[Illustration]

AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS

STUDIES FROM THE CHRONICLES OF ROME

BY

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II

LondonMACMILLAN AND CO. , LIMITEDNEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY1899

_All rights reserved_

Copyright, 1898, By The Macmillan Company. 

Set up and electrotyped October, 1898. Reprinted November, December, 1898; January, 1899. 

_Norwood Press__J. S. Cushing & Co. --Berwick & Smith__Norwood, Mass. , U. S. A. _

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME II PAGE

REGION VII REGOLA 1

REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO 23

REGION IX PIGNA 44

REGION X CAMPITELLI 64

REGION XI SANT' ANGELO 101

REGION XII RIPA 119

REGION XIII TRASTEVERE 132

REGION XIV BORGO 202

LEO THE THIRTEENTH 218

THE VATICAN 268

SAINT PETER'S 289

LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES

VOLUME II

Saint Peter's _Frontispiece_

 FACING PAGEPalazzo Farnese 18The Pantheon 46The Capitol 68General View of the Roman Forum 94Theatre of Marcellus 110Porta San Sebastiano 130The Roman Forum, looking west 154The Palatine 186Castle of Sant' Angelo 204Pope Leo the Thirteenth 228Raphael's "Transfiguration" 256Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" 274Panorama of Rome, from the Orti Farnesiani 298

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

VOLUME II

 PAGERegion VII Regola, Device of 1Portico of Octavia 3San Giorgio in Velabro 11Region VIII Sant' Eustachio, Device of 23Site of Excavations on the Palatine 31Church of Sant' Eustachio 39Region IX Pigna, Device of 44Interior of the Pantheon 49The Ripetta 53Piazza Minerva 55Region X Campitelli, Device of 64Church of Aracoeli 70Arch of Septimius Severus 83Column of Phocas 92Region XI Sant' Angelo, Device of 101Piazza Montanara and the Theatre of Marcellus 106Site of the Ancient Ghetto 114Region XII Ripa, Device of 119Church of Saint Nereus and Saint Achilleus 125The Ripa Grande and Site of the Sublician Bridge 128Region XIII Trastevere, Device of 132Ponte Garibaldi 137Palazzo Mattei 140House built for Raphael by Bramante, now torn down 145Monastery of Sant' Onofrio 147Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius 159Interior of Santa Maria degli Angeli 175Palazzo dei Conservatori 189Region XIV Borgo, Device of 202Hospital of Santo Spirito 214The Papal Crest 218Library of the Vatican 235Fountain of Acqua Felice 242Vatican from the Piazza of St. Peter's 251Loggie of Raphael in the Vatican 259Biga in the Vatican Museum 268Belvedere Court of the Vatican 272Sixtine Chapel 279Saint Peter's 289Mamertine Prison 294Interior of St. Peter's 305Pietà of Michelangelo 318Tomb of Clement the Thirteenth 321Ave atque Vale. Vignette 327

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Ave Roma Immortalis

REGION VII REGOLA

'Arenula'--'fine sand'--'Renula, ' 'Regola'--such is the derivation ofthe name of the Seventh Region, which was bounded on one side by thesandy bank of the Tiber from Ponte Sisto to the island of SaintBartholomew, and which Gibbon designates as a 'quarter of the cityinhabited only by mechanics and Jews. ' The mechanics were chieflytanners, who have always been unquiet and revolutionary folk, but atleast one exception to the general statement must be made, since it washere that the Cenci had built themselves a fortified palace on thefoundations of a part of the Theatre of Balbus, between the greaterTheatre of Marcellus, then held by the Savelli, and the often mentionedTheatre of Pompey. There Francesco Cenci dwelt, there the childhood ofBeatrice was passed, and there she lived for many months after themurder of her father, before the accusation was first brought againsther. It is a gloomy place now, with its low black archway, its mouldywalls, its half rotten windows, and its ghostly court of balconies; onemight guess that a dead man's curse hangs over it, without knowing howFrancesco died. And he, who cursed his sons and his daughters andlaughed for joy when two of them were murdered, rebuilt the littlechurch just opposite, as a burial-place for himself and them; butneither he nor they were laid there. The palace used to face the Ghetto, but that is gone, swept away to the very last stone by the municipalityin a fine hygienic frenzy, though, in truth, neither plague nor cholerahad ever taken hold there in the pestilences of old days, when theChristian city was choked with the dead it could not bury. There is agreat open space there now, where thousands of Jews once lived huddledtogether, crowding and running over each other like ants in an anthill, in a state that would have killed any other people, persecutedoccasionally, but on the whole, fairly well treated; indispensable thenas now to the spendthrift Christian; confined within their own quarter, as formerly in many other cities, by gates closed at dusk and opened atsunrise, altogether a busy, filthy, believing, untiring folk thatlaughed at the short descent and high pretensions of a Roman baron, butcringed and crawled aside as the great robber strode by in steel. Andclose by the Ghetto, in all that remains of the vast Portico of Octavia, is the little Church of Sant' Angelo in Pescheria where the Jews wereonce compelled to hear Christian sermons on Saturdays. 

[Illustration: PORTICO OF OCTAVIA

From a print of the last century]

Close by that church Rienzi was born, and it is for ever associated withhis memory. His name calls up a story often told, yet never clear, of aman who seemed to possess several distinct and contradictorypersonalities, all strong but by no means all noble, which by a freak offate were united in one man under one name, to make him by turns a hero, a fool, a Christian knight, a drunken despot and a philosophic Pagan. The Buddhist monks of the far East believe today that a man's individualself is often beset, possessed and dominated by all kinds of fragmentarypersonalities that altogether hide his real nature, which may in realitybe better or worse than they are. The Eastern belief may serve at leastas an illustration to explain the sort of mixed character with whichRienzi came into the world, by which he imposed upon it for a certainlength of time, and which has always taken such strong hold upon theimagination of poets, and writers of fiction, and historians. 

Rienzi, as we call him, was in reality named 'Nicholas Gabrini, the sonof Lawrence'; and 'Lawrence, ' being in Italian abbreviated to 'Rienzo'and preceded by the possessive particle 'of, ' formed the patronymic bywhich the man is best known in our language. Lawrence Gabrini kept awine-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cenci palace; he seemsto have belonged to Anagni, he was therefore by birth a retainer of theColonna, and his wife was a washer-woman. Between them, moreover, theymade a business of selling water from the Tiber, through the city, at atime when there were no aqueducts. Nicholas Rienzi's mother washandsome, and from her he inherited the beauty of form and feature forwhich he was famous in his youth. His gifts of mind were many, variedand full of that exuberant vitality which noble lineage rarelytransmits; if he was a man of genius, his genius belonged to that orderwhich is never far removed from madness and always akin to folly. Thegreatest of his talents was his eloquence, the least of his qualitieswas judgment, and while he possessed the courage to face dangerunflinchingly, and the means of persuading vast multitudes to follow himin the realization of an exalted dream, he had neither the wit to tracea cause to its consequence, nor the common sense to rest when he haddone enough. He had no mental perspective, nor sense of proportion, andin the words of Madame de Staël he 'mistook memories for hopes. '

He was born in the year 1313, in the turbulent year that followed thecoronation of Henry the Seventh of Luxemburg; and when his vanity hadcome upon him like a blight, he insulted the memory of his beautifulmother by claiming to be the Emperor's son. In his childhood he was sentto Anagni. There it must be supposed that he acquired his knowledge ofLatin from a country priest, and there he lived that early life ofsolitude and retirement which, with ardent natures, is generally thepreparation for an outburst of activity that is to dazzle, or delight, or terrify the world. Thence he came back, a stripling of twenty years, dazed with dreaming and surfeited with classic lore, to begin thestruggle for existence in his native Rome as an obscure notary. 

It seems impossible to convey an adequate idea of the confusion andlawlessness of those times, and it is hard to understand how any citycould exist at all in such absence of all authority and government. Thepowers were nominally the Pope and the Emperor, but the Pope had obeyedthe commands of Philip the Fair and had retired to Avignon, and noEmperor could even approach Rome without an army at his back and thealliance of the Ghibelline Colonna to uphold him if he succeeded inentering the city. The maintenance of order and the execution of suchlaws as existed, were confided to a mis-called Senator and a so-calledPrefect. The Senatorship was the property of the Barons, and when Rienziwas born the Orsini and Colonna had just agreed to hold it jointly tothe exclusion of every one else. The prefecture was hereditary in theancient house of Di Vico, from whose office the Via de' Prefetti in theRegion of Campo Marzo is named to this day; the head of the house was atfirst required to swear allegiance to the Pope, to the Emperor, and tothe Roman People, and as the three were almost perpetually at swordsdrawn with one another, the oath was a perjury when it was not a farce. The Prefects' principal duty appears to have been the administration ofthe Patrimony of Saint Peter, in which they exercised an almostunlimited power after Innocent the Third had formally dispensed themfrom allegiance to the Emperor, and the long line of petty tyrants didnot come to an end until Pope Eugenius the Fourth beheaded the last ofthe race for his misdeeds in the fifteenth century; after him the officewas seized upon by the Barons and finally drifted into the hands of theBarberini, a mere sinecure bringing rich endowments to its fortunatepossessor. 

In Rienzi's time there were practically three castes in Rome, --priests, nobles, and beggars, --for there was nothing which in any degreecorresponded to a citizen class; such business as there was consistedchiefly in usury, and was altogether in the hands of the Jews. Rome wasthe lonely and ruined capital of a pestilential desert, and itspopulation was composed of marauders in various degrees. 

The priests preyed upon the Church, the nobles upon the Church and uponeach other, the beggars picked the pockets of both, and such men as werebodily fit for the work of killing were enlisted as retainers in theservice of the Barons, whose steady revenues from their lands, whosestrong fortresses within the city, and whose possession of the coat andmail armour which was then so enormously valuable, made them masters ofall men except one another. They themselves sold the produce of theirestates and the few articles of consumption which reached Rome fromabroad, in shops adjoining their palaces; they owned the land upon whichthe corn and wine and oil were grown; they owned the peasants whoploughed and sowed and reaped and gathered; and they preserved theprivilege of disposing of their own wares as they saw fit. They fearednothing but an ambush of their enemies, or the solemn excommunication ofthe Pope, who cared little enough for their doings. The cardinals andprelates who lived in the city were chiefly of the Barons' own order andunder their immediate protection. The Barons possessed everything andruled everything for their own profit; they defended their privilegeswith their lives, and they avenged the slightest infringement on theirpowers by the merciless shedding of blood. They were ignorant, but theywere keen; they were brave, but they were faithless; they werepassionate, licentious and unimaginably cruel. 

Such was the city, and such the government, to which Rienzi returned atthe age of twenty, to follow the profession of a notary, probably underthe protection of the Colonna. That the business afforded occupation tomany is proved by the vast number of notarial deeds of that time stillextant; but it is also sufficiently clear that Rienzi spent much of histime in dreaming, if not in idleness, and much in the study of theancient monuments and inscriptions upon which no one had bestowed aglance for generations. It was during that period of early manhood thathe acquired the learning and collected the materials which earned himthe title, 'Father of Archæology. ' He seems to have been about thirtyyears old when he first began to speak in public places, to suchaudience as he could gather, expanding with ready though untriedeloquence the soaring thoughts bred in years of solitary study. 

Clement the Sixth, a Frenchman, was elected Pope at Avignon, a man who, according to the chronicler, contrasted favourably by his wisdom, breadth of view, and liberality, with a weak and vacillatingpredecessor. Seeing that they had to do with a man at last, the Romanssent an embassy to him to urge his return to Rome. The hope had longbeen at the root of Rienzi's life, and he must have already attained toa considerable reputation of learning and eloquence, since he was chosento be one of the ambassadors. Petrarch conceived the highest opinion ofhim at their first meeting, and never withdrew his friendship from himto the end; the great poet joined his prayers with those of the Romanenvoys, and supported Rienzi's eloquence with his own genius in a Latinpoem. But nothing could avail to move the Pope. Avignon was the Capua ofthe Pontificate, --a vast papal palace was in course of construction, andthe cardinals had already begun to erect sumptuous dwellings forthemselves. The Pope listened, smiled, and promised everything exceptreturn; the unsuccessful embassy was left without means of subsistence;and Rienzi, disappointed in soul, ill in body, and almost starving, wasforced to seek the refuge of a hospital, whither he retired in thesingle garment which remained unsold from his ambassadorial outfit. Buthe did not languish long in this miserable condition, for the Pope heardof his misfortunes, remembered his eloquence, and sent him back to Rome, invested with the office of Apostolic Notary, and endowed with a salaryof five golden florins daily, a stipend which at that time amountedalmost to wealth. The office was an important one, but Rienzi exercisedit by deputy, continued his studies, propagated his doctrines, and byquick degrees acquired unbounded influence with the people. His hatredof the Barons was as profound as his love of his native city was noble;and if the unavenged murder of a brother, and the unanswered buffet of aColonna rankled in his heart, and stimulated his patriotism with thesting of personal wrong, neither the one nor the other were the primecauses of his actions. The evils of the city were enormous, his couragewas heroic, and after profound reflection he resolved upon the stepwhich determined his tragic career. 

To the door of the Church of Saint George in Velabro he affixed aproclamation, or a prophecy, which set forth that Rome should soon berestored to the 'Good Estate'; he collected a hundred of his friends ina meeting by night, on the Aventine, to decide upon a course of action, and he summoned all citizens to appear before the church of Sant' Angeloin Pescheria, towards evening, peacefully and without arms, to providefor the restoration of that 'Good Estate' which he himself hadannounced. 

[Illustration: SAN GIORGIO IN VELABRO]

That night was the turning-point in Rienzi's life, and he made it aVigil of Arms and Prayer. In the mysterious nature of the destined man, the pure spirit of the Christian knight suddenly stood forth indomination of his soul, and he consecrated himself to the liberation ofhis country by the solemn office of the Holy Ghost. All night he kneeledin the little church, in full armour, with bare head, before the altar. The people came and went, and others came after them and saw himkneeling there, while one priest succeeded another in celebrating theThirty Masses of the Holy Spirit from midnight to early morning. The sunwas high when the champion of freedom came forth, bareheaded still, toface the clear light of day. Around him marched the chosen hundred; athis right hand went the Pope's vicar; and before him three greatstandards displayed allegories of liberty, justice, and peace. 

A vast concourse of people followed him, for the news had spread frommouth to mouth, and there were few in Rome who had not heard his voiceand longed for the 'Good Estate' which he so well described. The noblesheard of the assembly with indifference, for they were well used todisturbances of every kind and dreaded no unarmed rabble. Colonna andOrsini, joint senators, had quarrelled, and the Capitol was vacant;thither Rienzi went, and thence from a balcony he spoke to the people offreedom, of peace, of prosperity. The eloquence that had moved Clementand delighted Petrarch stirred ten thousand Roman hearts at once; adissatisfied Roman count read in clear tones the laws Rienzi proposed toestablish, and the appearance of a bishop and a nobleman by theplebeian's side gave the people hope and encouragement. The laws weresimple and direct, and there was to be but one interpretation of them, while all public revenues were to be applied to public ends. Each Regionof the city was to furnish a contingent of men-at-arms, and if any manwere killed in the service of his country, Rome was to provide for hiswife and children. The fortresses, the bridges, the gates, were to passfrom the custody of the Barons to that of the Roman people, and theBarons themselves were to retire forthwith from the city. So the Romansmade Rienzi Dictator. 

The nobles refused to believe in a change which meant ruin tothemselves. Old Stephen Colonna laughed and said he would throw themadman from the window as soon as he should be at leisure. It was nearnoon when he spoke; the sun was barely setting when he rode for his lifetowards Palestrina. The great bell of the Capitol called the people toarms, the liberator was already the despot, and the Barons were alreadyexiles. Rienzi assumed the title of Tribune with the authority ofDictator, and with ten thousand swords at his back exacted a humiliatingoath of allegiance from the representatives of the great houses. Uponthe Body and Blood of Christ they swore to the 'Good Estate, ' they boundthemselves to yield up their fortresses within the city, to harbourneither outlaws nor malefactors in their mountain castles, and to servethe Republic loyally in arms whenever they should be called upon to doso. The oath was taken by all, the power that could enforce it wasvisible to all men's eyes, and Rienzi was supreme. 

Had he been the philosopher that he had once persuaded himself he was;had he been the pure-hearted Christian Knight of the Holy Spirit he hadbelieved himself when he knelt through the long Office in the littlechurch; had he been the simple Roman Tribune of the People that heproclaimed himself, when he had seized the dictatorship, history mighthave followed a different course, and the virtues he imposed upon Romemight have borne fruit throughout all Italy. But with Rienzi, each newphase was the possession of a new spirit of good or evil, and with eachsuccessive change, only the man's great eloquence remained. While he wasa hero, he was a hero indeed; while he was a philosopher, his thoughtswere lofty and wise; so long as he was a knight, his life was pure andblameless. But the vanity which inspired him, not to follow an ideal, but to represent that ideal outwardly, and which inflamed him with agreat actor's self-persuading fire, required, like all vanity, theperpetual stimulus of applause and admiration. He could have leapt intothe gulf with Curtius before the eyes of ten thousand grateful citizens;but he could not have gone back with Cincinnatus to the plough, asimple, true-hearted man. The display of justice followed the assumptionof power, it is true; but when justice was established, the unquietspirit was assailed by the thirst for a new emotion which no boastingproclamation could satisfy, and no adulation could quench. The changeshe wrought in a few weeks were marvellous, and the spirit in which theywere made was worthy of a great reformer; Italy saw and admired, received his ambassadors and entertained them with respect, read hiseloquent letters and answered them with approbation; and Rienzi's courtwas the tribunal to which the King of Hungary appealed the cause of amurdered brother. Yet his vanity demanded more. It was not long beforehe assumed the dress, the habits, and the behaviour of a sovereign andappeared in public with the emblems of empire. He felt that he was nolonger in spirit the Knight of the Holy Ghost, and he required forself-persuasion the conference of the outward honours of knighthood. Hepurified himself according to the rites of chivalry in the font of theLateran Baptistry, consecrated by the tradition of Constantine'smiraculous recovery from leprosy, he watched his arms throughout thedark hours, and received the order from the sword of an honourablenobleman. The days of the philosopher, the hero, and the liberator wereover, and the reign of the public fool was inaugurated by the mostextravagant boasts, and celebrated by a feast of boundless luxury andabundance, to which the citizens of Rome were bidden with their wivesand daughters. Still unsatisfied, he demanded and obtained the ceremonyof a solemn coronation, and seven crowns were placed successively uponhis head as emblems of the seven spiritual gifts. Before him stood thegreat Barons in attitudes of humility and dejection; for a moment thegreat actor had forgotten himself in the excitement of his part, andRienzi again enjoyed the emotion of undisputed sovereignty. 

