your right hand, and your great glorious, dreadful city of Metropolis roars out, proclaiming that she is hungry for fresh human marrow and human brain and then the living food rolls on, like a stream, into the machine-rooms, which are like temples, and that, just used, is thrown up.... ”

“ But the small, eager sect of Gothics, whose leader was Desertus, half monk, half one enraptured, had sworn the solemn oath: If one hand from the wicked city of Metropolis were to dare to touch just one stone of the cathedral, then they would neither repose nor rest until the wicked city of Metropolis should lie, a heap of ruins, at the foot of her cathedral. ”

“ It was his place to turn the hut into a palace for his Queen; and so he would, when the Wise Men came out of the East and built the Magic City.
When the Fools had made the plains a fit place for human beings to inhabit, planting trees to draw down the reluctant rain from the clouds, sowing seed and raising crops sometimes, to their surprise and the amazement of those who heard of it, the Wise Men would appear and buy the land, and the building of great cities would begin. ”