Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) (637 page)

There was a French sentinel at this gateway, as at all the others; for the Gauls have always been a pest to Rome, and now gall her worse than ever. I observed, too, that an official, in citizen's dress, stood there also, and appeared to exercise a supervision over some carts with country produce, that were entering just then.

February 25th. — We went this forenoon to the Palazzo Borghese, which is situated on a street that runs at right angles with the Corso, and very near the latter. Most of the palaces in Rome, and the Borghese among them, were built somewhere about the sixteenth century; this in 1590, I believe. It is an immense edifice, standing round the four sides of a quadrangle; and though the suite of rooms comprising the picture-gallery forms an almost interminable vista, they occupy only a part of the ground-floor of one side. We enter from the street into a large court, surrounded with a corridor, the arches of which support a second series of arches above. The picture-rooms open from one into another, and have many points of magnificence, being large and lofty, with vaulted ceilings and beautiful frescos, generally of mythological subjects, in the flat central part of the vault. The cornices are gilded; the deep embrasures of the windows are panelled with wood-work; the doorways are of polished and variegated marble, or covered with a composition as hard, and seemingly as durable. The whole has a kind of splendid shabbiness thrown over it, like a slight coating of rust; the furniture, at least the damask chairs, being a good deal worn, though there are marble and mosaic tables, which may serve to adorn another palace when this one crumbles away with age. One beautiful hall, with a ceiling more richly gilded than the rest, is panelled all round with large looking-glasses, on which are painted pictures, both landscapes and human figures, in oils; so that the effect is somewhat as if you saw these objects represented in the mirrors. These glasses must be of old date, perhaps coeval with the first building of the palace; for they are so much dimmed, that one's own figure appears indistinct in them, and more difficult to be traced than the pictures which cover them half over. It was very comfortless, — indeed, I suppose nobody ever thought of being comfortable there, since the house was built, — but especially uncomfortable on a chill, damp day like this. My fingers were quite numb before I got half-way through the suite of apartments, in spite of a brazier of charcoal which was smouldering into ashes in two or three of the rooms. There was not, so far as I remember, a single fireplace in the suite. A considerable number of visitors — not many, however — were there; and a good many artists; and three or four ladies among them were making copies of the more celebrated pictures, and in all or in most cases missing the especial points that made their celebrity and value. The Prince Borghese certainly demeans himself like a kind and liberal gentleman, in throwing open this invaluable collection to the public to see, and for artists to carry away with them, and diffuse all over the world, so far as their own power and skill will permit. It is open every day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday, without any irksome restriction or supervision; and the fee, which custom requires the visitor to pay to the custode, has the good effect of making us feel that we are not intruders, nor received in an exactly eleemosynary way. The thing could not be better managed.

The collection is one of the most celebrated in the world, and contains between eight and nine hundred pictures, many of which are esteemed masterpieces. I think I was not in a frame for admiration to-day, nor could achieve that free and generous surrender of myself which I have already said is essential to the proper estimate of anything excellent. Besides, how is it possible to give one's soul, or any considerable part of it, to a single picture, seen for the first time, among a thousand others, all of which set forth their own claims in an equally good light? Furthermore, there is an external weariness, and sense of a thousand-fold sameness to be overcome, before we can begin to enjoy a gallery of the old Italian masters. . . . I remember but one painter, Francia, who seems really to have approached this awful class of subjects (Christs and Madonnas) in a fitting spirit; his pictures are very singular and awkward, if you look at them with merely an external eye, but they are full of the beauty of holiness, and evidently wrought out as acts of devotion, with the deepest sincerity; and are veritable prayers upon canvas. . . .

I was glad, in the very last of the twelve rooms, to come upon some Dutch and Flemish pictures, very few, but very welcome; Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Paul Potter, Teniers, and others, — men of flesh and blood, and warm fists, and human hearts. As compared with them, these mighty Italian masters seem men of polished steel; not human, nor addressing themselves so much to human sympathies, as to a formed, intellectual taste.