But Colonna, Orsini and Savelli were not men to submit tamely in fact, though the presence of an overwhelming power had forced them to outwardsubmission, and in his calmer moments the extravagant tribune washaunted by the dream of vengeance. A ruffian asserted under torture thatthe nobles were already conspiring against their victor, and Rienzienticed three of the Colonna and five of the Orsini to the Capitol, where he had taken up his abode. He seized them, held them prisoners allnight, and led them out in the morning to be the principal actors in afarce which he dared not turn to tragedy. Condemned to death, their sinsconfessed, they heard the tolling of the great bell, and stoodbareheaded before the executioner. The scene was prepared with the artof a consummate playwright, and the spectators were delighted by aspeech of rare eloquence and amazed by the sudden exhibition of aclemency that was born of fear. Magnanimously pardoning those whom hedared not destroy, Rienzi received a new oath of allegiance from hiscaptives and dismissed them to their homes. 

The humiliation rankled. Laying aside their hereditary feud, Colonna andOrsini made a desperate effort to regain their power. By amisunderstanding they were defeated, and the third part of their force, entering the city without the rest, was overwhelmed and massacred, andsix of the Colonna were slain. The low-born Rienzi refused burial fortheir bodies, knighted his son on the spot where they had fallen, andwashed his hands in water that was mingled with their blood. It was hislast triumph and his basest. 

His power was already declining, and though the people had assembled inarms to beat off their former masters, they had lost faith in a leaderwho had turned out a madman, a knave, and a drunkard. They refused topay the taxes he would have laid upon them, and resisted the measures heproposed. Clement the Sixth, who had approved his wisdom, punished hisfolly, and the so-called tribune was deposed, condemned for heresy, andexcommunicated. A Neapolitan soldier of fortune, an adventurer and acriminal, took possession of Rome with only one hundred and fifty men, in the name of the Pope, without striking a blow, and the people wouldnot raise a hand to help their late idol as he was led away weeping tothe Castle of Sant' Angelo, while the nobles looked on in scornfulsilence. Rienzi was allowed to depart in peace after a short captivityand became a wanderer and an outcast in Europe. 

In many disguises he went from place to place, and did not fear toreturn to Rome in the travesty of a pilgrim. The story of his adventureswould fill many pages, but Rome is not concerned with them. In vain heappealed to adventurers, to enthusiasts, and to fanatics to help inregaining what he had lost. None would listen to him, no man would drawthe sword. He came to Prague at last, obtained an audience of theEmperor Charles the Fourth, appealed to the whole court, withimpassioned eloquence, and declared himself to be Rienzi. The attemptcost him his freedom, for the prudent emperor forthwith sent him acaptive to the Pope at Avignon, where he was at first loaded with chainsand thrown into prison. But Clement hesitated to bring him to trial, hisfriend Petrarch spoke earnestly in his favour, and he was ultimatelyrelegated to an easy confinement, during which he once more gave himselfup to the study of his favourite classics in peaceful resignation. 

Meanwhile in Rome his enactments had been abolished with sweepingindifference to their character and importance, and the old misrule wasreëstablished in its pristine barbarity. The feud between Orsini andColonna broke out again in the absence of a common danger. The plagueappeared in Europe and decimated a city already distracted by internaldiscord. Rome was again a wilderness of injustice, as the chroniclesays; every one doing what seemed good in his own eyes, the Papal andthe public revenues devoured by marauders, the streets full of thieves, and the country infested by outlaws. Clement died, and Innocent theSixth, another Frenchman, was elected in his stead, 'a personage ofgreat science, zeal, and justice, ' who set about to reform abuses aswell as he could, but who saw that he could not hope to return to Romewithout long and careful preparation. He selected as his agent in theattempt to regain possession of the States of the Church the CardinalAlbornoz, a Spaniard of courage and experience. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO FARNESE]

Meanwhile Rienzi enjoyed greater freedom, and assumed the character ofan inspired poet; than which none commanded greater respect andinfluence in the early years of the Renascence. That he ever producedany verses of merit there is not the slightest evidence to prove, buthis undoubted learning and the friendship of Petrarch helped him tosustain the character. He never lacked talent to act any part which hisvanity suggested as a means of flattering his insatiable soul. He put onthe humility of a penitent and the simplicity of a true scholar; hespoke quietly and wisely of Italy's future and he obtained theconfidence of the new Pope. 

It was in this way that by an almost incredible turn of fortune, theoutcast and all but condemned heretic was once more chosen as a means ofrestoring order in Rome, and accompanied Cardinal Albornoz on hismission to Italy. Had he been a changed man as he pretended to be, hemight have succeeded, for few understood the character of the Romansbetter, and there was no name in the country of which the memoriesappealed so profoundly to the hearts of the people. 

The catalogue of his deeds during the second period of power is long andconfused, but the history of his fall is short and tragic. Not without akeen appreciation of the difference between his former position as thefreely chosen champion of the people, and his present mission as areformer supported by pontifical authority, he requested the Legate toinvest him with the dignity of a senator, and the Cardinal readilyassented to what was an assertion of the temporal power. Then Albornozleft him to himself. He entered Rome in triumph, and his eloquence didnot desert him. But he was no longer the young and inspired knight, self-convinced and convincing, who had issued from the little churchlong ago. In person he was bloated with drink and repulsive to all whosaw him; and the vanity which had so often been the temporary basis ofhis changing character had grown monstrous under the long repression ofcircumstances. With the first moment of success it broke out anddictated his actions, his assumed humility was forgotten in an instant, as well as the well-worded counsels of wisdom by which he had won thePope's confidence; and he plunged into a civil war with the stillpowerful Colonna. One act of folly succeeded another; he had neithermoney nor credit, and the stern Albornoz, seeing the direction he wastaking, refused to send him assistance. In his extremity he attempted toraise funds for his soldiers and money for his own unbounded luxury byimposing taxes which the people could not bear. The result was certainand fatal. The Romans rose against him in a body, and an infuriatedrabble besieged him at the Capitol. 

It has been said that the vainest men make the best soldiers. Rienzi wasbrave for a moment at the last. Seeing himself surrounded, and desertedby his servants, he went out upon a balcony and faced the mob alone, bearing in his hand the great standard of the Republic, and for the lasttime he attempted to avert with words the tempest which his deeds hadcalled forth. But his hour had come, and as he stood there alone he wasstoned and shot at, and an arrow pierced his hand. Broken in nerve bylong intemperance and fanatic excitement, he burst into tears and fled, refusing the hero's death in which he might still have saved his namefrom scorn. He attempted to escape from the other side of the Capitoltowards the Forum, and in the disguise of a street porter he haddescended through a window and had almost escaped notice while themultitude was breaking down the doors of the main entrance. Then he wasseen and taken, and they brought him in his filthy dress to the greatplatform of the Capitol, not knowing what they should do with him andalmost frightened to find their tyrant in their power. 

They thronged round him, looked at him, spoke to him, but he answerednothing; for his hour was come, the star of his nativity was in thehouse of death. In that respite, had he been a man, courage might haveawed them, eloquence might have touched them, and he might yet havedreamed of power. But he was utterly speechless, utterly broken, utterlyafraid. A whole hour passed, and no hand was lifted against him; yet hespoke not. Then one man, tired of his pale and bloated face, silentlystruck a knife into his heart, and as he fell dead, the rabble rushedupon him and stabbed him to pieces, and a long yell of murderous ragetold all Rome that Rienzi was dead. 

They left his body to the dogs and went away to their homes, for it wasevening, and they were spent with madness. Then the Jews came, who hatedhim also; and they dragged the miserable corpse through the streets; andmade a bonfire of thistles in a remote place and burned it; and what wasleft of the bones and ashes they threw into the Tiber. So perishedRienzi, a being who was not a man, but a strangely responsiveinstrument, upon which virtue, heroism, courage, cowardice, faith, falsehood and knavery played the grandest harmonies and the wildestdiscords in mad succession, till humanity was weary of listening, andsilenced the harsh music forever. However we may think of him, he wasgreat for a moment, yet however great we may think him, he was little inall but his first dream. Let him have some honour for that, and muchmerciful oblivion for the rest. 

[Illustration]

REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO

The Eighth region is almost symmetrical in shape, extending nearly northand south with a tolerably even breadth from the haunted palace of theSantacroce, where the marble statue of the dead Cardinal comes down fromits pedestal to pace the shadowy halls all night, to Santa Maria inCampo Marzo, and cutting off, as it were, the three Regions so long heldby the Orsini from the rest of the city. Taking Rome as a whole, it wasa very central quarter until the development of the newly inhabitedportions. It was here, near the churches of Saint Eustace and SaintIves, that the English who came to Rome for business establishedthemselves, like other foreigners, in a distinct colony during theRenascence. Upon the chapel of Saint Ives, unconsecrated now and turnedinto a lecture room of the University, a strange spiral tower shows thetalents of Borromini, Bernini's rival, at their lowest ebb. So far asone can judge, the architect intended to represent realistically thearduous path of learning; but whatever he meant, the result is as bad apiece of Barocco as is to be found in Rome. 

As for the Church of Saint Eustace, it commemorates a vision whichtradition attributes alike to Saint Julian the Hospitaller, to SaintFelix, and to Saint Hubert. The genius of Flaubert, who was certainlyone of the greatest prose writers of this century, has told the story ofthe first of these in very beautiful language, and the legend of SaintHubert is familiar to every one. Saint Eustace is perhaps less known, for he was a Roman saint of early days, a soldier and a lover of thechase, as many Romans were. We do not commonly associate with them theidea of boar hunting or deer stalking, but they were enthusiasticsportsmen. Virgil's short and brilliant description of Æneas shootingthe seven stags on the Carthaginian shore is the work of a man who hadseen what he described, and Pliny's letters are full of allusions tohunting. Saint Eustace was a contemporary of the latter, and perhapsoutlived him, for he is said to have been martyred under Hadrian, when along career of arms had raised him to the rank of a general. It is anoften-told story--how he was stalking the deer in the Ciminian forestone day, alone and on foot, when a royal stag, milk-white and withoutblemish, crashed through the meeting boughs before him; how he followedthe glorious creature fast and far, and shot and missed and shot again, and how at last the stag sprang up a steep and jutting rock and facedhim, and he saw Christ's cross between the branching antlers, and uponthe Cross the Crucified, and heard a still far voice that bade him beChristian and suffer and be saved; and so, alone in the greenwood, heknelt down and bowed himself to the world's Redeemer, and rose up again, and the vision had departed. And having converted his wife and his twosons, they suffered together with him; for they were thrust into thegreat brazen bull by the Colosseum, and it was made red hot, and theyperished, praising God. But their ashes lie under the high altar in thechurch to this day. 

The small square of Saint Eustace is not far from Piazza Navona, communicating with it by gloomy little streets, and on the great nightof the Befana, the fair spreads through the narrow ways and overflowswith more booths, more toys, more screaming whistles, into the spacebetween the University and the church. And here at the southeast cornerused to stand the famous Falcone, the ancient eating-house which to thelast kept up the Roman traditions, and where in old days, many a famousartist and man of letters supped on dishes now as extinct as the dodo. The house has been torn down to make way for a modern building. Famousit was for wild boar, in the winter, dressed with sweet sauce and pinenuts, and for baked porcupine and strange messes of tomatoes and cheese, and famous, too, for its good old wines in the days when wine was notmixed with chemicals and sold as 'Chianti, ' though grown about Olevano, Paliano and Segni. It was a strange place, occupying the whole of twohouses which must have been built in the sixteenth century, after thesack of Rome. It was full of small rooms of unexpected shapes, scrupulously neat and clean, with little white and red curtains, tiledfloors, and rush bottomed chairs, and the regular guests had their ownplaces, corners in which they had made themselves comfortable for life, as it were, and were to be found without fail at dinner and at suppertime. It was one of those genial bits of old Rome which survived till afew years ago, and was more deeply regretted than many better thingswhen it disappeared. 

Behind the Church of Saint Eustace runs a narrow street straight up fromthe Square of the Pantheon to the Via della Dogana Vecchia. It used tobe chiefly occupied at the lower end by poulterers' shops, but towardsits upper extremity--for the land rises a little--it has always had apeculiarly dismal and gloomy look. It bears a name about which areassociated some of the darkest deeds in Rome's darkest age; it is calledthe Via de' Crescenzi, the street and the abode of that great and evilhouse which filled the end of the tenth century with its bloody deeds. 

There is no more unfathomable mystery in the history of mediæval Romethan the origin and power of Theodora, whose name first appears in theyear 914, as Lady Senatress and absolute mistress of the city. Thechronicler Luitprand, who is almost the only authority for this period, heaps abuse upon Theodora and her eldest daughter, hints that they wereof low origin, and brands them with a disgrace more foul than theircrimes. No one can read their history and believe that they wereanything but patrician women, of execrable character but of highdescent. From Theodora, in little more than a hundred years, descendedfive Popes and a line of sovereign Counts, ending in Peter, the firstancestor of the Colonna who took the name; and, from her also, by themarriage of her second daughter, called Theodora like herself, theCrescenzi traced their descent. Yet no historian can say who that firstTheodora was, nor whence she came, nor how she rose to power, nor canany one name the father of her children. Her terrible eldest child, Marozia, married three sovereigns, the Lord of Tusculum, the Lord ofTuscany, and at last Hugh, King of Burgundy, and left a history that isan evil dream of terror and bloodshed. But the story of those fearfulwomen belongs to their stronghold, the great castle of Sant' Angelo. Tothe Region of Saint Eustace belongs the history of Crescenzio, consul, tribune and despot of Rome. In the street that bears the name of hisfamily, the huge walls of Severus Alexander's bath afforded thematerials for a fortress, and there Crescenzio dwelt when his kinswomanMarozia held Hadrian's tomb, and after she was dead. Those were thetimes when the Emperors defended the Popes against the Roman people. Notmany years had passed since Otto the First had done justice upon Peterthe Prefect, far away at the Lateran palace; Otto the Second reigned inhis stead, and Benedict the Sixth was Pope. The race of Theodora hatedthe domination of the Emperor, and despised a youthful sovereign whomthey had never seen. They dreamed of restoring Rome to the EasternEmpire, and of renewing the ancient office of Exarch for themselves. Benedict stood in their way and was doomed. They chose their antipope, aRoman Cardinal, one Boniface, a man with neither scruple nor conscience, and set him up in the Pontificate; and, when they had done that, Crescenzio seized Benedict and dragged him through the low blackentrance of Sant' Angelo, and presently strangled him in his dungeon. But neither did Boniface please those who had made him Pope; and, within the month, lest he should die like him he had supplanted, hestealthily escaped from Rome to the sea, and it is recorded that hestole and carried away the sacred vessels and treasures of the Vatican, and took them to Constantinople. 

So Crescenzio first appears in the wild and confused history of thatcentury of dread, when men looked forward with certainty and horror tothe ending of the world in the year one thousand. And during a dozenyears after Benedict was murdered, the cauldron of faction boiled andseethed in Rome. Then, in the year 987, when Hugh Capet took France forhimself and for his descendants through eight centuries, and when Johnthe Fifteenth was Pope in Rome, 'a new tyrant arose in the city whichhad hitherto been trampled down and held under by the violence of therace of Alberic, '--that is, the race of Theodora, --'and that tyrant wasCrescentius. ' And Crescenzio was the kinsman of Alberic's children. 

The second Otto was dead, and Otto the Third was a mere boy, whenCrescenzio, fortified in Sant' Angelo, suddenly declared himself Consul, seized all power, and drove the Pope from Rome. This time he had noantipope; he would have no Pope at all, and there was no Emperor either, since the young Otto had not yet been crowned. So Crescenzio reignedalone for awhile, with what he called a Senate at his back, and theterror of his name to awe the Roman people. But Pope John was wiser thanthe unfortunate Benedict, and a better man than Boniface, the antipopeand thief; and having escaped to the north, he won the graces ofCrescenzio's distant kinsman by marriage and hereditary foe, Duke Hughof Tuscany, grandson of Hugh of Burgundy the usurper; and from thatstrong situation he proceeded to offer the boy Otto inducements forcoming to be crowned in Rome. 

He wisely judged from what he had seen during his lifetime that the mosteffectual means of opposing the boundless license of the Romanpatricians was to make an Emperor, even of a child, and he knew that thename of Otto the Great was not forgotten, and that the terribleexecution of Peter the Prefect was remembered with a lively dread. Crescenzio was not ready to oppose the force of the Empire; he wassurrounded by jealous factions at home, which any sudden revolutionmight turn against himself, he weighed his strength against the dangerand he resolved to yield. The 'Senate, ' which consisted of patricians asgreedy as himself, but less daring or less strong, had altogetherrecovered the temporal power in Rome, and Crescenzio easily persuadedthem that it would be both futile and dangerous to quarrel with theEmperor about spiritual matters. The 'Consul' and the 'Senate'--whichmeant a tyrant and his courtiers--accordingly requested the Pope toreturn in peace and exercise his episcopal functions in the Holy See. Pope John must have been as bold as he was wise, for he did nothesitate, but came back at once. He reaped the fruit of his wisdom andhis courage. Crescenzio and the nobles met him with reverence andimplored his forgiveness for their ill-considered deeds; the Popegranted them a free pardon, wisely abstaining from any assertion oftemporal power, and sometimes apparently submitting with patience to theConsul's tyranny. For it is recorded that some years later, when theBishops of France sent certain ambassadors to the Pope, they were notreceived, but were treated with indignity, kept waiting outside thepalace three days, and finally sent home without audience or answerbecause they had omitted to bribe Crescenzio. 

[Illustration: SITE OF EXCAVATIONS ON THE PALATINE]

If Pope John had persuaded Otto to be crowned at once, such things mightnot have taken place. It was many years before the young Emperor came toRome at last, and he had not reached the city when he was met by thenews that Pope John was dead. He lost no time, designated his privatechaplain, the son of the Duke of Franconia, 'a young man of letters, butsomewhat fiery on account of his youth, ' to be Pope, and sent himforward to Rome at once with a train of bishops, to be installed in theHoly See. In so youthful a sovereign, such action lacked neither energynor wisdom. The young Pontiff assumed the name of Gregory the Fifth, espoused the cause of the poor citizens against the tyranny of thenobles, crowned his late master Emperor, and forthwith made a determinedeffort to crush Crescenzio and regain the temporal power. 

