Very Possibly I Had Seen Both
Of These Memorable Towers In My Former Roman Sojourn, But I Did Not
Remember Them, Whereas I Renewed My Old Impressions Of San Paolo Fuori
Le Mura In Almost Every Detail.
That is the most majestic church in Rome, I think, and I suppose it is,
for a cold splendor, unequalled anywhere.
Somehow, from its form and
from the great propriety of its decoration, it far surpasses St.
Peter's. The antic touch of the baroque is scarcely present in it, for,
being newly rebuilt after the fire which destroyed the fourth-century
basilica in 1823, its faults are not those of sixteenth-century excess.
It would be a very bold or a very young connoisseur who should venture
to appraise its merits beyond this negative valuation; and timid age can
affirm no more than that it came away with its sensibilities unwounded.
Tradition and history combine with the stately architecture, which
reverently includes every possible relic of the original fabric, to
render the immense temple venerable; and as it is still in process of
construction, with a colonnaded porch in scale and keeping with the body
of the basilica, it offers to the eye of wonder the actual spectacle of
that unstinted outlay of riches which has filled Rome with its
multitudes of pious monuments - monuments mainly ugly, but potent with
the imagination even in their ugliness through the piety of their
origin. Where did all that riches come from?
Out of what unfathomable opulence, out of what pitiable penury, out of
what fear, out of what love?
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