Rome

“ When that effort is made, Rome itself is dying. Alaric and the fifth century have come. For Rome the drama of a thousand years is ended: Rome is moribund and has but strength to die greatly, tragically. Would you see the end of Rome as in a figure darkly? Over a dead Roman a Goth bends, and by the flare of a torch seeks to read on the still brow the secret of his own destiny. ”

“ This is the veritable beating, pulsing heart of Rome, and Rome is the world. Here is reality. Here are solidity, strength, planning made real, dreams hewn in enduring stone. Here are wealth, accomplishment, power, might. Not twenty paces across there is the Millenarium Aureum, the resplendent bronze column set up to mark the center of the Roman world, the point from which miles are counted along the highways and their joining sea lanes stretching to the ends of the known earth to bind Rome into one colossal, unconquerable, enduring Empire!... ”

“ Is it the commander of a legion, or the resident governor of a dependent kingdom, or even Cæsar himself? And have you dealt with Rome when you have dealt with Balista, or Heraclianus, or Probus? Alas! no. Rome still stands omnipotent and secure. The lion has been but chafed, and is still a lion, with more than his former fury; one hair has been drawn; his teeth, his limbs, his massy weight, his untouched energies, remain. Rome has been asleep for thirteen long years. Any empire but Rome--which is immortal--would have slept the sleep of death under the dastardly, besotted Gallienus. ”

“ And again he himself lived on, dreaming, still enthusiastically believing in a splendid future, overflowing with boundless hope, seeing Rome double her population, grow and spread with a wild vegetation of new districts, and once more, in his loving enraptured eyes, become the queen of the world. ”

“ One loses sight of all dabbling and pretension when seated at the feet of dead Rome,—Rome so grand and beautiful upon her bier. Art is dead here; the few sparkles that sometimes break through the embers cannot make a flame; but the relics of the past are great enough, over-great; we should do nothing but sit, and weep, and worship.
In Rome, one has all the free feeling of the country; the city is so interwoven with vineyards and gardens, such delightful walks in the villas, such ceaseless music of the fountains, and from every high point the Campagna and Tiber seem so near. ”

“ I am an old, old man, and I have lived
In Rome for thirty years and more, and know
The jarring of the wheels of that great world,
Its jealousies, its discords, and its strife.
Therefore I say to you, remain content
Here in your convent, here among your woods,
Where only there is peace. Go not to Rome. ”

“ In painted Rome, in the Rome of poetry, there laziness may luxuriate; but in the real Rome, where obelisks, Colosseum, Capitol, triumphal arches, incessantly behold and reproach thee,—where the history of ancient deeds, all day long, like an invisible storm-wind, sweeps and sounds through the city, and impels and lifts thee,—O, who can stretch himself out in inglorious ease and contemplation before the magnificent stirring of the world? ”

“ WRITTEN AT ROME Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too;— Besides, you need not be alone; the soul Shall have society of its own rank. Be great, be true, and all the Scipios, The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome, Shall flock to you and tarry by your side, And comfort you with their high company. ”

“ Amid the solemn mournfulness that reigns over declining Rome, this delightful elevation rises light, airy, and inviting, at once a refreshment to the body and a solace to the spirit. From its smooth summit the city is seen in its utmost majesty, and the surrounding country in its brightest aspect. The crimes and miseries of Rome seem deterred from approaching its favoured soil; it impresses the mind as a place set apart by common consent for the presence of the innocent and the joyful—as a scene that rest and recreation keep sacred from the intrusion of tumult and toil. ”

“ Will you not believe that it is for some great end that we do and bear as thou seest—even the redemption, and purifying, and saving of Rome? I love Rome, even as a mother, and for her am ready to die. I have bled for her freely in battle, in Gaul, upon the Danube, in Asia, and in Egypt. I am willing to bleed for her at home, even unto death, if that blood might, through the blessing of God, be a stream to cleanse her putrifying members. But O, holy Jesus! why waste I words upon one whose heart is harder than the nether millstone! ”