But he had met his match at the outset. The blood of Theodora was noteasily put down. The Consul laughed to scorn the pretensions of theyoung Pope; the nobles were in arms, the city was his, and in the secondyear of his Pontificate, Gregory the Fifth was driven ignominiously fromthe gates in a state of absolute destitution. He was the third Pope whomCrescenzio had driven out. Gregory made his way to Pavia, summoned acouncil of Bishops, and launched the Major Excommunication at hisadversary. But the Consul, secure in Sant' Angelo, laughed again, moregrimly, and did as he pleased. 

At this time Basil and Constantine, joint Emperors in Constantinople, sent ambassadors to Rome to Otto the Third, and with them came a certainJohn, a Calabrian of Greek race, a man of pliant conscience, tortuousmind, and extraordinary astuteness, at that time Archbishop of Piacenza, and formerly employed by Otto upon a mission to Constantinople. Crescenzio, as though to show that his enmity was altogether against thePope, and not in the least against the Emperor, received these envoyswith great honour, and during their stay persuaded them to enter into ascheme which had suddenly presented itself to his ambitiousintelligence. The old dream of restoring Rome to the Eastern Empire wasrevived, the conspirators resolved to bring it to realization, and Johnof Calabria was a convenient tool for their hands. He was to be Pope;Crescenzio was to be despot, under the nominal protection andsovereignty of the Greek Emperors, and the ambassadors were to concludethe treaty with the latter. Otto was on the German frontier waging waragainst the Slavs, and Gregory was definitely exiled from Rome. Nothingstood in the way of the plot, and it was forthwith put into execution. Certain ambassadors of Otto's were passing through Rome on their returnfrom the East and on their way to the Emperor's presence; they werepromptly seized and thrown into prison, in order to interruptcommunication between the two Empires. John of Calabria was consecratedPope, or rather antipope, Crescenzio took possession of all power, andcertain legates of Pope Gregory having ventured to enter Rome were atonce imprisoned with the Emperor's ambassadors. It was a daring stroke, and if it had succeeded, the history of Europe would have been differentfrom that time forward. Crescenzio was bold, unscrupulous, pertinaciousand keen. He had the Roman nobles at his back and he controlled suchscanty revenues as could still be collected. He had violently expelledthree Popes, he had created two antipopes, and his name was terror inthe ears of the Church. Yet it would have taken more than all that tooverset the Catholic Church at a time when the world was ripe for thefirst crusade; and though the Empire had fallen low since the days ofCharles the Great, it was fast climbing again to the supremacy of powerin which it culminated under Barbarossa and whence it fell withFrederick the Second. A handful of high-born murderers and maraudersmight work havoc in Rome for a time, but they could neither destroy thatdeep-rooted belief nor check the growth of that imperial law by whichEurope emerged from the confusion of the dark age--to lose both law andbelief again amid the intellectual excitements of the Renascence. 

Otto the Third was young, brave and determined, and before the treatywith the Eastern Emperors was concluded, he was well informed of theoutrageous deeds of the Roman patricians. No sooner had he brought thewar on the Saxon frontier to a successful conclusion than he descendedagain into Italy 'to purge the Roman bilge, ' in the chronicler's strongwords. On his way, he found time to visit Venice secretly, with only sixcompanions, and we are told how the Doge entertained him in private asEmperor, with sumptuous suppers, and allowed him to wander about Veniceall day as a simple unknown traveller, with his companions, 'visitingthe churches and the other rare things of the City, ' whereby it is clearthat in the year 998, when Rome was a half-deserted, half-ruined city, ruled by a handful of brigands living in the tomb of the Cæsars, Venice, under the good Doge Orseolo the Second, was already one of the beautifulcities of the world, as well as mistress of the Adriatic, of allDalmatia, and of many lovely islands. 

Otto took with him Pope Gregory, and with a very splendid army ofGermans and Italians marched down to Rome. Neither Crescenzio nor hisfollowers had believed that the young Emperor was in earnest; but whenit was clear that he meant to do justice, Antipope John was afraid, andfled secretly by night, in disguise. Crescenzio, of sterner stuff, heaped up a vast provision of food in Sant' Angelo, and resolved toabide a siege. The stronghold was impregnable, so far as any one couldknow, for it had never been stormed in war or riot, and on itspossession had depended the long impunity of Theodora's race. TheEmperor might lay siege to it, encamp before it, and hem it in formonths; in the end he must be called away by the more urgent wars of theEmpire in the north, and Crescenzio, secure in his stronghold, wouldhold the power still. But when the Roman people knew that Otto was athand and that the antipope had fled, their courage rose against thenobles, and they went out after John, and scoured the country till theycaught him in his disguise, for his face was known to many. Because theEmperor was known to be kind of heart, and because it was rememberedalso that this John of Calabria, who went by many names, had by strangechance baptized both Otto and Pope Gregory, the Duke of Franconia's son, therefore the Romans feared lest justice should be too gentle; andhaving got the antipope into their hands, they dealt with him savagely, put out his eyes, cut out his tongue and sliced off his nose, and drovehim to prison through the city, seated face backwards on an ass. Andwhen the Emperor and the Pope came, they left him in his dungeon. 

Now at Gaeta there lived a very holy man, who was Saint Nilus, and whoafterwards founded the monastery of Grottaferrata, where there arebeautiful wall paintings to this day. He was a Greek, like John ofCalabria, and though he detested the antipope he had pity on the manand felt compassion for his countryman. So he journeyed to Rome and camebefore Otto and Gregory, who received him with perfect devotion, as asaint, and he asked of them that they should give him the wretched John, 'who, ' he said, 'held both of you in his arms at the Font of Baptism, 'though he was grievously fallen since that day by his great hypocrisy. Then the Emperor was filled with pity, and answered that the saint mighthave the antipope alive, if he himself would then remain in Rome anddirect the monastery of Saint Anastasia of the Greeks. The holy man waswilling to sacrifice his life of solitary meditation for the sake of hiswretched countryman, and he would have obtained the fulfilment of hisrequest from Otto; but Pope Gregory remembered how he himself had beendriven out penniless and scantily clothed, to make way for John ofCalabria, and his heart was hardened, and he would not let the prisonergo. Wherefore Saint Nilus foretold that because neither the Pope nor theEmperor would have mercy, the wrath of God should overtake them both. And indeed they were both cut off in the flower of their youth--Gregorywithin one year, and Otto not long afterwards. 

Meanwhile they sent Nilus away and laid siege to the Castle of Sant'Angelo, where Crescenzio and his men had shut themselves up with a goodstore of food and arms. No one had ever taken that fortress, nor didany one believe that it could be stormed. But Pope and Emperor wereyoung and brave and angry, and they had a great army, and the people ofRome were with them, every man. They used such engines as theyhad, --catapults, and battering-rams, and ladders; and yet Crescenziolaughed, for the stone walls were harder than the stone missiles, andhigher than the tallest ladders, and so thick that fire could not heatthem from without, nor battering-ram loosen a single block in a singlecourse; and many assaults were repelled, and many a brave soldier fellwrithing and broken into the deep ditch with his ladder upon him. 

When the time of fate was fulfilled, the end came on a fair Aprilmorning; one ladder held its place till desperate armed hands hadreached the rampart, and swift feet had sprung upon the edge, and onebrave arm beat back the twenty that were there to defend; and then therewere two, and three, and ten, and a score, and a hundred, and the greatcastle was taken at last. Nor do we know surely that it was ever takenagain by force, even long afterwards in the days of artillery. ButCrescenzio's hour had come, and the Emperor took him and the twelvechief nobles who were with him, and cut off their heads, one by one, inquick justice and without torture, and the heads were set up on spikes, and the headless bodies were hung out from the high crenellations of theramparts. Thus ended Crescenzio, but not his house, nor the line ofTheodora, nor died he unavenged. 

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SANT' EUSTACHIO

From a print of the last century]

It is said and believed that Pope Gregory perished by the hands of theCrescenzi, who lived in the little street behind the Church of SaintEustace. As for Otto, he came to a worse end, though he was of a pioushouse, and laboured for the peace of his soul against the temptations ofthis evil world. For he was young, and the wife of Crescenzio waswonderfully fair, and her name was Stefania. She came weeping before himand mourning her lord, and was beautiful in her grief, and knew it, asmany women do. And the young Emperor saw her, and pitied her, and lovedher, and took her to his heart in sin, and though he repented daily, hedaily fell again, while the woman offered up her body and her soul to berevenged for the fierce man she had loved. So it came to pass, at last, that she found her opportunity against him, and poured poison into hiscup, and kissed him, and gave it to him with a very loving word. And hedrank it and died, and the prophecy of the holy man, Nilus, wasfulfilled upon him. 

The story is told in many ways, but that is the main truth of it, according to Muratori, whom Gibbon calls his guide and master in thehistory of Italy, but whom he did not follow altogether in his briefsketch of Crescenzio's life and death, and their consequences. TheCrescenzi lived on, in power and great state. They buried the terribletribune in Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, where his epitaph may be readtoday, but whither he did not retire in life, as some guide-books say, to end his days in prayer and meditation. And for some reason, perhapsbecause they no longer held the great Castle, they seem to have left theRegion of Saint Eustace; for Nicholas, the tribune's son, built thesmall palace by the Tiber, over against the Temple of Hercules, thoughit has often been called the house of Rienzi, whose name was alsoNicholas, which caused the confusion. And later they built themselvesother fortresses, but the end of their history is not known. 

In the troubles which succeeded the death of Crescentius, a curiouspoint arises in the chronicle, with regard to the titles of the bishopsdepending from the Holy See. It is certainly not generally known that, as late as the tenth century, the bishops of the great cities calledthemselves Popes--the 'Pope of Milan, ' the 'Pope of Naples, ' and thelike--and that Gregory the Seventh, the famous Hildebrand, was the firstto decree that the title should be confined to the Roman Pontiffs, withthat of 'Servus Servorum Dei'--'servant of the servants of God. ' Andindeed, in those changing times such a confusion of titles must havecaused trouble, as it did when Gregory the Fifth, driven out byCrescentius, and taking refuge in Pavia, found himself, the Pope ofRome, confronted with Arnulf, the 'Pope' of Milan, and complained of hisposition to the council he had summoned. 

The making and unmaking of Popes, and the election of successors tothose that died, brings up memories of what Rome was during the vacancyof the See, and of the general delight at the death of any reigningPontiff, good or bad. A certain monk is reported to have answered Paulthe Third, that the finest festival in Rome took place while one Popelay dead and another was being elected. During that period, not alwaysbrief, law and order were suspended. According to the testimony ofDionigi Atanagi, quoted by Baracconi, the first thing that happened wasthat the prisons were broken open and all condemned persons set free, while all men in authority hid themselves in their homes, and theofficers of justice fled in terror from the dangerous humour of thepeople. For every man who could lay hands on a weapon seized it, andcarried it about with him. It was the time for settling private quarrelsof long standing, in short and decisive fights, without fear ofdisturbance or interference from the frightened Bargello and theterrorized watchmen of the city. And as soon as the accumulated privatespite of years had spent itself in a certain amount of free fighting, the city became perfectly safe again, and gave itself up to layingwagers on the election of the next Pope. The betting was high, and therewere regular bookmakers, especially in all the Regions from SaintEustace to the Ponte Sant' Angelo, where the banks had establishedthemselves under the protection of the Pope and the Guelph Orsini, andwhere the most reliable and latest news was sure to be obtained freshfrom the Vatican. Instead of the Piazza di Spagna and the Villa Medici, the narrow streets and gloomy squares of Ponte, Parione and Sant'Eustachio became the gathering-place of society, high, low andindiscriminate; and far from exhibiting the slightest signs of mourningfor its late ruler, the city gave itself up to a sort of Carnivalseason, all the more delightful, because it was necessarily unexpected. 

Moreover, the poor people had the delight of speculating upon the wealthof the cardinal who might be elected; for, as soon as the choice of theConclave was announced, and the cry, 'A pope, a pope!' rang through thestreets, it was the time-honoured privilege of the rabble to sack andplunder the late residence of the chosen cardinal, till, literally, nothing was left but the bare walls and floors. This was so much amatter of course, that the election of a poor Pope was a source of thebitterest disappointment to the people, and was one of their principalcauses of discontent when Sixtus the Fifth was raised to thePontificate, it having been given out as certain, but a few hoursearlier, that the rich Farnese was to be the fortunate man. 

[Illustration]

REGION IX PIGNA

There used to be a tradition, wholly unfounded, but deeply rooted in theRoman mind, to the effect that the great bronze pine-cone, eleven feethigh, which stands in one of the courts of the Vatican, giving it thename 'Garden of the Pine-cone, ' was originally a sort of stopper whichclosed the round aperture in the roof of the Pantheon. The Pantheonstands at one corner of the Region of Pigna, and a connection betweenthe Region, the Pantheon and the Pine-cone seems vaguely possible, though altogether unsatisfactory. The truth about the Pine-cone isperfectly well known; it was part of a fountain in Agrippa's artificiallake in the Campus Martius, of which Pigna was a part, and it was set upin the cloistered garden of Saint Peter's by Pope Symmachus aboutfourteen hundred years ago. The lake may have been near the Pantheon. 

No one, so far as I am aware, --not even the excellent Baracconi, --offersany explanation of the name and device of the Ninth Region. Topographically it is nearly a square, of which the angles are thePantheon, the corner of Via di Caravita and the Corso, the Palazzo diVenezia, and the corner of the new Via Arenula and Via Florida. Besidesthe Pantheon it contains some of the most notable buildings erectedsince the Renascence. Here are the palaces of the Doria, of the Altieri, and the 'Palace of Venice' built by Paul the Second, that VenetianBarbo, whose name may have nicknamed the racing horses of the Carnival. Here were the strongholds of the two great rival orders, the Dominicansand the Jesuits, the former in the Piazza della Minerva, the latter inthe Piazza del Gesù, and in the Collegio Romano; and here at the presentday, in the buildings of the old rivals, significantly connected by anarched passage, are collected the greatest libraries of the city. Thatof the Dominicans, wisely left in their care, has been opened to thepublic; the other, called after Victor Emmanuel, is a vast collection ofbooks gathered together by plundering the monastic institutions of Italyat the time of the disestablishment. The booty--for it was nothingelse--was brought in carts, mostly in a state of the utmost confusion, and the books and manuscripts were roughly stacked in vacant rooms onthe ground floor of the Collegio Romano, in charge of a porter. Notuntil a poor scholar, having bought himself two ounces of butter in thePiazza Navona, found the greasy stuff wrapped in an autograph letter ofChristopher Columbus, did it dawn upon the authorities that the porterwas deliberately selling priceless books and manuscripts as waste paper, by the hundredweight, to provide himself with the means of gettingdrunk. That was about the year 1880. The scandal was enormous, a strictinquiry was made, justice was done as far as possible, and an officialaccount of the affair was published in a 'Green Book'; but the amount ofthe loss was unknown, it may have been incalculable, and it wasundeniably great. 

The names visibly recorded in the Region have vast suggestions inthem, --Ignatius Loyola, the Dominicans, Venice, Doria, Agrippa, and thebuildings themselves, which are the record, will last for ages; theopposition of Jesuit and Inquisitor, under one name or another, and ofboth by the people, will live as long as humanity itself. 

The crisis in the history of the Inquisition in Rome followed closelyupon the first institution of the Tribunal, and seventeen years afterPaul the Fourth had created the Court, by a Papal Bull of Julytwenty-first, 1542, the people burned the Palace of the Inquisition andthreatened to destroy the Dominicans and their monastery. 

[Illustration: THE PANTHEON]

So far as it is possible to judge the character of the famous CarafaPope, he was ardent under a melancholic exterior, rigid but ambitious, utterly blind to everything except the matter he had in hand, proud tofolly, and severe to cruelty. A chronicler says of him, that his head'might be compared to the Vesuvius of his native city, since he wasardent in all his actions, wrathful, hard and inflexible, undoubtedlymoved by an incredible zeal for religion, but a zeal often lacking inprudence, and breaking out in eruptions of excessive severity. ' On theother hand, his lack of perception was such that he remained in completeignorance of the outrageous deeds done in his name by his two nephews, the one a cardinal, the other a layman, and it was not until the lastyear of his life that their doings came to his knowledge. 

This was the man to whom Queen Elizabeth sent an embassy, in the hope ofobtaining the Papal sanction for her succession to the throne. Henry theSecond of France had openly espoused the cause of Mary Queen of Scots, whom Philip the Second of Spain was also inclined to support, after thefailure of his attempt to obtain the hand of Elizabeth for the Duke ofSavoy. With France and Spain against her, the Queen appealed to Rome, and to Paul the Fourth. In the eyes of Catholics her mother had neverbeen the lawful wife of Henry the Eighth, and she herself wasillegitimate. If the Pope would overlook this unfortunate fact andconfirm her crown in the eyes of Catholic Europe, she would make an actof obedience by her ambassador. She had been brought up as a Catholic, she had been crowned by a Roman Catholic bishop, and on first ascendingthe throne she had shown herself favourable to the Catholic party; therequest and proposition were reasonable, if nothing more. Muratoripoints out that if a more prudent, discreet and gentle Pope had reignedat that time, and if he had received Elizabeth's offer kindly, accordingto the dictates of religion, which he should have considered to theexclusion of everything else, and without entering into other people'squarrels, nor into the question of his own earthly rights, England mighthave remained a Catholic country. Paul the Fourth's answer, instead, wasshort, cold and senseless. 'England, ' he said, 'is under the feudaldominion of the Roman Church. Elizabeth is born out of wedlock; thereare other legitimate heirs, and she should never have assumed the crownwithout the consent of the Apostolic See. ' This is the generallyaccepted account of what took place, as given by Muratori and otherhistorians. Lingard, however, whose authority is undeniable, arguesagainst the truth of the story on the ground that the English Ambassadorin Rome at the time of Queen Mary's death never had an audience of thePope. It seems probable, nevertheless, that Elizabeth actually appealedto the Holy See, though secretly and with the intention of concealingthe step in case of failure. 

A child might have foreseen the consequences of the Pope's politicalfolly. Elizabeth saw her extreme danger, turned her back upon Romeforever, and threw herself into the arms of the Protestant party as heronly chance of safety. At the same time heresy assumed alarmingproportions throughout Europe, and the Pope called upon the Inquisitionto put it down in Rome. Measures of grim severity were employed, and theRoman people, overburdened with the taxes laid upon them by the Pope'snephews, were exasperated beyond endurance by the religious zeal of theDominicans, in whose hands the inquisitorial power was placed. 

