And Looking, From The Distance,
On The Course We Had Taken In The Morning, I Almost Feel (As I Had
Felt When I First Saw It, At That Hour) As If The Sun Would Never
Rise Again, But Looked Its Last, That Night, Upon A Ruined World.
To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an expedition, is a
fitting close to such a day.
The narrow streets, devoid of
footways, and choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of
dunghill-rubbish, contrast so strongly, in their cramped
dimensions, and their filth, and darkness, with the broad square
before some haughty church: in the centre of which, a
hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the
Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps
an ancient pillar, with its honoured statue overthrown, supports a
Christian saint: Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul, and Trajan
to St. Peter. Then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from
the spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like
mountains: while here and there, are broken arches and rent walls,
through which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a
wound. The little town of miserable houses, walled, and shut in by
barred gates, is the quarter where the Jews are locked up nightly,
when the clock strikes eight--a miserable place, densely populated,
and reeking with bad odours, but where the people are industrious
and money-getting. In the day-time, as you make your way along the
narrow streets, you see them all at work: upon the pavement,
oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops: furbishing old
clothes, and driving bargains.
Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the moon
once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and
rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. In the
narrow little throat of street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with
flaring lamps, and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky
Romans round its smoky coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew;
its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine. As you rattle
round the sharply-twisting corner, a lumbering sound is heard. The
coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes slowly by,
preceded by a man who bears a large cross; by a torch-bearer; and a
priest: the latter chaunting as he goes. It is the Dead Cart,
with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the Sacred
Field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit
that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a
year.
But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns ancient
temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or forums: it is strange to
see, how every fragment, whenever it is possible, has been blended
into some modern structure, and made to serve some modern purpose--
a wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable--some use for which
it never was designed, and associated with which it cannot
otherwise than lamely assort.
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