“ Behold the wrecks of what a great nation once dedicated to the abstractions of the mind! Rome is a city, as it were, of the dead, or rather of those who cannot die, and who survive the puny generations which inhabit and pass over the spot which they have made sacred to eternity. ”

“ And this is Rome,—weird, wonderful, ancient, mighty Rome,—mighty once by physical force and grandeur, mightier now in physical decadence and weakness by the spell of a potent moral enchantment.
As the sun is moving westward, the whole air around becomes flooded with a luminousness which seems to transfuse itself with pervading presence through every part of the city, and make all its ruinous and mossy age bright and living. The air shivers with the silver vibrations of hundreds of bells, and the evening glory goes up and down, soft-footed and angelic, transfiguring all things. ”

“ To halt on that crest of the road, of a fair, still, mild, brilliant afternoon when the sun is already visibly declining and its rays fall slanting and mellow; to view the great city bathed in the warm, even light, its pinnacles, tower-roofs, domes, and roof-tiles flashing and sparkling in the late sunshine, all of it radiant with the magical glow of an Italian afternoon, to see Rome so vast, so grandiose, so majestic, so winsome, so lovely; to know that one owns one's share in Rome, that one is part of Rome; that, I conceive, confers the keenest joy of which the human heart is capable. ”

“ Not till then did Rome become, for the number and size of her temples, the magnificence of her baths, her basilicas, and her private palaces, for the beauty of her public gardens, for her size and population, the first and most marvellous city of the Empire: the portent which evokes the admiration of the whole world. ”

“ I scarcely know what view of Rome to prefer. That from the ruined Baths of Caracalla, or from the verge of the Coliseum, or the panorama of the Capitol, or from the porch of the Lateran, which commands a different landscape.—~You see nothing of the city, for your back is turned on it; you are on a height, the Campagna at your feet, spanned by a number of ruined aqueducts, whose grandeur and extent impress the mind, more than any other object, with a sense of Roman greatness. ”

“ I firmly believe that the greatest height of power in the future will be that which shall have its base and its apex in Rome; for I, a Latin, glory in having set at the head of my faith the mystical truth expressed by the poet: 'It is certain that Nature disposed one place in the world to be suitable for universal empire, and that that place is Rome.’ Now from what mysterious union of races, what vast experience of culture, what auspicious harmony of circumstances, shall the new King of Rome arise? ”

“ Her buskins are blue, and she is standing on a rock in the middle of the sea, surrounded by a very beautiful sky. Rome is a maiden as beautiful as it is possible for man to imagine, with dishevelled hair and certain tresses wrought with infinite grace. ”

“ Rome created the word that denotes this marvellous and monstrous phenomenon, of history, the enormous city, the deceitful source of life and death--urbs--the city. Whence it is not strange that the countless urbes which the grand economic progress of the nineteenth century has caused to rise in every part of Europe and America look to Rome as their eldest sister and their dean. ”

“ That Rome was the mother of nations, the terror of thrones, and the great entrance into eternity, and now is the dismantled wreck of her illustrious past—while the hunting-grounds of the “Six Nations” are transformed into a mighty empire, is but the melancholy picture of the past, gorgeous in its dilapidation, under the luxurious warmth of an Italian sky, while the other is the picture of the present, more magnificent and vigorous, tinted by the rays of a western sun. ”

“ The crowded history of Rome is condensed into one mighty spectacle. The ambitions, the hates, the valor, the passions, the religions, the life and death of a thousand years are there; and, in the dimness of the dusky evening, troops of the dead rise before the imagination and advance in slow procession by opposite ways along the silent road. ”