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON]

Nor were they appeased by the fall of the two Carafa, which wasultimately brought about by the ambassador of Tuscany. The Pope enquiredof him one day why he so rarely asked an audience, and he franklyreplied that the Carafa would not admit him to the Pope's presenceunless he would previously give a full account of his intentions, andreveal all the secrets of the Grand Duke's policy. Then some one wroteout an account of the Carafa's misdeeds and laid it in the Pope's ownBreviary. The result was sudden and violent, like most of Paul'sdecisions and actions. He called a Consistory of cardinals, made openapology for his nephews' doings, deprived them publicly of all theiroffices and honours, and exiled them, in opposite directions and withtheir families, beyond the confines of the Papal States. 

But the people were not satisfied; they accused the Pope of treating hisnephews as scapegoats for his own sins, and the immediate repeal of manytaxes was no compensation for the terrors of the Inquisition. There werespies everywhere. No one was safe from secret accusers. The decisions ofthe tribunal were slow, mysterious and deadly. The Romans became thevictims of a secret reign of terror such as the less brave Neapolitanshad more bravely fought against and had actually destroyed a dozen yearsearlier, when Paul the Fourth, then only a cardinal, had persuaded theirViceroy to try his favourite method of reducing heresy. Yet such was thefear of the Dominicans and of the Pope himself that no one dared toraise his voice against the 'monks of the Minerva. '

The general dissatisfaction was fomented by the nobles, and principallyby the Colonna, who had been at open war with the Pope during his wholereign. Moreover, the severities of his government had produced betweenColonna and Orsini one of those occasional alliances for their commonsafety, which vary their history without adorning it. The Pope seizedthe Colonna estates and conferred them upon his nephews, but was in turnoften repulsed as the fighting ebbed and flowed during the four years ofhis Pontificate, for the Colonna as usual had powerful allies in theEmperor and in his kingdom of Naples. Changeable as the Roman peoplealways were, they had more often espoused the cause of Colonna than thatof the Pope and Orsini. Paul the Fourth fell ill in the summer, when theheat makes a southern rabble dangerous, and the certain news of hisapproaching end was a message of near deliverance. He lingered and diedhard, though he was eighty-four years old and afflicted with dropsy. Butthe exasperated Romans were impatient for the end, and the nobles werewilling to take vengeance upon their oppressor before he breathed hislast. As the news that the Pope was dying ran through the city, thespell of terror was broken, secret murmuring turned to open complaint, complaint to clamour, clamour to riot. A vast and angry multitudegathered together in the streets and open places, and hour by hour, asthe eager hope for news of death was ever disappointed, and the hardold man lived on, the great concourse gathered strength within itself, seething, waiting, listening for the solemn tolling of the great bell inthe Capitol to tell them that Paul the Fourth had passed away. Still itcame not. And in the streets and everywhere there were retainers andmen-at-arms of the great houses, ready of tongue and hand, but friendlywith the people, listening to tales of suffering and telling of theirlords' angry temper against the dying Pope. A word here, a word there, like sparks amid sun-dried stubble, till the hot stuff was touched withfire and all broke out in flame. 

Then words were no longer exchanged between man and man, but a great cryof rage went up from all the throng, and the people began to move, someknowing what they meant to do and some not knowing, nor caring, butmoving with the rest, faster and faster, till many were trampled down inthe press, and they came to the prisons, to Corte Savella and Tor diNona, and even to Sant' Angelo, and as they battered at the great doorsfrom without, the prisoners shouted for freedom from within, and theirgaolers began to loose their chains, fearing for their own lives, anddrew back the bolts to let the stream of riot in. So on that day fourhundred condemned men were taken out and let loose, before the Pope wasdead. 

[Illustration: THE RIPETTA

From a print of the last century]

Yet the people had not enough, and they surged and roared in thestreets, quivering with rage not yet half spent. And again words ranalong, as fire through dry grass, and suddenly all men thought of theInquisition, down by the Tiber at the Ripetta. Thought was motion, motion was action, action was to set men free and burn the hated prisonto the ground. The prisoners of the Holy Roman Office were seventy-two, and many had lain there long unheard, for the trial of unbelief wascumbrous in argument and slow of issue, and though the Pope couldbelieve no one innocent who was in prison, and though he was violent inhis judgments, the saintly Ghislieri was wise and cautious, and wouldcondemn no man hastily to please his master. When he in turn was Pope, the people loved him, though at first they feared him for Pope Paul'ssake. 

When they had burned the Inquisition on that day and set free theaccused persons, and it was not yet night, they turned back from theTiber, still unsatisfied, for they had shed little blood, or none atall, perhaps, and the people of Rome always thirsted for that when theiranger was hot. Through the winding streets they went, dividing where theways were narrow and meeting again where there was room, always towardsPigna, and the Minerva, and the dwelling of the learned black and whiterobed fathers into whose hands the Inquisition had been given and fromwhose monastery the good Ghislieri had been chosen to be cardinal. Forthe rabble knew no difference of thought or act between him and thedying Pope. They bore torches and weapons, and beams for battering downthe doors, and they reached the place, a raging horde of madmen. 

Suddenly before them there were five men on horseback, who were just anddid not fear them. These men were Marcantonio Colonna and his kinsmanGiuliano Cesarini, and a Salviati, and a Torres and GianbattistaBernardi, who had all suffered much at the hands of the Pope and hadcome swiftly to Rome when they heard that he was near death. And at thesight of those calm knights, sitting there on their horses withoutarmour and with sheathed swords, the people drew back a moment, whileColonna spoke. Presently, as he went on, they grew silent andunderstood his words. And when they had understood, they saw that hewas right and their anger was quieted, and they went away to theirhomes, satisfied with having set free those who had been long in prison. So the great monastery was saved from fire and the monks from death. Butthe Pope was not yet dead, and while he lived the people were restlessand angry by day and night, and ready for new deeds of violence; butMarcantonio Colonna rode through the city continually, entreating themto wait patiently for the end, and because he also had suffered much atPaul's hands, they listened to him and did nothing more. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA MINERVA]

The rest is a history which all men know: how the next Pope was just, and put the Carafa to their trial for many deeds of bloodshed; how thejudgment was long delayed that it might be without flaw; how it tookeight hours at last to read the judges' summing up; and how CardinalCarafa was strangled by night in Sant' Angelo, while at the same hourhis brother and the two who had murdered his wife were beheaded in Tordi Nona, just opposite the Castle, across the Tiber--a grim tragedy, butthe tragedy of justice. 

Southward a few steps from the Church of the Minerva is the littlePiazza della Pigna, with a street of the same name leading out of it. And at the corner of the place is a small church, dedicated to 'SaintJohn of the Pine-cone, ' that is, of the Region. Within lies one of thenoble Porcari in a curious tomb, and their stronghold was close by, perhaps built in one block with the church itself. 

The name Porcari calls up another tale of devotion, of betrayal, and ofdeath, with the last struggle for a Roman Republic at the end of theMiddle Age. It was a hopeless attempt, made by a brave man of simple andtrue heart, a man better and nobler than Rienzi in every way, but whojudged the times ill and gave his soul and body for the dream of aliberty which already existed in another shape, but which for its name'ssake he would not acknowledge. Stephen Porcari failed where Rienzipartially succeeded, because the people were not with him; they were nolonger oppressed, and they desired no liberator; they had freedom infact and they cared nothing for the name of liberty; they had a rulerwith whom they were well pleased, and they did not long for one of whomthey knew nothing. But Stephen, brave, pure and devoted, was a man ofdreams, and he died for them, as many others have died for the name ofRome and the phantom of an impossible Republic; for Rome has many timesbeen fatal to those who loved her best. 

In the year 1447 Pope Eugenius the Fourth died, after a long and justreign, disturbed far more by matters spiritual than by any worldlytroubles. And then, says the chronicler, a meeting of the Romans wascalled at Aracoeli, to determine what should be asked of the Conclavethat was to elect a new Pope. And there, with many other citizens, Stephen Porcari spoke to the Council, saying some things useful to theRepublic; and he declared that Rome should govern itself and pay afeudal tribute to the Pope, as many others of the Papal States did. Andthe Archbishop of Benevento forbade that he should say more; but theCouncil and the citizens wished him to go on; and there was disorder, and the meeting broke up, the Archbishop being gravely displeased, andthe people afraid to support Stephen against him, because the King ofSpain was at Tivoli, very near Rome. 

Then the Cardinals elected Pope Nicholas the Fifth, a good man and agreat builder, and of gentle and merciful temper, and there was muchfeasting and rejoicing in Rome. But Stephen Porcari pondered theinspired verses of Petrarch and the strange history of Rienzi, andwaited for an opportunity to rouse the people, while his brother, or hiskinsman, was the Senator of Rome, appointed by the Pope. At last, aftera long time, when there was racing, with games in the Piazza Navona, certain youths having fallen to quarrelling, and Stephen being there, and a great concourse of people, he tried by eloquent words to stir thequarrel to a riot, and a rebellion against the Pope. The people carednothing for Petrarch's verses nor Rienzi's memory, and Nicholas was kindto them, so that Stephen Porcari failed again, and his failure was hightreason, for which he would have lost his head in any other state ofEurope. Yet the Pope was merciful, and when the case had been tried, therebel was sent to Bologna, to live there in peace, provided that heshould present himself daily before the Cardinal Legate of the City. Butstill he dreamed, and would have made action of dreams, and he planned aterrible conspiracy, and escaped from Bologna, and came back to Romesecretly. 

His plan was this. On the feast of the Epiphany he and his kinsmen andretainers would seize upon the Pope and the Cardinals as prisoners, whenthey were on their way to High Mass at Saint Peter's, and then bythreatening to murder them the conspirators would force the keepers ofSant'Angelo to give up the Castle, which meant the power to hold Rome insubjection. Once there, they would call upon the people to acclaim thereturn of the ancient Republic, the Pope should be set free to fulfilthe offices of religion, while deprived of all temporal power, and thevision of freedom would become a glorious reality. 

But Rome was not with Porcari, and he paid the terrible price ofunpopular fanaticism and useless conspiracy. He was betrayed by thefolly of his nephew, who, with a few followers, killed the Pope'sequerry in a street brawl, and then, perhaps to save himself, fired thetrain too soon. Stephen shut the great gates of his house and defendedhimself as well as he could against the men-at-arms who were sent totake him. The doors were closed, says the chronicler, and within therewere many armed men, and they fought at the gate, while those in theupper story threw the tables from the windows upon the heads of thebesiegers. Seeing that they were lost, Stephen's men went out by thepostern behind the house, and his nephew, Battista Sciarra, with fourcompanions, fought his way through, only one of them being taken, because the points of his hose were cut through, so that the hoseslipped down and he could not move freely. Those who had not cut theirway out were taken within by the governor's men, and Stephen was draggedwith ignominy from a chest in which he had taken refuge. 

The trial was short and sure, for even the Pope's patience wasexhausted. Three days later, Stephen Infessura, the chronicler, saw thebody of Stephen Porcari hanging by the neck from the crenellations ofthe tower that used to stand on the right-hand side of Sant' Angelo, asyou go towards the Castle from the bridge; and it was dressed in a blackdoublet and black hose--the body of that 'honourable man who loved theright and the liberty of Rome, who, because he looked upon hisbanishment as without good cause, meant to give his life, and gave hisbody, to free his country from slavery. '

Infessura was a retainer of the Colonna and no friend of any Pope's, ofcourse; yet he does not call the execution of Porcari an act ofinjustice. He speaks, rather, with a sort of gentle pity of the man whogave so much so freely, and paid bodily death and shame for his beliefin a lofty vision. Rienzi dreamed as high, rose far higher, and fell tothe depths of his miserable end by his vanity and his weaknesses. Stephen Porcari accomplished nothing in his life, nor by his death; hadhe succeeded, no one can tell how his nature might have changed; but infailure he left after him the clean memory of an honest purpose, whichwas perhaps mistaken, but was honourable, patriotic and unselfish. 

It is strange, unless it be an accident, that the great opponents, theDominicans and the Jesuits, should have established themselves onopposite sides of the same street, and it is characteristic that thelatter should have occupied more land and built more showy buildingsthan the former, extending their possessions in more than one directionand in a tentative way, while the rigid Dominicans remained rooted tothe spot they had chosen, throughout many centuries. Both are gone, inan official and literal sense. The Dominican Monastery is filled withpublic offices, and though the magnificent library is still kept inorder by Dominican friars, it is theirs no longer, but confiscated tothe State, and connected with the Victor Emmanuel Library, in what wasthe Jesuit Roman College, by a bridge that crosses the street of SaintIgnatius. And the Jesuit College, on its side, is the property of theState and a public school; the Jesuits' library is taken from themaltogether, and their dwelling is occupied by other public offices. Butthe vitality which had survived ages was not to be destroyed by such atrifle as confiscation. Officially both are gone; in actual fact bothare more alive than ever. When the Jesuits were finally expelled fromtheir College, they merely moved to the other side of the DominicanMonastery, across the Via del Seminario, and established themselves inthe Borromeo palace, still within sight of their rivals' walls, and theycalled their college the Gregorian University. The Dominicans, drivenfrom the ancient stronghold at last, after occupying it exactly fivehundred years, have taken refuge in other parts of Rome under thesecurity of title-deeds held by foreigners, and consequently beyond thereach of Italian confiscation. Yet still, in fact, the two great ordersface each other. 

It was the prayer of Ignatius Loyola that his order should bepersecuted, and his desire has been most literally fulfilled, for theJesuits have suffered almost uninterrupted persecution, not at the handsof Protestants only, but of the Roman Catholic Church itself insuccessive ages. Popes have condemned them, and Papal edicts haveexpelled their order from Rome; Catholic countries, with Catholic Spainat their head, have driven them out and hunted them down with adetermination hardly equalled, and certainly not surpassed at any time, by Protestant Prussia or Puritan England. Non-Catholics are very apt toassociate Catholics and Jesuits in their disapproval, dislike, orhatred, as the case may be; but neither Englishman nor German couldspeak of the order of Ignatius more bitterly than many a most devoutCatholic. 

To give an idea of the feeling which has always been common in Romeagainst the Jesuits, it is enough to quote the often told popular legendabout the windy Piazza del Gesù, where their principal church stands, adjoining what was once their convent, or monastery, as people saynowadays, though Doctor Johnson admits no distinction between the words, and Dryden called a nunnery by the latter name. The story is this. Oneday the Devil and the Wind were walking together in the streets of Rome, conversing pleasantly according to their habit. When they came to thePiazza del Gesù, the Devil stopped. 'I have an errand in there, ' hesaid, pointing to the Jesuits' house. 'Would you kindly wait for me amoment?' 'Certainly, ' answered the Wind. The Devil went in, but nevercame out again, and the Wind is waiting for him still. 

When one considers what the Jesuits have done for mankind, as educators, missionaries and civilizers, it seems amazing that they should be sojudged by the Romans themselves. Their devotion to the cause ofChristianity against paganism has led many of them to martyrdom in pastcenturies, and may again so long as Asia and Africa are non-Christian. Their marvellous insight into the nature and requirements of educationin the highest sense has earned them the gratitude of thousands ofliving laymen. They have taught all over the world. Their courage, theirtenacity, their wonderful organization, deserve the admiration ofmankind. Neither their faults nor their mistakes seem adequate toexplain the deadly hatred which they have so often roused againstthemselves among Christians of all denominations. All organized bodiesmake mistakes, all have faults; few indeed can boast of such a catalogueof truly good deeds as the followers of Saint Ignatius; yet none havebeen so despised, so hated, so persecuted, not only by men who might besuspected of partisan prejudice, but by the wise, the just and thegood. 

[Illustration]

REGION X CAMPITELLI

Rome tends to diminutives in names as in facts. The first emperor wasAugustus, the last was Augustulus; with the Popes, the Roman Senatedwindled to a mere office, held by one man, and respected by none; theascent to the Capitol, the path of triumphs that marked the subjugationof the world, became in the twelfth century 'Fabatosta, ' or 'Roast BeansLane'; and, in the vulgar tongue, 'Capitolium' was vulgarized to'Campitelli, ' and the word gave a name to a Region of the city. Withinthat Region are included the Capitol, the Forum, the Colosseum and thePalatine, with the palaces of the Cæsars. It takes in, roughly, the landcovered by the earliest city; and, throughout the greater part of Romanhistory, it was the centre of political and military life. It meritedsomething better than a diminutive for a name; yet, in the latestrevolution of things, it has fared better, and has been more respected, than many other quarters, and still the memories of great times anddeeds cling to the stones that are left. 

In the dark ages, when a ferocious faith had destroyed the remnants ofLatin learning and culture, together with the last rites of the oldreligion, the people invented legend as a substitute for the folklore ofall the little gods condemned by the Church; so that the fairy tale isin all Europe the link between Christianity and paganism, and to theweakness of vanquished Rome her departed empire seemed only explicableas the result of magic. The Capitol, in the imagination of such tales, became a tower of wizards. High above all, a golden sphere reflected thesun's rays far out across the distant sea by day, and at night a hugelamp took its place as a beacon for the sailors of the Mediterranean, even to Spain and Africa. In the tower, too, was preserved the mysticmirror of the world, which instantly reflected all that passed in theempire, even to its furthest limits. Below the towers, also, andsurmounting the golden palace, there were as many statues as Rome hadprovinces, and each statue wore a bell at its neck, that rang of itselfin warning whenever there was trouble in the part of the world to whichit belonged, while the figure itself turned on its base to look in thedirection of the danger. Such tales Irving tells of the Alhambra, notmore wonderful than those believed of Rome, and far less numerous. 

There were stories of hidden treasure, too, without end. For, in thosedays of plundering, men laid their hands on what they saw, and hid whatthey took as best they might; and later, when the men of the Middle Ageand of the Renascence believed that Rome had been destroyed by theGoths, they told strange stories of Gothmen who appeared suddenly indisguise from the north, bringing with them ancient parchments in whichwere preserved sure instructions for unearthing the gold hastily hiddenby their ancestors, because there had been too much of it to carry away. Even in our own time such things have been done. In the latter days ofthe reign of Pius the Ninth, some one discovered an old book ormanuscript, wherein it was pointed out that a vast treasure lay buriedon the northward side of the Colosseum within a few feet of the walls, and it was told that if any man would dig there he should find, as hedug deeper, certain signs, fragments of statues, and hewn tablets, and aspring of water. So the Pope gave his permission, and the work began. Every one who lived in Rome thirty years ago can remember it, and theexcited curiosity of the whole city while the digging went on. And, strange to say, though the earth had evidently not been disturbed forcenturies, each object was found in succession, exactly as described, toa great depth; but not the treasure, though the well was sunk down tothe primeval soil. It was all filled in again, and the mystery has neverbeen solved. Yet the mere fact that everything was found except thegold, lends some possibility to the other stories of hidden wealth, toldand repeated from generation to generation. 