March 1st. — To-day began very unfavorably; but we ventured out at about eleven o'clock, intending to visit the gallery of the Colonna Palace. Finding it closed, however, on account of the illness of the custode, we determined to go to the picture-gallery of the Capitol; and, on our way thither, we stepped into Il Gesu, the grand and rich church of the Jesuits, where we found a priest in white, preaching a sermon, with vast earnestness of action and variety of tones, insomuch that I fancied sometimes that two priests were in the agony of sermonizing at once. He had a pretty large and seemingly attentive audience clustered round him from the entrance of the church, half-way down the nave; while in the chapels of the transepts and in the remoter distances were persons occupied with their own individual devotion. We sat down near the chapel of St. Ignazio, which is adorned with a picture over the altar, and with marble sculptures of the Trinity aloft, and of angels fluttering at the sides. What I particularly noted (for the angels were not very real personages, being neither earthly nor celestial) was the great ball of lapis lazuli, the biggest in the world, at the feet of the First Person in the Trinity. The church is a splendid one, lined with a great variety of precious marbles, . . . . but partly, perhaps, owing to the dusky light, as well as to the want of cleanliness, there was a dingy effect upon the whole. We made but a very short stay, our New England breeding causing us to feel shy of moving about the church in sermon time.

It rained when we reached the Capitol, and, as the museum was not yet open, we went into the Palace of the Conservators, on the opposite side of the piazza. Around the inner court of the ground-floor, partly under two opposite arcades, and partly under the sky, are several statues and other ancient sculptures; among them a statue of Julius Caesar, said to be the only authentic one, and certainly giving an impression of him more in accordance with his character than the withered old face in the museum; also, a statue of Augustus in middle age, still retaining a resemblance to the bust of him in youth; some gigantic heads and hands and feet in marble and bronze; a stone lion and horse, which lay long at the bottom of a river, broken and corroded, and were repaired by Michel Angelo; and other things which it were wearisome to set down. We inquired of two or three French soldiers the way into the picture-gallery; but it is our experience that French soldiers in Rome never know anything of what is around them, not even the name of the palace or public place over which they stand guard; and though invariably civil, you might as well put a question to a statue of an old Roman as to one of them. While we stood under the loggia, however, looking at the rain plashing into the court, a soldier of the Papal Guard kindly directed us up the staircase, and even took pains to go with us to the very entrance of the picture-rooms. Thank Heaven, there are but two of them, and not many pictures which one cares to look at very long.

Italian galleries are at a disadvantage as compared with English ones, inasmuch as the pictures are not nearly such splendid articles of upholstery; though, very likely, having undergone less cleaning and varnishing, they may retain more perfectly the finer touches of the masters. Nevertheless, I miss the mellow glow, the rich and mild external lustre, and even the brilliant frames of the pictures I have seen in England. You feel that they have had loving care taken of them; even if spoiled, it is because they have been valued so much. But these pictures in Italian galleries look rusty and lustreless, as far as the exterior is concerned; and, really, the splendor of the painting, as a production of intellect and feeling, has a good deal of difficulty in shining through such clouds.

There is a picture at the Capitol, the “Rape of Europa,” by Paul Veronese, that would glow with wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight, — this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce quite a new sentiment.

Here, and at the Borghese Palace, there were some pictures by Garofalo, an artist of whom I never heard before, but who seemed to have been a man of power. A picture by Marie Subleyras — a miniature copy from one by her husband, of the woman anointing the feet of Christ — is most delicately and beautifully finished, and would be an ornament to a drawing-room; a thing that could not truly be said of one in a hundred of these grim masterpieces. When they were painted life was not what it is now, and the artists had not the same ends in view. . . . It depresses the spirits to go from picture to picture, leaving a portion of your vital sympathy at every one, so that you come, with a kind of half-torpid desperation, to the end. On our way down the staircase we saw several noteworthy bas-reliefs, and among them a very ancient one of Curtius plunging on horseback into the chasm in the Forum. It seems to me, however, that old sculpture affects the spirits even more dolefully than old painting; it strikes colder to the heart, and lies heavier upon it, being marble, than if it were merely canvas.

My wife went to revisit the museum, which we had already seen, on the other side of the piazza; but, being cold, I left her there, and went out to ramble in the sun; for it was now brightly, though fitfully, shining again. I walked through the Forum (where a thorn thrust itself out and tore the sleeve of my talma) and under the Arch of Titus, towards the Coliseum. About a score of French drummers were beating a long, loud roll-call, at the base of the Coliseum, and under its arches; and a score of trumpeters responded to these, from the rising ground opposite the Arch of Constantine; and the echoes of the old Roman ruins, especially those of the Palace of the Caesars, responded to this martial uproar of the barbarians. There seemed to be no cause for it; but the drummers beat, and the trumpeters blew, as long as I was within hearing.