“ I cannot focus Rome into any definite perspective, or see it in the colour of one mood. And whatever may have happened there to my small person has left no trace in what I have written. What I meet in Rome is Rome itself. Rome is alive (only the more so for its occasional air of death) , and one is too busy loving, hating, being harassed or soothed, and ruminating over its contradictions, to remember much of the pains and joys which mere mortals have given one in its presence. ”

“ Rome is a colossus built up of a thousand blocks; but among them a hundred and more be but loosely in their places, and are ready to drop away from the body of the foul monster—sooner rather than later. Our shout alone will shake them down, and they will fall on our side, we may choose the best for our own use. ”

“ The history of Rome has been and can be so rich, so manifold, so universal, because in its long record ancient Rome gathered up into itself, welded, fused, the most diverse elements of social life, from all peoples and all regions with which it came into contact. ”

“ The weather for a month has been perfect, the sky an extravagance of blue, the air lively enough, the nights cool, nippingly cool. and the whole ancient greyness lighted with an irresistible smile. Rome, which in some moods, especially to new-comers, seems a place of almost sinister gloom, has an occasional art, as one knows her better, of brushing away care by the grand gesture with which some splendid impatient mourning matron--just the Niobe of Nations, surviving, emerging and looking about her again--might pull off and cast aside an oppression of muffling crape. ”

“ At. Rome may, perhaps, refuse to treat of peace.
Pub. Didst thou behold the universal joy
At his return, thou wouldst not doubt success.
There's not a tongue in Rome but, wild with transport,
Proclaims aloud that Regulus is come;
The streets are filled with thronging multitudes,
Pressing with eager gaze to catch a look.
The happy man who can descry him first,
Points him to his next neighbour, he to his;
Then what a thunder of applause goes round;
What music to the ear of filial love!
Attilia! not a Roman eye was seen,
But shed pure tears of exquisite delight. ”

“ And from that moment Rome is theirs, Rome where their general so long commands, whence so long go forth the directions for the obscure tactics which are blindly followed by their innumerable army, whose skilful organisation covers the globe as with an iron network hidden by the velvet of hands expert in dealing gently with poor suffering humanity. ”

“ It is not our object, the reader is aware, to give here a history of Rome, or of its pontiffs, or of the tumultuous world of the Middle Ages in which a few figures of Popes and Princes stand out upon the ever-crowded, ever-changing background, helping us to hear among the wild confusion of clanging swords and shattering lances, of war cries and shouts of rage and triumph—and to see amidst the mist and smoke, the fire and flame, the dust of breached walls and falling houses. ”

“ Rome, by reason of its extent and magnificence, is the most excellent of all the cities of the earth; built gradually in the course of many ages by a long series of emperors, with the assistance of numerous architects and artificers; the realization of immense resources brought together from every part of the world. Destroy this splendid creation, and you will incur eternal obloquy in the memory of succeeding generations. ”

“ It was a special kind of beauty, broad and ruddy, made up of nothing, sometimes simplified into a series of low, horizontal lines, but ever ennobled by the great memories it evoked: the Roman legions marching along the paved highways across the bare Campagna; the long slumber of the middle ages; and then the awakening of antique nature in the midst of Catholicism, whereby, for the second time, Rome became ruler of the world. ”

“ It is by the aimless flânerie which leaves you free to follow capriciously every hint of entertainment that you get to know Rome. The greater part of the life about you goes on in the streets; and for an observer fresh from a country in which town scenery is at the least monotonous incident and character and picture seem to abound. I become conscious with compunction, let me hasten to add, that I have launched myself thus on the subject of Roman churches and Roman walks without so much as a preliminary allusion to St. Peter’s. ”

“ THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. ————parti elette Di Roma, che son state cimitero Alla milizia che Pietro seguette.
PARADISO, c. ix.
"Roma Sotterranea,"—the underground Rome of the dead,—the buried city of graves. Sacred is the dust of its narrow streets. Blessed were those who, having died for their faith, were laid to rest in its chambers. In pace is the epitaph that marks the places where they lie. ”