The legend of the Capitol is too vast, too varied, too full oftremendous contrasts to be briefly told or carelessly sketched. Archæologists have reconstructed it on paper, scholars have written outits history, poets have said great things of it; yet if one goes up thesteps today and stands by the bronze statue in the middle of the square, seeing nothing but a paved space enclosed on three sides by palaces ofthe late Renascence, it is utterly impossible to call up the past. Perhaps no point of ancient Rome seems less Roman and less individualthan that spot where Rienzi stood, silent and terrified, for a wholehour before the old stone lion, waiting for the curious, pitiless rabbleto kill him. The big buildings shut out history, hide the Forum, theGemonian steps, and the Tarpeian rock, and in the very inmost centre ofthe old city's heart they surround a man with the artificialities of anuninteresting architecture. For though Michelangelo planned thereconstruction he did not live to see his designs carried out, and theyfell into the hands of little men who tried to improve upon what theycould not understand, and ruined it. 

The truth is that half a dozen capitols have been built on the hill, destroyed, forgotten, and replaced, each one in turn, during successiveages. It is said that certain Indian jugglers allow themselves to beburied alive in a state of trance, and are taken from the tomb aftermany months not dead; and it is said that the body, before it is broughtto life again, is quite cold, as though the man were dead, exceptingthat there is a very little warmth just where the back of the skulljoins the neck. Yet there is enough left to reanimate the whole being ina little time, so that life goes on as before. So in Rome's darkest andmost dead days, the Capitol has always held within it a spark ofvitality, ready to break out with little warning and violent effect. 

[Illustration: THE CAPITOL]

For the Capitol, not yet the Capitol, but already the sacred fortress ofRome, was made strong in the days of Romulus, and it was in his time, when he and his men had carried off the Sabine girls and were at warwith their fathers and brothers, that Tarpeia came down the narrow path, her earthen jar balanced on her graceful head, to fetch spring water fora household sacrifice. Her father kept the castle. She came down, astraight brown girl with eager eyes and red lips, clad in the greywoollen tunic that left her strong round arms bare to the shoulder. Often she had seen the golden bracelets which the Sabine men wore ontheir left wrists, and some of them had a jewel or two set in the gold;but the Roman men wore none, and the Roman women had none to wear, andTarpeia's eyes were eager. Because she came to get water for holy thingsshe was safe, and she went down to the spring, and there was Tatius, ofthe Sabines, drinking. When he saw how her eyes were gold-struck by hisbracelet, he asked her if she should like to wear it, and the blood cameto her brown face, as she looked back quickly to the castle where herfather was. 'If you Sabines will give me what you wear on your leftarms, ' she said--for she did not know the name of gold--'you shall havethe fortress tonight, for I will open the gate for you. ' The Sabinelooked at her, and then he smiled quickly, and promised for himself andall his companions. So that night they went up stealthily, for there wasno moon, and the gate was open, and Tarpeia was standing there. Tatiuscould see her greedy eyes in the starlight; but instead of his bracelet, he took his shield from his left arm and struck her down with it for abetrayer, and all the Sabine men threw their shields upon her as theypassed. So she died, but her name remains to the rock, to this day. 

It was long before the temple planned by the first Tarquin was solemnlydedicated by the first consuls of the Republic, and the earthen image ofJupiter, splendidly dressed and painted red, was set up between Juno andMinerva. Many hundred years later, in the terrible times of Marius andSylla, the ancient sanctuary took fire and was burned, and Sylla rebuiltit. That temple was destroyed also, and another, built by Vespasian, was burned too, and from the last building Genseric stole the giltbronze tiles in the year 455, when Christianity was the fact and Jupiterthe myth, one and twenty years before the final end of Rome's empire;and the last of what remained was perhaps burned by Robert Guiscardafter serving as a fortress for the enemies of Gregory the Seventh. 

[Illustration: CHURCH OF ARACOELI]

But we know, at last, that the fortress of the old city stood where theChurch of Aracoeli stands, and that the temple was on the other side, over against the Palatine, and standing back a little from the Tarpeianrock, so that the open square of today is just between the places of thetwo. And when one goes up the steps on the right, behind the right-handbuilding, one comes to a quiet lane, where German students of archæologylive in a little colony by themselves and have their Institute at theend of it, and a hospital of their own; and there, in a wall, is a smallgreen door leading into a quiet garden, with a pretty view. Along theouter edge runs a low stone wall, and there are seats where one may restand dream under the trees, a place where one might fancy lovers meetingin the moonlight, or old men sunning themselves of an autumn afternoon, or children playing among the flowers on a spring morning. 

But it is a place of fear and dread, ever since Tarpeia died there forher betrayal, and one may dream other dreams there than those of peaceand love. The vision of a pale, strong man rises at the edge, bound andhelpless, lifted from the ground by savage hands and hurled from thebrink to the death below, --Manlius, who saved the Capitol and loved thepeople, and was murdered by the nobles, --and many others after him, justand unjust, whirled through the clear air to violent destruction fortheir bad or their good deeds, as justice or injustice chanced to be inthe ascendant of the hour. And then, in the Middle Age, thesweet-scented garden was the place of terrible executions, and thegallows stood there permanently for many years, and men were hanged anddrawn and quartered there, week by week, month by month, all the yearround, the chief magistrate of Rome looking on from the window of theSenator's palace, as a duty; till one of them sickened at the sight ofblood, and ordained that justice should be done at the Bridge of Sant'Angelo, and at Tor di Nona, and in the castle itself, and the summit ofthe fatal rock was left to the birds, the wild flowers, and the mercifulpurity of nature. And that happened four hundred years ago. 

Until our own time there were prisons deep down in the old Roman vaults. At first, as in old days, the place of confinement was in the Mamertineprison, on the southeastern slope, beneath which was the hideousTullianum, deepest and darkest of all, whence no captive ever came outalive to the upper air again. In the Middle Age, the prison was belowthe vaults of the Roman Tabularium on the side of the Forum, but it issaid that the windows looked inward upon a deep court of the Senator'spalace. As civilization advanced, it was transferred a story higher, toa more healthy region of the building, but the Capitoline prison was notfinally given up till the reign of Pius the Ninth, at which time it hadbecome a place of confinement for debtors only. 

Institutions and parties in Rome have always had a tendency to cling toplaces more than in other cities. It is thus that during so manycenturies the Lateran was the headquarters of the Popes, the Capitolthe rallying-place of the ever-smouldering republicanism of the people, and the Castle of Sant' Angelo the seat of actual military power ascontrasted with spiritual dominion and popular aspiration. So far as thelatter is concerned its vitality is often forgotten and its vigourunderestimated. 

One must consider the enormous odds against which the spirit of popularemancipation had to struggle in order to appreciate the strength itdeveloped. A book has been written called 'The One Hundred and Sixty-onerebellions of papal subjects between 896 and 1859'--a title which givesan average of about sixteen to a century; and though the furiouspartiality of the writer calls them all rebellions against the popes, whereas a very large proportion were revolts against the nobles, andRienzi's attempt was to bring the Pope back to Rome, yet there can be noquestion as to the vitality which could produce even half of such aresult; and it may be remembered that in almost every rising of theRoman people the rabble first made a rush for the Capitol, and, ifsuccessful, seized other points afterwards. In the darkest ages thewords 'Senate' and 'Republic' were never quite forgotten and were neverdissociated from the sacred place. The names of four leaders, Arnold ofBrescia, Stefaneschi, Rienzi and Porcari, recall the four greatestefforts of the Middle Age; the first partially succeeded and left itsmark, the second was fruitless because permanent success was thenimpossible against such odds, the third miscarried because Rienzi was amadman and Cardinal Albornoz a man of genius, and the fourth, becausethe people were contented and wanted no revolution at all. The firstthree of those men seized the Capitol at once, the fourth intended to doso. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power toring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans fromViterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Itssolemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour ofcondemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through thestreets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward tillthe tower rocked, the Romans ran to arms, the captains of the Regionsbuckled on their breastplates and displayed their banners, and thepeople flocked together to do deeds of sudden violence and shortlivedfury. In a few hours Stefaneschi of Trastevere swept the nobles from thecity; between noon and night Rienzi was master of Rome, and it was fromthe Capitol that the fierce edicts of both threatened destruction to theunready barons. They fled to their mountain dens like wolves at sunrise, but the night was never slow to descend upon liberty's short day, andwith the next dawn the ruined towers began to rise again; the peoplelooked with dazed indifference upon the fall of their leader, andpresently they were again slaves, as they had been--Arnold was hangedand burned, Stefaneschi languished in a dungeon, Rienzi wandered overEurope a homeless exile, the straight, stiff corpse of brave StephenPorcari hung, clad in black, from the battlement of Sant' Angelo. It wasalways the same story. The Barons were the Sabines, the Latins and theÆquians of Mediæval Rome; but there was neither a Romulus nor aCincinnatus to lead the Roman people against steel-clad masters trainedto fighting from boyhood, bold by inheritance, and sure of a power whichthey took every day by violence and held year after year by force. 

In imagination one would willingly sweep away the three stiff buildingson the Capitol, the bronze Emperor and his horse, the marble Castor andPollux, the proper arcades, the architectural staircase, and the evenpavement, and see the place as it used to be five hundred years ago. Itwas wild then. Out of broken and rocky ground rose the ancient Church ofAracoeli, the Church of the Altar of Heaven, built upon that altarwhich the Sibyl of Tivoli bade Augustus raise to the Firstborn of God. To the right a rude fortress, grounded in the great ruins of Rome'sArchive House, flanked by rough towers, approached only by that oldtriumphal way, where old women slowly roasted beans in ironchafing-dishes over little fires that were sheltered from the northwind by the vast wall. Before the fortress a few steps led to the maindoor, and over that was a great window and a balcony with a rusty ironbalustrade--the one upon which Rienzi came out at the last, with thestandard in his hand. The castle itself not high, but strong, brown andbattered. Beyond it, the gallows, and the place of death. Below it, adesolation of tumbling rock and ruin, where wild flowers struggled for aholding in spring, and the sharp cactus sent out ever-green pointsbetween the stones. Far down, a confusion of low, brown houses, withmany dark towers standing straight up from them like charred trees aboveunderbrush in a fire-blasted forest. Beyond all, the still loneliness offar mountains. That was the scene, and those were the surroundings, inwhich the Roman people reinstituted a Roman Senate, after a lapse ofnearly six hundred years, in consequence of the agitation begun and longcontinued by Arnold of Brescia. 

Muratori, in his annals, begins his short account of the year 1141 bysaying that the history of Italy during that period is almost entirelyhidden in darkness, because there are neither writers nor chroniclers ofthe time, and he goes on to say that no one knows why the town of Tivolihad so long rebelled against the Popes. The fact remains, astonishingand ridiculous, --in the middle of the twelfth century imperial Rome wasat war with suburban Tivoli, and Tivoli was the stronger; for when theRomans persuaded Pope Innocent the Second to lay siege to the town, theinhabitants sallied out furiously, cut their assailants to pieces, seized all their arms and provisions, and drove the survivors toignominious flight. Hence the implacable hatred between Tivoli and Rome;and Tivoli became an element in the struggles that followed. 

Now for many years, Rome had been in the hands of a family of convertedJews, known as the Pierleoni, from Pietro Leone, first spoken of in thechronicles as an iniquitous usurer of enormous wealth. They becameprefects of Rome; they took possession of Sant' Angelo and were thetyrants of the city, and finally they became the Pope's great enemies, the allies of Roger of Apulia, and makers of antipopes, of whom thefirst was either Pietro's son or his grandson. They had on their sidepossession, wealth, the support of a race which never looks uponapostasy from its creed as final, the alliance of King Roger and of DukeRoger, his son, and the countenance, if not the friendship, of Arnold ofBrescia, the excommunicated monk of northern Italy, and the pupil of theromantic Abelard. And the Pierleoni had against them the Popes, thegreat Frangipani family with most of the nobles, and Saint Bernard ofClairvaux, who has been called the Bismarck of the Church. Arnold ofBrescia was no ordinary fanatic. He was as brave as Stefaneschi, aspure-hearted as Stephen Porcari, as daring and eloquent as Rienzi inhis best days. The violent deeds of his followers have been imputed tohim, and brought him to his end; but it was his great adversary, SaintBernard, who expressed a regretful wish 'that his teachings might havebeen as irreproachable as his life. ' The doctrine for which he died atlast was political, rather than spiritual, human rather thantheological. In all but his monk's habit he was a layman in his lateryears, as he had been when he first wandered to France and sat at thefeet of the gentle Abelard; but few Churchmen of that day were asspotless in their private lives. 

He was an agitator, a would-be reformer, a revolutionary; and the timescraved change. The trumpet call of the first Crusade had roused thepeoples of Europe, and the distracted forces of the western world hadbeen momentarily concentrated in a general and migratory movement ofreligious conquest; forty years later the fortunes of the Latins in theEast were already waning, and Saint Bernard was meditating the inspiringwords that sent four hundred thousand warriors to the rescue of the HolyPlaces. What Bernard was about to attempt for Palestine, Arnold dreamedof accomplishing for Rome. In his eyes she was holy, too, her ruins werethe sepulchre of a divine freedom, worthy to be redeemed from tyrannyeven at the price of blood, and he would have called from the tomb thespirit of murdered liberty to save and illuminate mankind. WhereBernard was a Christian, Arnold was a Roman in soul; where Bernard wasan inspired monk, Arnold was in heart a Christian, of that firstApostolic republic which had all things in common. 

At such a time such a man could do much. Rome was in the utmostdistress. At the election of Innocent the Second, the Jewish Pierleonihad set up one of themselves as antipope, and Innocent had been obligedto escape in spite of the protection of the still powerful Frangipani, leaving the Israelitish antipope to rule Rome, in spite of the Emperor, and in alliance with King Roger for nine years, until his death, when itrequired Saint Bernard's own presence and all the strength of his fierywords to dissuade the Romans from accepting another spiritual andtemporal ruler imposed upon them by the masterful Pierleoni. So Innocentreturned at last, a good man, much tried by misfortune, but neither wisenor a leader of men. At that time the soldiers of Rome were beaten inopen battle by the people of Tivoli, a humiliation which it was not easyto forget. And it is more than probable that the Pierleoni looked on atthe Pope's failure in scornful inaction from their stronghold of Sant'Angelo, which they had only nominally surrendered to Innocent'sauthority. 

From a distance, Arnold of Brescia sadly contemplated Rome's disgraceand the evil state of the Roman people. The yet unwritten words of SaintBernard were already more than true. They are worth repeating here, inGibbon's strong translation, for they perfect the picture of the times. 

'Who, ' asks Bernard, 'is ignorant of the vanity and arrogance of theRomans? a nation nursed in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, theyaspire to reign; if they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity ofrevolt; yet they vent their discontent in loud clamours, if your doors, or your counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, theyhave never learnt the science of doing good. Odious to earth and heaven, impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their neighbours, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one are they beloved; andwhile they wish to inspire fear, they live in base and continualapprehension. They will not submit; they know not how to govern;faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful totheir benefactors, and alike impudent in their demands and theirrefusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution: adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of their policy. '

Fearless and in earnest, Arnold came to Rome, and began to preach agreat change, a great reform, a great revival, and many heard him andfollowed him; and it was not in the Pope's power to silence him, norbring him to any trial. The Pierleoni would support any seditionagainst Innocent; the Roman people were weary of masters, they listenedwith delight to Arnold's fierce condemnation of all temporal power, thatof the Pope and that of the Emperor alike, and the old words, Republic, Senate, Consul, had not lost their life in the slumber of five hundredyears. The Capitol was there, for a Senate house, and there were men inRome to be citizens and Senators. Revolution was stirring, and Innocenthad recourse to the only weapon left him in his weakness. Arnold waspreaching as a Christian and a Catholic. The Pope excommunicated him ina general Council. In the days of the Crusades the Major Interdictionwas not an empty form of words; to applaud a revolutionary was onething, to attend the sermons of a man condemned to hell was a gravermatter; Arnold's disciples deserted him, his friends no longer dared toprotect him under the penalty of eternal damnation, and he went out fromRome a fugitive and an outcast. 

Wandering from Italy to France, from France to Germany, and at last toSwitzerland, he preached his doctrines without fear, though he had uponhim the mark of Cain; but if the temporal sovereignty against which hespoke could not directly harm him, the spiritual power pursued himhither and thither, like a sword of flame. A weaker man would haverenounced his beliefs, or would have disappeared in a distant obscurity;but Arnold was not made to yield. Goaded by persecution, divinelyconfident of right, he faced danger and death and came back to Rome. 

He arrived at a moment when the people were at once elated by thesubmission of Tivoli, and exasperated against Innocent because herefused to raze that city to the ground. The Pierleoni were ever readyto encourage rebellion. The Romans, at the words Liberty and Republic, rose in a body, rushed to the Capitol, proclaimed the Commonwealth, andforthwith elected a Senate which assumed absolute sovereignty of thecity, and renewed the war with Tivoli. The institution then refoundedwas not wholly abolished until, under the Italian kings, arepresentative government took its place. 

The success and long supremacy of Arnold's teaching have been unfairlycalled his 'reign'; yet he neither caused himself to be elected aSenator, nor at any time, so far as we can learn, occupied any officewhatsoever; neither did he profit in fortune by the changes he hadwrought, and to the last he wore the garb of poverty and led the simplelife which had extorted the reluctant admiration of his noblestadversary. But he could not impose upon others the virtues he practisedhimself, nor was it in his power to direct the force his teachings hadcalled into life. For the time being the Popes were powerless againstthe new order. Innocent is said to have died of grief and humiliation, almost before the revolution was complete. His successor, Celestin theSecond, reigned but five months and a half, busy in a quarrel with KingRoger, and still the new Senate ruled the city. 