I walked along the Appian Way as far as the Baths of Caracalla. The Palace of the Caesars, which I have never yet explored, appears to be crowned by the walls of a convent, built, no doubt, out of some of the fragments that would suffice to build a city; and I think there is another convent among the baths. The Catholics have taken a peculiar pleasure in planting themselves in the very citadels of paganism, whether temples or palaces. There has been a good deal of enjoyment in the destruction of old Rome. I often think so when I see the elaborate pains that have been taken to smash and demolish some beautiful column, for no purpose whatever, except the mere delight of annihilating a noble piece of work. There is something in the impulse with which one sympathizes; though I am afraid the destroyers were not sufficiently aware of the mischief they did to enjoy it fully. Probably, too, the early Christians were impelled by religious zeal to destroy the pagan temples, before the happy thought occurred of converting them into churches.

March 3d. — This morning was U —
 
— 's birthday, and we celebrated it by taking a barouche, and driving (the whole family) out on the Appian Way as far as the tomb of Cecilia Metella. For the first time since we came to Rome, the weather was really warm, — a kind of heat producing languor and disinclination to active movement, though still a little breeze which was stirring threw an occasional coolness over us, and made us distrust the almost sultry atmosphere. I cannot think the Roman climate healthy in any of its moods that I have experienced.

Close on the other side of the road are the ruins of a Gothic chapel, little more than a few bare walls and painted windows, and some other fragmentary structures which we did not particularly examine. U —
 
— and I clambered through a gap in the wall, extending from the basement of the tomb, and thus, getting into the field beyond, went quite round the mausoleum and the remains of the castle connected with it. The latter, though still high and stalwart, showed few or no architectural features of interest, being built, I think, principally of large bricks, and not to be compared to English ruins as a beautiful or venerable object.

A little way beyond Cecilia Metella's tomb, the road still shows a specimen of the ancient Roman pavement, composed of broad, flat flagstones, a good deal cracked and worn, but sound enough, probably, to outlast the little cubes which make the other portions of the road so uncomfortable. We turned back from this point and soon re-entered the gate of St. Sebastian, which is flanked by two small towers, and just within which is the old triumphal arch of Drusus, — a sturdy construction, much dilapidated as regards its architectural beauty, but rendered far more picturesque than it could have been in its best days by a crown of verdure on its head. Probably so much of the dust of the highway has risen in clouds and settled there, that sufficient soil for shrubbery to root itself has thus been collected, by small annual contributions, in the course of two thousand years. A little farther towards the city we turned aside from the Appian Way, and came to the site of some ancient Columbaria, close by what seemed to partake of the character of a villa and a farm-house. A man came out of the house and unlocked a door in a low building, apparently quite modern; but on entering we found ourselves looking into a large, square chamber, sunk entirely beneath the surface of the ground. A very narrow and steep staircase of stone, and evidently ancient, descended into this chamber; and, going down, we found the walls hollowed on all sides into little semicircular niches, of which, I believe, there were nine rows, one above another, and nine niches in each row. Thus they looked somewhat like the little entrances to a pigeon-house, and hence the name of Columbarium. Each semicircular niche was about a foot in its semidiameter. In the centre of this subterranean chamber was a solid square column, or pier, rising to the roof, and containing other niches of the same pattern, besides one that was high and deep, rising to the height of a man from the floor on each of the four sides. In every one of the semicircular niches were two round holes covered with an earthen plate, and in each hole were ashes and little fragments of bones, — the ashes and bones of the dead, whose names were inscribed in Roman capitals on marble slabs inlaid into the wall over each individual niche. Very likely the great ones in the central pier had contained statues, or busts, or large urns; indeed, I remember that some such things were there, as well as bas-reliefs in the walls; but hardly more than the general aspect of this strange place remains in my mind. It was the Columbarium of the connections or dependants of the Caesars; and the impression left on me was, that this mode of disposing of the dead was infinitely preferable to any which has been adopted since that day. The handful or two of dry dust and bits of dry bones in each of the small round holes had nothing disgusting in them, and they are no drier now than they were when first deposited there. I would rather have my ashes scattered over the soil to help the growth of the grass and daisies; but still I should not murmur much at having them decently pigeon-holed in a Roman tomb.