[Illustration: ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS]

But saving that it endured, it left no mark of good in Rome; the noblessaw that a new weapon was placed in their hands, they easily electedthemselves to office, and the people, deluded by the name of a Republic, had exchanged the sovereignty of the Pope, or the allegiance of theEmperor, for the far more ruthless tyranny of the barons. The JewishPierleoni were rich and powerful still, but since Rome was strong enoughto resist the Vatican, the Pontificate was no longer a prize worthseizing, and they took instead, by bribery or force, the Consulship orthe Presidency of the Senate. Jordan, the brother of the antipopeAnacletus, obtained the office, and the violent death of the next Pope, Lucius the Second, was one of the first events of his domination. 

Lucius refused to bear any longer the humiliation to which hispredecessors had tamely submitted. Himself in arms, and accompanied bysuch followers as he could collect, the Pope made a desperate attempt todislodge the Senate and their guards from the Capitol, and at the headof the storming party he endeavoured to ascend the old road, known thenas Fabatosta. But the Pierleoni and their men were well prepared for theassault, and made a desperate and successful resistance. The Pope fellat the head of his soldiers, struck by a stone on the temple, mortallywounded, but not dead. In hasty retreat, the dying man was borne by hisrouted soldiers to the monastery of Saint Gregory on the Coelian, under the safe protection of the trusty Frangipani, who held thePalatine, the Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum. Of all the many Popeswho died untimely deaths he was the only one, I believe, who fell inbattle. And he got his deathblow on the slope of that same Capitol whereGracchus and Manlius had died before him, each in good cause. 

It has been wrongly said that he had all the nobles with him, and thatthe revolution was of the people alone, aided by the Pierleoni. This isnot true. So far as can be known, the Frangipani were his only faithfulfriends, but it is possible that the Count of Tusculum, seventh indescent from Theodora, and nephew of the first Colonna, at that timeholding a part of the Aventine, may have also been the Pope's ally. Bethat as it may, the force that Lucius led was very small, and thegarrison of the Capitol was overwhelmingly strong. 

Some say also that Arnold of Brescia was not actually in Rome at thattime, that the first revolution was the result of his unforgottenteachings, bearing fruit in the hearts of the nobles and the people, andthat he did not come to the city till Pope Lucius was dead. However thatmay be, from that time forward, till the coming of Barbarossa, Arnoldwas the idol of the Romans, and their vanity and arrogance knew nobounds. Pope Eugenius the Third was enthroned in the Lateran under theprotection of the Frangipani, but within the week he was forced toescape by night to the mountains. The Pierleoni held Sant' Angelo; thepeople seized and fortified the Vatican, deprived the Pope's Prefect ofhis office, and forced the few nobles who resisted them to swearallegiance to Jordan Pierleone, making him in fact dictator, and in nametheir 'Patrician. ' The Pope retorted by excommunicating him, and allyinghimself with Tivoli, but was forced to a compromise whereby heacknowledged the Senate and the supremacy of the Roman people, who, already tired of their dictator, agreed to restore the Prefect tooffice, and to express some sort of obedience, more spiritual thantemporal, to the Pope's authority. But Arnold was still supreme, andafter a short stay in the city Eugenius was again a fugitive. 

It was then that he passed into France, when Lewis the Seventh was readyarmed to lead the Second Crusade to the Holy Land; and through thatstirring time Rome is dark and sullen, dwelling aloof from Church andEmpire in the new-found illusion of an unreal and impossible greatness. Seven hundred years later an Italian patriot exclaimed, 'We have anItaly, but we have no Italians. ' And so Arnold of Brescia must manytimes have longed for Romans to people a free Rome. He had made arepublic, but he could not make free men; he had called up a vision, buthe could not give it reality; like Rienzi and the rest, he had 'mistakenmemories for hopes, ' and he was fore-destined to pay for his belief inhis country's life with the sacrifice of his own. He had dreamed of aliberty serene and high, but he had produced only a dismal confusion: inplace of peace he had brought senseless strife; instead of a wise andsimple consul, he had given the Romans the keen and rapacious son of aJewish usurer for a dictator; where he had hoped to destroy the temporalpower of Pope and Emperor, he had driven the greatest forces of his age, and two of the greatest men, to an alliance against him. 

So he perished. Eugenius died in Tivoli, Anastasius reigned a fewmonths, and sturdy Nicholas Breakspeare was Adrian the Fourth. Conradthe Emperor also died, poisoned by the physicians King Roger sent himfrom famous Salerno, and Frederick Barbarossa of Hohenstauffen, hisnephew, reigned in his stead. Adrian and Frederick quarrelled at theirfirst meeting in the sight of all their followers in the field, for theyoung Emperor would not hold the Englishman's stirrup on the first day. On the second he yielded, and Pope and Emperor together were invincible. Then the Roman Senate and people sent out ambassadors, who spoke hugelyboasting words to the red-haired soldier, and would have set conditionson his crowning, so that he laughed aloud at them; and he and Adrianwent into the Leonine city, but not into Rome itself, and the Englishmancrowned the German. Yet the Romans would fight, and in the heat of thesummer noon they crossed the bridge and killed such straggling guards asthey could find; then the Germans turned and mowed them down, and killeda thousand of the best, while the Pierleoni, as often before, looked onin sullen neutrality from Sant' Angelo, waiting to take the side of thewinner. Then the Emperor and the Pope departed together, leaving Rome toits factions and its parties. 

Suddenly Arnold of Brescia is with them, a prisoner, but how taken noman can surely tell. And with them also, by Soracte, far out in thenorthern Campagna, is Di Vico, the Prefect, to judge the leader of thepeople. The Pope and the Emperor may have looked on, while Di Vicojudged the heretic and the rebel; but they did not themselves judge him. The Prefect, Lord of Viterbo, had been long at war with the new-formedSenate and the city, and owed Arnold bitter hatred and grudge. 

The end was short. Arnold told them all boldly that his teaching wasjust, and that he would die for it. He knelt down, lifted up his handsto heaven, and commended his soul to God. Then they hanged him, and whenhe was dead they burnt his body and scattered the ashes in the river, lest any relics of him should be taken to Rome to work new miracles ofrevolution. No one knows just where he died, but only that it was mostsurely far out in the Campagna, in the hot summer days, in the year1155, and not within the city, as has been so often asserted. 

He was a martyr--whether in a good cause or a foolish one, let thosejudge who call themselves wise; there was no taint of selfishness inhim, no thought of ambition for his own name, and there was no spot uponhis life in an age of which the evils cannot be written down, and arebetter not guessed. He died for something in which he believed enough todie for it, and belief cannot be truer to itself than that. So far asthe Church of today may speak, all Churchmen know that his heresies offaith, if they were real, were neither great nor vital, and that he wasput to death, not for them, but because he was become the idol and theprophet of a rebellious city. His doctrine had spread over Italy, hiswords had set the country aflame, his mere existence was a lasting causeof bloody strife between city and city, princes and people, nobles andvassals. The times were not ripe, and in the inevitable course of fateit was foreordained that he must perish, condemned by Popes andEmperors, Kings and Princes; but of all whole-souled reformers, of allpatriot leaders, of all preachers of liberty, past and living, it is nottoo much to say that Arnold of Brescia was the truest, the bravest andthe simplest. 

 * * * * *

To them all, the Capitol has been the central object of dreams, and uponits walls the story of their failure has often been told in grotesquefigures of themselves. When Rienzi was first driven out, his effigy waspainted, hanged by the heels upon one of the towers, and many another'enemy of the state' was pictured there--Giuliano Cesarini, for one, andthe great Sforza, himself, with a scornful and insulting epigraph; asAndrea del Castagno, justly surnamed the 'Assassin, ' painted upon thewalls of the Signoria in Florence the likeness of all those who hadjoined in the great conspiracy of the Pazzi, hung up by the feet, as maybe seen to this day. 

It has ever been a place of glory, a place of death and a place ofshame, but since the great modern changes it is meant to be only theseat of honour, and upon the slope of the Capitol the Italians, in thefirst flush of victorious unity, have begun to raise a great monument totheir greatest idol, King Victor Emmanuel. If it is not the best work ofart of the sort in existence it will probably enjoy the distinction ofbeing the largest, and it is by no means the worst, for the centralstatue of the 'Honest King' has been modelled with marvellous skill andstrength by Chiaradia, whose name is worthy to be remembered; yet thevastness of the architectural theatre provided for its display betraysagain the giantism of the Latin race, and when in a future century thebroad flood of patriotism shall have subsided within the straight riverbed of sober history, men will wonder why Victor Emmanuel, honest andbrave though he was, received the greater share of praise, and Cavourand Garibaldi the less, seeing that he got Italy by following the adviceof the one, if not by obeying his dictation, and by accepting thekingdom which the other had destined for a republic, but was forced toyield to the monarchy by the superior genius of the statesman. 

That day is not far distant. After a period of great and disastrousactivity, the sleepy indifference of 1830 is again settling upon Rome, the race for imaginary wealth is over, time is a drug in the market, money is scarce, dwellings are plentiful, the streets are quiet by dayand night, and only those who still have something to lose or whocherish very modest hopes of gain, still take an interest in financialaffairs. One may dream again, as one dreamed thirty years ago, when allthe clocks were set once a fortnight to follow the sun. 

Rome is restoring to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. They are muchbigger and finer things than the symmetrical, stuccoed cubes which havelately been piled up everywhere in heaven-offending masses, and one isglad to come back to them after the nightmare that has lasted twentyyears. Moreover, one is surprised to find how little permanent effecthas been produced by the squandering of countless millions during thebuilding mania, beyond a cruel destruction of trees, and a fewmodifications of natural local accidents. To do the moderns justice, they have done no one act of vandalism as bad as fifty, at least, committed by the barons of the Middle Age and the Popes of theRenascence, though they have shown much worse taste in such new thingsas they have set up in place of the old. 

The charm of Rome has never lain in its architecture, nor in the beautyof its streets, though the loveliness of its old-fashioned gardenscontributed much which is now in great part lost. Nor can it be saidthat the enthralling magic of the city we used to know lay especially inits historical association, since Rome has been loved to folly byhalf-educated girls, by flippant women of the world and by ignorantidlers without number, as well as by most men of genius who have everspent much time there. 

[Illustration: COLUMN OF PHOCAS, LOOKING ALONG THE FORUM]

In the Middle Age one man might know all that was to be known. Dantedid; so did Lionardo da Vinci. But times have changed since a mediævalscholar wrote a book 'Concerning all things and certain others also. ' Wecannot all be archæologists. Perhaps when we go and stand in the Forumwe have a few general ideas about the relative position of the oldbuildings; we know the Portico of the Twelve Gods in Council, the Templeof Concord, the Basilica Julia, the Court of Vesta, the Temple of Castorand Pollux; we have a more vague notion of the Senate Hall; the hideousarch of Septimius Severus stares us in the face; so does the lovelycolumn of evil Phocas, the monster of the east, the red-handedcenturion-usurper who murdered an Emperor and his five sons to reach thethrone. And perhaps we have been told where the Rostra stood, and theRostra Julia, and that the queer fragment of masonry by the arch issupposed to be the 'Umbilicus, ' the centre of the Roman world. There isno excuse for not knowing these things any more than there is any verystrong reason for knowing them, unless one be a student. There is a planof the Forum in every guide book, with a description that changes witheach new edition. 

And yet, without much definite knowledge, --with 'little Latin and lessGreek, ' perhaps, --many men and women, forgetting for one moment theguide book in their hands, have leaned upon a block of marble withhalf-closed, musing eyes, and breath drawn so slow that it is almostquite held in day-dream wonder, and they have seen a vision rise of pastthings and beings, even in the broad afternoon sunshine, out of stonesthat remember Cæsar's footsteps, and from walls that have echoedAntony's speech. There they troop up the Sacred Way, the shock-headed, wool-draped, beak-nosed Romans; there they stand together in groups atthe corner of Saturn's temple; there the half-naked plebeian childrenclamber upon the pedestals of the columns to see the sights, and doublethe men's deep tones with a treble of childish chatter; there the nobleboy with his bordered toga, his keen young face, and longing backwardlook, is hurried home out of the throng by the tall household slave, whocarries his school tablets and is answerable with his skin for the boy'ssafety. The Consul Major goes by, twelve lictors marching in single filebefore him--black-browed, square-jawed, relentless men, with their rodsand axes. Then two closed litters are carried past by big, black, oilyfellows, beside whom walk freedmen and Greek slaves, and three or fourcurled and scented parasites, the shadows of the great men. Under theirvery feet the little street boys play their games of pitching at tinypyramids of dried lupins, unless they have filberts, and lupins arealmost as good; and as the dandified hanger-on of Mæcenas, straining hisear for the sound of his patron's voice from within the litter, heedlessly crushes the little yellow beans under his sandal, theparticular small boy whose stake is smashed clenches his fist, and withflashing eyes curses the dandy's dead to the fourth generation ofascendants, and he and his companions turn and scatter like mice as oneof the biggest slaves threateningly raises his hand. 

[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE FORUM]

Absurd details rise in the dream. An old crone is selling roastedchestnuts in the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux; a tipsysoldier is reeling to his quarters with his helmet stuck on wrong sideforemost; a knot of Hebrew money-changers, with long curls and highcaps, are talking eagerly in their own language, clutching the littlebags they hide in the sleeves of their yellow Eastern gowns--the men whomourned for Cæsar and for Augustus, whose descendants were to burnRienzi's body among the thistles by Augustus's tomb, whose offspringwere to breed the Pierleoni; a bright-eyed, skinny woman of the peopleboxes her daughter's ears for having smiled at one of the rich men'sparasites, and the girl, already crying, still looks after thefashionable good-for-nothing, under her mother's upraised arm. 

All about stretches the vast humming city of low-built houses coveringthe short steep hills and filling all the hollow between. Northeastwardlies the seething Suburra; the yellow river runs beyond the Velabrum andthe cattle market to the west; southward rise the enchanted palaces ofCæsar; due east is the Esquiline of evil fame, redeemed and made lovelywith trees and fountains by Mæcenas, but haunted even today, say modernRomans, by the spectres of murderers and thieves who there died bloodydeaths of quivering torture. All around, as the sun sinks and the coolshadows quench the hot light on the white pavements, the ever-increasingcrowds of men--always more men than women--move inward, halfunconsciously, out of inborn instinct, to the Forum, the centre of theEmpire, the middle of the world, the boiling-point of the whole earth'sriches and strength and life. 

Then as the traveller muses out his short space of rest, the visiongrows confused, and Rome's huge ghosts go stalking, galloping, clanging, raving through the surging dream-throng, --Cæsar, Brutus, Pompey, Catiline, Cicero, Caligula, Vitellius, Hadrian, --and close upon themGauls and Goths and Huns, and all barbarians, till the dream is a medleyof school-learned names, that have suddenly taken shadows of great facesout of Rome's shadow storehouse, and gorgeous arms and streamingdraperies, and all at once the sight-seer shivers as the sun goes down, and passes his hand over his eyes, and shakes himself, and goes awayrather hastily, lest he should fall sick of a fever and himself begathered to the ghosts he has seen. 

It matters very little whether the day-dream much resembles the realityof ages long ago, whether boys played with lupins or with hazel-nutsthen, or old women roasted chestnuts in the streets, or whether suchunloving spirits should be supposed to visit one man in one vision. Thetraveller has had an impression which has not been far removed fromemotion, and his day has not been lost, if it be true that emotion isthe soul's only measure of time. There, if anywhere, lies Rome's secret. The place, the people, the air, the crystal brightness of winter, thepassion-stirring scirocco of autumn, the loveliness of the long spring, the deep, still heat of summer, the city, the humanity, the memories ofboth, are all distillers of emotion in one way or another. 

Above all, the night is beautiful in Rome, when the moon is high and allis quiet. Go down past the silver Forum to the Colosseum and see what itis then, and perhaps you will know what it was in the old days. Suchwhite stillness as this fell then also, by night, on all the broad spacearound the amphitheatre of all amphitheatres, the wonder of the world, the chief monument of Titus, when his hand had left of Jerusalem not onestone upon another. The same moonbeams fell slanting across the samehuge walls, and whitened the sand of the same broad arena when the greatawning was drawn back at night to air the place of so much death. In theshadow, the steps are still those up which Dion the Senator went to seemad Commodus play the gladiator and the public fool. On one of thoselower seats he sat, the grave historian, chewing laurel leaves to steadyhis lips and keep down his laughter, lest a smile should cost his head;and he showed the other Senators that it was a good thing for theirsafety, and there they sat, in their rows, throughout the longafternoon, solemnly chewing laurel leaves for their lives, while thestrong madman raved on the sand below, and slew, and bathed himself inthe blood of man and beast. There is a touch of frightful humour in thetale. 

And one stands there alone in the stillness and remembers how, on thatsame night, when all was over, when the corpses had been dragged away, it may have been almost as it is now. Only, perhaps, far off among thearches and on the tiers of seats, there might be still a tiny lightmoving here and there; the keepers of that terrible place would go theirrounds with their little earthen lamps; they would search everywhere inthe spectators' places for small things that might have been lost in thepress--a shoulder-buckle of gold or silver or bronze, an armlet, awoman's earring, a purse, perhaps, with something in it. And the fitfulnight-breeze blew now and then and made them shade their lights withtheir dark hands. By the 'door of the dead' a torch was burning down inits socket, its glare falling upon a heap of armour, mostly somewhatbattered, and all of it blood-stained; a score of black-browed smithswere picking it over and distributing it in heaps, according to itscondition. Now and then, from the deep vaults below the arena, came thedistant sound of a clanging gate or of some piece of huge stagemachinery falling into its place, and a muffled calling of men. One ofthe keepers, with his light, was singing softly some ancient minorstrain as he searched the tiers. That would be all, and presently eventhat would cease. 

One thinks of such things naturally enough; and then the dream runsbackward, against the sun, as dreams will, and the moon rays weave avision of dim day. Straightway tier upon tier, eighty thousand facesrise, up to the last high rank beneath the awning's shade. High in thefront, under the silken canopy sits the Emperor of the world, sodden-faced, ghastly, swine-eyed, robed in purple; all alone, save forhis dwarf, bull-nosed, slit-mouthed, hunch-backed, sly. Next, on thelowest bench, the Vestals, old and young, the elder looking on with hardfaces and dry eyes, the youngest with wide and startled looks, andparted lips, and quick-drawn breath that sobs and is caught at sight ofeach deadly stab and gash of broadsword and trident, and hands thattwitch and clutch each other as a man's foot slips in a pool of blood, and the heavy harness clashes in the red, wet sand. Then grey-hairedsenators; then curled and perfumed knights of Rome; and then the people, countless, vast, frenzied, blood-thirsty, stretching out a hundredthousand hands with thumbs reversed, commanding death to thefallen--full eighty thousand throats of men and women roaring, yelling, shrieking over each ended life. A theatre indeed, a stage indeed, a playwherein every scene of every act ends in sudden death. 

And then the wildest, deadliest howl of all on that day; a handful ofmen and women in white, and one girl in the midst of them; the clang ofan iron gate thrown suddenly open; a rushing and leaping of great, lithebodies of beasts, yellow and black and striped, the sand flying inclouds behind them; a worrying and crushing of flesh and bone, as ofhuge cats worrying little white mice; sharp cries, then blood, thensilence, then a great laughter, and the sodden face of mankind's drunkenmaster grows almost human for a moment with a very slow smile. The wildbeasts are driven out with brands and red-hot irons, step by step, dragging backward nameless mangled things in their jaws, and thebull-nosed dwarf offers the Emperor a cup of rare red wine. It dripsfrom his mouth while he drinks, as the blood from the tiger's fangs. 

"What were they?" he asks. 

"Christians, " explains the dwarf. 

[Illustration]

REGION XI SANT' ANGELO

The Region of Sant' Angelo, as has been already said, takes its namefrom the small church famous in Rienzi's story. It encloses all of whatwas once the Ghetto, and includes the often-mentioned Theatre ofMarcellus, now the palace of the Orsini, but successively a fortress ofthe Pierleoni, appropriately situated close to the Jews' quarter, andthe home of the Savelli. The history of the Region is the history of theJews in Rome, from Augustus to the destruction of their dwelling-place, about 1890. In other words, the Hebrew colony actually lived duringnineteen hundred years at that point of the Tiber, first on one side ofthe river, and afterwards on the other. 

It is said that the first Jews were brought to Rome by Pompey, asprisoners of war, and soon afterwards set free, possibly on their payinga ransom accumulated by half starving themselves, and selling thegreater part of their allowance of corn during a long period. Seventeenyears later, they were a power in Rome; they had lent Julius Cæsarenormous sums, which he repaid with exorbitant interest, and after hisdeath they mourned him, and kept his funeral pyre burning seven days andnights in the Forum. A few years after that time, Augustus establishedthem on the opposite side of the Tiber, over against the bridge ofCestius and the island. Under Tiberius their numbers had increased tofifty thousand; they had synagogues in Rome, Genoa and Naples, and it isnoticeable that their places of worship were always built upon the shoreof the sea, or the bank of a river, whence their religious services cameto be termed 'orationes littorales'--which one might roughly translateas 'alongshore prayers. '

They were alternately despised, hated, feared and flattered. Tacituscalls them a race of men hated by the gods, yet their kings, Herod andAgrippa--one asks how the latter came by an ancient Roman name--weretreated with honour and esteem. The latter was in fact brought up withDrusus, the son of the Emperor Tiberius, his son was on terms of thegreatest intimacy with Claudius, and his daughter or grand-daughterBerenice was long and truly loved by Titus, who would have made herEmpress had it been possible, to the great scandal of the Emperor's manydetractors, as Suetonius has told. Sabina Poppæa, Nero's lowly and evilsecond wife, loved madly one Aliturius, a Jewish comic actor and afavourite of Nero; and when the younger Agrippa induced Nero to imprisonSaint Peter and Saint Paul, and Josephus came to Pozzuoli, havingsuffered shipwreck like the latter, this same Josephus, the historian ofthe Jews, got the actor's friendship and by his means moved Poppæa, andthrough her, Nero, to a first liberation of those whom he describes as'certain priests of my acquaintance, very excellent persons, whom on asmall and trifling charge Felix the procurator of Judæa had put in ironsand sent to Rome to plead their cause before Cæsar. ' It should not beforgotten that Josephus was himself a pupil of Banus, who, though not aChristian, is believed to have been a follower of John the Baptist. Andhere Saint John Chrysostom, writing about the year 400, takes up thestory and tells how Saint Paul attempted to convert Poppæa and topersuade her to leave Nero, since she had two other husbands living; andhow Nero turned upon him and accused him of many sins, and imprisonedhim, and when he saw that even in prison the Apostle still worked uponPoppæa's conscience, he at last condemned him to die. Other historianshave said that Poppæa turned Jewess for the sake of her Jewish actor, and desired to be buried by the Jewish rite when she was dying of thesavage kick that killed her and her child--the only act of violence Neroseems to have ever regretted. However that may be, it is sure that sheloved the comedian, and that for a time he had unbounded influence inRome. And so great did their power grow that Claudius Rutilius, a Romanmagistrate and poet, a contemporary of Chrysostom, and not a Christian, expressed the wish that Judæa might never have been conquered by Pompeyand subdued again by Titus, 'since the contagion of the cancer, cut out, spreads wider, and the conquered nation grinds its conquerors. '

And so, with varying fortune, they survived the empire which they hadseen founded, and the changes of a thousand years, they themselvesinwardly unchanged and unchanging, while following many arts and manytrades besides money-lending, and they outlived persecution and did notdecay in prosperity. In their seven Roman synagogues they set up modelsof the temple Titus had destroyed, and of the seven-branched candlestickand of the holy vessels of Jerusalem which were preserved in the templeof Peace as trophies of the Jews' subjection; they made candlesticks andvessels of like shape for their synagogues, nursing their hatred, praying for deliverance, and because those sacred things were kept inRome, it became a holy city for them, and they throve; and by and bythey oppressed their victors. Then came Domitian the Jew-hater, andturned them out of their houses and laid heavy taxes upon them, andforced them for a time to live in the caves and wild places andcatacombs of the Aventine, and they became dealers in spellsand amulets and love philtres, which they sold dear to theever-superstitious Romans, and Juvenal wrote scornful satires on them. Presently they returned, under Trajan, to their old dwellings by theTiber. Thence they crept along the Cestian bridge to the island, andfrom the island by the Fabrician bridge to the other shore, growing richagain by degrees, and crowding their little houses upon the gloriousportico of Octavia, where Vespasian and Titus had met the Senate at dawnon the day when they triumphed over the Jews and the fall of Jerusalem, and the very place of the Jews' greatest humiliation became theirstronghold for ages. 

Then all at once, in the twelfth century, they are the masters. ThePierleoni hold Sant' Angelo, and close to their old quarters fortify theTheatre of Marcellus, and a Pierleone is antipope in name, but a realand ruling Pope in political fact, while Innocent the Second wandershelplessly from town to town, and later, while Lewis the Seventh ofFrance leads the Second Crusade to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, the'Vicar of Christ' is an outcast before the race of those by whom Christwas crucified. That was the highest point of the Jews' greatness inRome. 

[Illustration: PIAZZA MONTANARA AND THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS

From a print of the last century]

But it is noticeable that while the Hebrew race possesses in the veryhighest degree the financial energy to handle and accumulate money, andthe tenacity to keep it for a long time, it has never shown that sort ofstrength which can hold land or political power in adversecircumstances. In the twelfth century the Pierleoni were the masters ofRome; in the thirteenth, they had disappeared from history, though theystill held the Theatre of Marcellus; in the fourteenth they seem to haveperished altogether and are never heard of again. And it should not beargued that this was due to any overwhelming persecution and destructionof the Jews, since the Pierleoni's first step was an outward, if not asincere, conversion to Christianity. In strong contrast with these factsstands the history of the Colonna. The researches of the learned Coppimake it almost certain that the Colonna descend from Theodora, theSenatress of Rome, who flourished in the year 914; Pietro della Colonnaheld Palestrina, and is known to have imprisoned there, 'in an emptycistern, ' the governor of Campagna, in the year 1100; like the Orsini, the Colonna boast that during more than five hundred years no treaty wasdrawn up with the princes of Europe in which their two families were notspecifically designated; and at the time of the present writing, in thelast days of the nineteenth century, Colonna is still not only one ofthe greatest names in Europe, but the family is numerous andflourishing, unscathed by the terrible financial disasters which beganto ruin Italy in 1888, not notably wealthy, but still in possession ofits ancestral palace in Rome, and of immense tracts of land in thehills, in the Campagna, and in the south of Italy--actively engaged, moreover, in the representative government of Italy, strong, solid andfull of life, as though but lately risen to eminence from a sturdycountry stock--and all this after a career that has certainly lastedeight hundred years, and very probably nearer a thousand. Nor can anyone pretend that it owes much to the power or protection of anysovereign, since the Colonna have been in almost constant opposition tothe Popes in history, have been exiled and driven from Italy more thanonce, and have again and again suffered confiscation of all theypossessed in the world. There have certainly not been in the same timeso many confiscations proclaimed against the Jews. 

The question presents itself: why has a prolific race which, as a whole, has survived the fall of kingdoms and empires without end, with singularintegrity of original faith and most extraordinary tenacity of traditionand custom, together with the most unbounded ambition and very superiormental gifts, never produced a single family of powerful men able tomaintain their position more than a century or two, when the nations ofEurope have produced at least half a dozen that have lasted a thousandyears? If there be any answer to such a question, it is that the pursuitand care of money have a tendency to destroy the balance and producedegeneration by over-stimulating the mind in one direction, and that nota noble one, at the expense of the other talents; whereas the strugglefor political power sharpens most of the faculties, and the acquisitionand preservation of landed property during many generations bring mennecessarily into a closer contact with nature, and therefore induce ahealthier life, tending to increase the vitality of a race rather thanto diminish it. Whether this be true or not, it is safe to say that nogreat family has ever maintained its power long by the possession ofmoney, without great lands; and by 'long' we understand at least threehundred years. 

With regard to the Jews in Rome it is a singular fact that they havegenerally been better treated by the religious than by the civilauthorities. They were required to do homage to the latter every yearin the Capitol, and on this occasion the Senator of Rome placed his footupon the heads of the prostrate delegates, by way of accentuating theirhumiliation and disgrace, but the service they were required to do onthe accession of a new Pope was of a different and less degradingnature. The Israelite School awaited the Pope's passage, on his returnfrom taking possession of the Lateran, standing up in a richly hungtemporary balcony, before which he passed on his way. They thenpresented him with a copy of the Pentateuch, which he blessed on thespot, and took away with him. That was all, and it amounted to asanction, or permission, accorded to the Jewish religion. 

As for the sumptuary laws, the first one was decreed in 1215, after thefall of the Pierleoni, and it imposed upon all Jews, and other hereticswhomsoever, the wearing of a large circle of yellow cloth sewn upon thebreast. In the following century, according to Baracconi, this mark wasabolished by the statutes of the city and the Jews were made to wear ascarlet mantle in public; but all licensed Jewish physicians, beingregarded as public benefactors, were exempted from the rule. For theprofession of medicine is one which the Hebrews have always followedwith deserved success, and it frequently happened in Rome that thePope's private physician, who lived in the Vatican and was a personageof confidence and importance, was a professed Israelite from theGhetto, who worshipped in the synagogue on Saturdays and looked withcontempt and disgust upon his pontifical patient as an eater of uncleanfood. There was undoubtedly a law compelling a certain number of theJews to hear sermons once a week, first in the Trinità dei Pellegrini, and afterwards in the Church of Sant' Angelo in the Fishmarket, and itwas from time to time rigorously enforced; it was renewed in the presentcentury under Leo the Twelfth, and only finally abolished, together withall other oppressive measures, by Pius the Ninth at the beginning of hisreign. But when one considers the frightful persecution suffered by therace in Spain, it must be conceded that they were relatively welltreated in Rome by the Popes. Their bitterest enemies and oppressorswere the lower classes of the people, who were always ready to attackand rifle the Ghetto on the slightest pretext, and against whoseoutrageous deeds the Jews had no redress. 

[Illustration: THEATRE OF MARCELLUS]

It was their treatment by the people, rather than the matter itself, which made the carnival races, in which they were forced to run after ahearty meal, together with a great number of Christians, an intolerabletyranny; and when Clement the Ninth exempted them from it, he did notabolish the races of Christian boys and old men. The people detested theJews, hooted them, hissed them, and maltreated them with and withoutprovocation. Moses Mendelssohn, the father of the composer, wrote to afriend from Berlin late in the eighteenth century, complaining bitterlythat in that self-styled city of toleration, the cry of 'Jew' was raisedagainst him when he ventured into the streets with his little childrenby daylight, and that the boys threw stones at them, as they passed, sothat he only went out late in the evening. Things were no better in Romeunder Paul the Fourth, but they were distinctly better in Rome than inBerlin at the time of Mendelssohn's writing. 

Paul the Fourth, the Carafa Pope, and the friend of the Inquisition, confined the Jews to the Ghetto. There can be no doubt but that the actwas intended as a measure of severity against heretics, and as such Piusthe Ninth considered it indefensible and abolished it. In actual fact itmust have been of enormous advantage to the Jews, who were thus providedwith a stronghold against the persecutions and robberies of the rabble. The little quarter was enclosed by strong walls with gates, and if theJews were required to be within them at night, on pain of a fine, theyand their property were at least in safety. This fact has never beennoticed, and accounts for the serenity with which they bore theirnightly imprisonment for three centuries. Once within the walls of theGhetto they were alone, and could go about the little streets in perfectsecurity; they were free from the contamination as well as safe from thedepredations of Christians, and within their own precincts they were notforced to wear the hated orange-coloured cap or net which Paul theFourth imposed upon the Jewish men and women. To a great extent, too, such isolation was already in the traditions of the race. A hundredyears earlier Venice had created its Ghetto; so had Prague, and otherEuropean cities were not long in following. Morally speaking theirconfinement may have been a humiliation; in sober fact it was an immenseadvantage; moreover, a special law of 'emphyteusis' made the leases oftheir homes inalienable, so long as they paid rent, and forbade theraising of the rent under any circumstances, while leaving the tenantabsolute freedom to alter and improve his house as he would, togetherwith the right to sublet it, or to sell the lease itself to any otherHebrew; and these leases became very valuable. Furthermore, though underthe jurisdiction of criminal courts, the Jews had their own police inthe Ghetto, whom they chose among themselves half yearly. 

It has been stated by at least one writer that the church and square ofSanta Maria del Pianto--Our Lady of Tears--bears witness to the grief ofthe people when they were first forced into the Ghetto in the year 1556. But this is an error. The church received the name from a tragedy and amiracle which are said to have taken place before it ten years earlier. It was formerly called San Salvatore in Cacaberis, the Church of the'Saviour in the district of the kettle-makers. ' An image of the BlessedVirgin stood over the door of a house close by; a frightful murder wasdone in broad day, and at the sight tears streamed from the statue'seyes; the image was taken into the church, which was soon afterwardsdedicated to 'Our Lady of Tears, ' and the name remained forever tocommemorate the miraculous event. 

Besides mobbing the Jews in the streets and plundering them when theycould, the Roman populace invented means of insulting them which musthave been especially galling. They ridiculed them in the popularopen-air theatres, and made blasphemous jests upon their most sacredthings in Carnival. It is not improbable that 'Punch and Judy' may havehad their origin in something of this sort, and 'Judy' certainlysuggests 'Giudea, ' a Jewess. What the Roman rabble had done againstChristians in heathen days, the Christian rabble did against the Jews inthe Middle Age and the Renascence. They were robbed, ridiculed, outraged, and sometimes killed; after the fall of the Pierleoni, theyappear to have had no civil rights worth mentioning; they were taxedmore heavily than the Christian citizens, in proportion as they werebelieved to be more wealthy, and were less able to resent thetax-gatherer; their daughters were stolen away for their beauty, lessconsenting than Jessica, and with more violence, and the Merchant ofVenice is not a mere fiction of the master playwright. All these thingswere done to them and more, yet they stayed in Rome, and multiplied, andgrew rich, being then, as when Tacitus wrote of them, 'scrupulouslyfaithful and ever actively charitable to each other, and filled withinvincible hatred against all other men. '

[Illustration: SITE OF THE ANCIENT GHETTO]

The old Roman Ghetto has been often described, but no description cangive any true impression of it; the place where it stood is a vast openlot, waiting for new buildings which will perhaps never rise, and thememory of it is relegated to the many fast-fading pictures of old Rome. Persius tells how, on Herod's birthday, the Jews adorned their doorswith bunches of violets and set out rows of little smoky lamps upon thegreasy window-sills, and feasted on the tails of tunny fish--the meanestpart--pickled, and eaten off rough red earthen-ware plates with draughtsof poor white wine. The picture was a true one ten years ago, for themanners of the Ghetto had not changed in that absolute isolation. Thename itself, 'Ghetto, ' is generally derived from a Hebrew root meaning'cut off'--and cut off the Jews' quarter was, by walls, by religion, bytradition, by mutual hatred between Hebrews and other men. It has beencompared to a beehive, to an anthill, to an old house-beam riddled andtraversed in all directions by miniature labyrinths of worm-holes, crossing, intercommunicating, turning to right and left, upwards anddownwards, but hardly ever coming out to the surface. It has beendescribed by almost every writer who ever put words together about Rome, but no words, no similes, no comparisons, can make those see it who werenever there. In a low-lying space enclosed within a circuit of fivehundred yards, and little, if at all, larger than the Palazzo Doria, between four and five thousand human beings were permanently crowdedtogether in dwellings centuries old, built upon ancient drains andvaults that were constantly exposed to the inundations of the river andalways reeking with its undried slime; a little, pale-faced, crooked-legged, eager-eyed people, grubbing and grovelling in masses offoul rags for some tiny scrap richer than the rest and worthy to be soldapart; a people whose many women, haggard, low-speaking, dishevelled, toiled half doubled together upon the darning and piecing and smoothingof old clothes, whose many little children huddled themselves intocorners, to teach one another to count; a people of sellers who soldnothing that was not old or damaged, and who had nothing that they wouldnot sell; a people clothed in rags, living among rags, thriving on rags;a people strangely proof against pestilence, gathering rags from thecity to their dens, when the cholera was raging outside the Ghetto'sgates, and rags were cheap, yet never sickening of the plaguethemselves; a people never idle, sleeping little, eating sparingly, labouring for small gain amid dirt and stench and dampness, till Fridaynight came at last, and the old crier's melancholy voice ran through thedarkening alleys--'The Sabbath has begun. '

And all at once the rags were gone, the ghostly old clothes that swunglike hanged men, by the neck, in the doorways of the cavernous shops, flitted away into the utter darkness within; the old bits of iron andbrass went rattling out of sight, like spectres' chains; the hook-nosedantiquary drew in his cracked old show-case; the greasy frier of fishand artichokes extinguished his little charcoal fire of coals; theslipshod darning-women, half-blind with six days' work, folded thehalf-patched coats and trousers, and took their rickety oldrush-bottomed chairs indoors with them. 

Then, on the morrow, in the rich synagogue with its tapestries, itsgold, and its gilding, the thin, dark men were together in their hatsand long coats, and the sealed books of Moses were borne before theireyes and held up to the North and South and East and West, and all themen together lifted up their arms and cried aloud to the God of theirfathers. But when the Sabbath was over, they went back to their rags andtheir patched clothes and to their old iron and their junk and theirantiquities, and toiled on patiently again, looking for the coming ofthe Messiah. 

And there were astrologers and diviners and magicians and witches andcrystal-gazers among them to whom great ladies came on foot, thicklyveiled, and walking delicately amidst the rags, and men, too, who weremore ashamed of themselves, and slunk in at nightfall to ask the Jewsconcerning the future--even in our time as in Juvenal's, and inJuvenal's day as in Saul's of old. Nor did the papal laws againstwitchcraft have force against Jews, since the object of the laws was tosave Christian souls from the hell which no Jew could escape save byconversion. And the diviners and seers and astrologers of the Ghettowere long in high esteem, and sometimes earned fortunes when they hitthe truth, and when the truth was pleasant in the realization. 

They are gone now, with the Ghetto and all that belonged to it. The Jewswho lived there are either becoming absorbed in the population of Rome, or have transferred themselves and their rags to other places, wherelodgings are cheap, but where they no longer enjoy the privilege ofirrevocable leases at rents fixed for all time. A part of them areliving between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Lateran, a part inTrastevere, and they exercise their ancient industries in their newhomes, and have new synagogues instead of the old ones. But one can nolonger see them all together in one place. Little by little, too, theold prejudices against them are disappearing, even among the poorerRomans, whose hatred was most tenacious, and by and by, at no verydistant date, the Jews in Rome will cease to be an isolated and peculiarpeople. Then, when they live as other men, amongst other folks, as inmany cities of the world, they will get the power in Rome, as they havebegun to get it already, and as they have it already in more than onegreat capital. But a change has come over the Jewish race within thelast fifty years, greater than any that has affected their destiniessince Titus destroyed the Temple and brought thousands of them, in thetrain of Pompey's thousands, to build the Colosseum; and the wisestamong them, if they be faithful and believing Jews, as many are, askthemselves whether this great change, which looks so like improvement, is really for good, or whether it is the beginning of the end of theoldest nation of us all. 

[Illustration]

REGION XII RIPA

In Italian, as in Latin, Ripa means the bank of a river, and the TwelfthRegion took its name from being bounded by the river bank, from justbelow the island all the way to the Aurelian walls, which continue theboundary of the triangle on the south of Saint Sebastian's gate; thethird side runs at first irregularly from the theatre of Marcellus tothe foot of the Palatine, skirts the hill to the gas works at the northcorner of the Circus Maximus, takes in the latter, and thence runsstraight to the gate before mentioned. The Region includes the Aventine, Monte Testaccio, and the baths of Caracalla. The origin of the device, like that of several others, seems to be lost. 

The Aventine, ever since the auguries of Remus, has been especially therefuge of opposition, and more especially, perhaps, of religiousopposition. In very early times it was especially the hill of theplebeians, who frequently retired to its heights in their difficultieswith the patricians, as they had once withdrawn to the more distant MonsSacer in the Campagna. The temple of Ceres stood in the immediateneighbourhood of the Circus, on the line of approach to the Aventine, and contained the archives of the plebeian Ædiles. In the times of theDecemvirs, much of the land on the hill was distributed among thepeople, who probably lived within the city, but went out daily tocultivate their little farms, just as the inhabitants of the hillvillages do today. 

If this were not the case, it would be hard to explain how the Aventinecould have been a solitude at night, as it was in the time of theBacchic orgies, of which the discovery convulsed the republic, and endedin a religious persecution. That was when Scipio of Asia had beenaccused and not acquitted of having taken a bribe of six thousand poundsof gold and four hundred and eighty pounds of silver to favourAntiochus. It was in the first days of Rome's corruption, when thebrilliant army of Asia first brought the love of foreign luxury to Rome;when the soldiers, enriched with booty, began to have brass bedsteads, rich coverlets and curtains, and other things of woven stuff in theirmagnificent furniture, and little Oriental tables with one foot, anddecorated sideboards; when people first had singing-girls, andlute-players, and players on the sharp-strung 'triangle, ' and actors, toamuse them at their feasts; when the feasts themselves began to beextravagant, and the office of a cook, once mean and despised, rose tobe one of high estimation and rich emolument, so that what had been aslave's work came to be regarded as an art. It was no wonder that suchchanges came about in Rome, when every triumph brought hundreds andthousands of pounds of gold and silver to the city, when Marcus Fulviusbrought back hundreds of crowns of gold, and two hundred and eighty-fivebronze statues, and two hundred and thirty statues of marble, with othervast spoils, and when Cnæus Manlius brought home wealth in bullion andin coin, which even in these days, when the value of money is far less, would be worth any nation's having. 

And with it all came Greek corruption, Greek worship, Greek vice. Foryears the mysteries of Dionysus and the orgies of the Mænads werecelebrated on the slopes of the Aventine and in those deep caves thatriddle its sides, less than a mile from the Forum, from the Capitol, from the house of the rigid Cato, who found fault with Scipio of Africafor shaving every day and liking Greek verses. The evil had first cometo Rome from Etruria, and had then turned Greek, as it were, in the daysof the Asian triumphs; and first it was an orgy of drunken women only, as in most ancient times, but soon men were admitted, and presently arule was made that no one should be initiated who was over twenty yearsof age, and that those who refused to submit to the horrid rites afterbeing received should perish in the deepest cave of the hill, while thenoise of drums and clashing cymbals and of shouting drowned theirscreams. And many boys and girls were thus done to death; and theconspiracy of the orgies was widespread in Rome, yet the secret was wellkept. 

Now there was a certain youth at that time, whose father had died, andwhose mother was one of the Mænads and had married a man as bad asherself. He and she were guardians of her son's fortune, and they hadsquandered it, and knew that when he came of age they should not be ableto give an account of their guardianship. They therefore determined toinitiate him at the Bacchic orgy, for he was of a brave temper, and theyknew that he would not submit to the rites, and so would be torn topieces by the Mænads, and they might escape the law in their fraud. Hismother called him, and told him that once, when he had been ill, she hadpromised the gods that she would initiate him in the Bacchanalia if herecovered, and that it was now time to perform her vow. And doubtlessshe delighted his ignorance with an account of a beautiful and solemnceremony. 

But this youth was dearly loved by a woman whose faith to him coveredmany sins. She had been a slave when a girl, and with her mistress hadbeen initiated, and knew what the rites were, and how evil and terrible;and since she had been freed she had never gone to them. So when herlover told her he was to go, thinking it good news, she was terrified, and told him that it were better that both he and she should die thatnight, than that he should be so contaminated. When he knew the truth, he went home and told his mother and his stepfather boldly that he wouldnot go; and they, being beside themselves with anger and disappointment, called four slaves and threw him out into the street. For which deedthey died. For the young man went to his father's sister, and told all;and she sent him to the Consul to tell his story, who called the womanthat loved him, and promised her protection, so that at last she toldthe truth, and he brought the matter before the Senate. Then there wasgreat horror at what was told, and the people who had been initiatedfled in haste by thousands, and the city was in a turmoil, while theSenate made new and terrible laws against the rites. Many persons wereput to death, and a few were taken and imprisoned on suspicion, andmany, being guilty, killed themselves. For it was found that more thanseven thousand men and women had conspired in the orgies, and thecontamination had spread throughout Italy. 

As for the youth, and the woman who had saved the State out of love forhim, the Senate and the people made a noble and generous decree. Forhim, he received a sum of money from the public treasury in place of thefortune his mother had stolen from him, and he was exempted frommilitary service, unless he chose to be a soldier, and from everfurnishing a horse to the State. But for the woman, whose life had beenevil, it was publicly decreed that her sins should be blotted out, thatshe should have all rights of holding, transferring and sellingproperty, of marrying into another gens and of choosing a guardian, asif she had received all from a husband by will; that she should be atliberty to marry a man of free descent, and that he who should marry herwas to incur no degradation, and that all consuls and prætors in thefuture should watch over her and see that no harm came to her, as longas she lived. Her people made her an honourable Roman matron, andperhaps the stern old senators thus rewarded her in order that the manshe had saved might marry her without shame. But whether he did or not, no one knows. 

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT NEREUS AND SAINT ACHILLÆUS

From a print of the last century]

This is the first instance in which a religion, and the orgies were socalled by the Romans, was practised upon the Aventine in opposition tothat of the State. It was not the last. Under Domitian, Juvenal found ahost of Jews established there, on the eastern slope and about thefountain of Egeria, and thirty years before him Saint Paul lived on theAventine in the Jewish house of Aquila and Priscilla where Santa Priscastands today. It is worth noting that Aquila, an eagle, the GermanAdler, was already then a Jewish name. Little by little, however, theJews went back to the Tiber, and the Aventine became the stronghold ofthe Christians; there they built many of their oldest churches, andthence they carried out their dead to the near catacombs of SaintPetronilla, the church better known as that of Saint Nereus and SaintAchillæus. And there are many other ancient churches on the hill, and onthe road that leads to Saint Sebastian's gate, and beyond the walls, onthe Appian Way as far as Saint Callixtus; lonely, peaceful shrines, beautiful with the sculptures and pavements and mosaics of the Cosmasfamily who lived and worked between six and seven hundred years ago. Onthe other side of the hill, near the Circus, Saint Augustine taughtrhetoric for a living, though he knew no Greek and was perhaps no greatLatin scholar either--still an unbeliever then, an astrologer and afollower after strange doctrines, one whom no man could have taken for afuture bishop and Father of the Church, who was to be author of twohundred and thirty-two theological treatises, as well as of anexposition of the Psalms and the Gospels. Here Saint Gregory the Great, once Prefect of Rome, preached and prayed, and here the fierceHildebrand lived when he was young, and called himself Gregory when hewas Pope, perhaps, because he had so often meditated here upon the lifeand acts of the wise Saint, in the places hallowed by his footsteps. 

Later, the Aventine was held by the Savelli, who dwelt in castles longsince destroyed, even to the foundations, by the fury of their enemies;and there the two Popes of the house, Honorius the Third--a famouschronicler in his day--and Honorius the Fourth, found refuge when therestless Romans 'annoyed them, ' as Muratori mildly puts it. They werebrave men in their day, mostly Guelphs, and faithful friends of theColonna, and it is told how one of them died in a great fight betweenColonna and Orsini. 

It was in that same struggle which culminated in the execution ofLorenzo Colonna, the Protonotary, that Pope Sixtus the Fourth destroyedthe last remains of the Sublician Bridge, at the foot of the Aventine. So, at least, tradition says. From that bridge the Roman pontiffs hadtaken their title, 'Pontifex, ' a bridge-maker, because it was one oftheir chief duties to keep it in repair, when it was the only means ofcrossing the Tiber, and the safety of the city might depend upon it atany time; and for many centuries the bridge was built of oak, andwithout nails or bolts of iron, in memory of the first bridge whichHoratius had kept. Now those who love to ponder on coincidences may seeone in this, that the last remnant of the once oaken bridge, kept wholeby the heathen Pontifex, was destroyed by the Christian Pontifex, whosename was 'of the oak'--for so 'della Rovere' may be translated if oneplease. 

Years ago, one might still distinctly see in the Tiber the remains ofpiers, when the water was low, at the foot of the Aventine, a littleabove the Ripa Grande; and those who saw them looked on the very lastvestige of the Sublician Bridge, that is to say, of the stone structurewhich in later times took the place of the wooden one; and that lasttrace has been destroyed to deepen the little harbour. In older daysthere were strange superstitions and ceremonies connected with thebridge that had meant so much to Rome. Strangest of all was theprocession on the Ides of May, --the fifteenth of that month, --when thePontiffs and the Vestals came to the bridge in solemn state, with menwho bore thirty effigies made of bulrushes in likeness to men's bodies, and threw them into the river, one after the other, with prayers andhymns; but what the images meant no man knows. Most generally it wasbelieved in Rome that they took the place of human beings, oncesacrificed to the river in the spring. Ovid protests against the merethought, but the industrious Baracconi quotes Sextus Pompeius Festus toprove that in very early times human victims were thrown into the Tiberfor one reason or another, and that human beings were otherwisesacrificed until the year of the city 657, when, Cnæus CorneliusLentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus being consuls, the Senate made alaw that no man should be sacrificed thereafter. The question is one forscholars; but considering the savage temper of the Romans, their darksuperstitions, the abundance of victims always at hand, and thefrequency of human sacrifices among nations only one degree morebarbarous, there is no reason for considering the story very improbable. 

[Illustration: THE RIPA GRANDE AND SITE OF THE SUBLICIAN BRIDGE]

Within the limits of this region the ancient Brotherhood of Saint JohnBeheaded have had their church and place of meeting for centuries. Itwas their chief function to help and comfort condemned criminals fromthe midnight preceding their death until the end. To this confraternitybelonged Michelangelo, among other famous men whose names stand on therolls to this day; and doubtless the great master, hooded in black andunrecognizable among the rest, and chanting the penitential psalms inthe voice that could speak so sharply, must have spent dark hours ingloomy prisons, from midnight to dawn, beside pale-faced men who werenot to see the sun go down again; and in the morning, he must have stoodupon the very scaffold with the others, and seen the bright axe smiteout the poor life. But neither he nor any others of the brethren spokeof these things except among themselves, and they alone knew who hadbeen of the band, when they bore the dead man to his rest at last, bytheir little church, when they laid Beatrice Cenci before the altar inSaint Peter's on the Janiculum, and Lucrezia in the quiet church ofSaint Gregory by the Aventine. They wrote down in their journal theday, the hour, the name, the death; no more than that. And they wentback to their daily life in silence. 

But for their good deeds they obtained the right of saving one man fromdeath each year, conceded them by Paul the Third, the Farnese Pope, while Michelangelo was painting the Last Judgment--a right perhaps askedfor by him, as one of the brothers, and granted for his sake. Baracconihas discovered an account of the ceremony. At the first meeting inAugust, the governor of the confraternity appointed three brethren tovisit all the prisons of Rome and note the names of the prisonerscondemned to death, drawing up a precise account of each case, butascertaining especially which ones had obtained the forgiveness of thosewhom they had injured. At the second meeting in August, the reports wereread, and the brethren chose the fortunate man by ballot. 

[Illustration: PORTO SAN SEBASTIANO]

Then the whole dark company went in procession to the prison. The beadleof the order marched first, bearing his black wand in one hand, and inthe other a robe of scarlet silk and a torch for the pardoned man; twobrothers followed with staves, others with lanterns, more with lightedtorches, and after them was borne the crucifix, the sacred figure's armshanging down, perhaps supposed to be in the act of receiving thepardoned man, and a crown of silvered olive hung at its feet--then morebrothers, and last of all the Governor and the chaplain. The prisondoors were draped with tapestries, box and myrtle strewed the ground, and the Governor received the condemned person and signed a receipt forhis body. The happy man prostrated himself before the crucifix, wascrowned with the olive garland, the Te Deum was intoned, and he was ledaway to the brotherhood's church, where he heard high mass in sight ofall the people. Last, and not least, if he was a pauper, the brethrenprovided him with a little money and obtained him some occupation; if astranger, they paid his journey home. 

But the Roman rabble, says the writer, far preferred an execution to apardon, and would follow a condemned man to the scaffold in thousands. If he was to be hanged, the person who touched the halter was the mostfortunate, and much money was often paid for bits of the rope; and atnight, when the wretched corpse was carried away to the church by thebrethren, the crowd followed in long procession, mumbling prayers, tokneel on the church steps at last and implore the dead man's liberatedspirit to suggest to them, by some accident, numbers to be played at thelottery--custom which recalls the incantations of the witches by thecrosses of executed slaves on the Esquiline. 

[Illustration]

REGION XIII TRASTEVERE

All that part of Rome which lies on the right bank of the Tiber isdivided into two Regions; namely, Trastevere and Borgo. The first ofthese is included between the river and the walls of Urban the Eighthfrom Porta Portese and the new bridge opposite the Aventine to thebastions and the gate of San Spirito; and Trastevere was the last of thethirteen Regions until the end of the sixteenth century, when theso-called Leonine City was made the fourteenth and granted a captain anda standard of its own. 

The men of Trastevere boast that they are of better blood than the otherRomans, and they may be right. In many parts of Italy just such smallancient tribes have kept alive, never intermarrying with theirneighbours nor losing their original speech. There are villages in thesouth where Greek is spoken, and others where Albanian is the language. There is one in Calabria where the people speak nothing but Piedmontese, which is as different from the Southern dialects as German is fromFrench. Italy has always been a land of individualities rather than ofamalgamations, and a country of great men, rather than a great country. 

It is true that the Trasteverines have preserved their individuality, cut off as they have been by the river from the modernizing influenceswhich spread like a fever through the length and breadth of Rome. Theirquarter is full of crooked little streets and irregularly shaped openplaces, the houses are not high, the windows are small and oldfashioned, and the entrances dark and low. There are but few palaces andnot many public buildings. Yet Trastevere is not a dirty quarter; on thecontrary, to eyes that understand Italians, there is a certain dignityin its poverty, which used to be in strong contrast with the slipshodpublicity of household dirt in the inhabited parts of Monti. Thecontrast is, in a way, even more vivid now, for Monti, the first Region, has suffered most in the great crisis, and Trastevere least of all. Romeis one of the poorest cities in the civilized world, and when she wastrying to seem rich, the element of sham was enormous in everything. Inthe architecture of the so-called new quarters the very gifts of theItalians turned against them; for they are born engineers andmathematicians, and by a really marvellous refinement of calculationthey have worked miracles in the construction of big buildings out ofaltogether insufficient material, while the Italian workman'straditional skill in modelling stucco has covered vast surfaces ofunsafe masonry with elaborately tasteless ornamentation. One result ofall this has been a series of catastrophes of which a detailed accountwould appal grave men in other countries; another consequence is theexistence of a quantity of grotesquely bad street decoration, much ofwhich is already beginning to crumble under the action of the weather. It is sadder still, in many parts of Monti to see the modern ruins ofhouses which were not even finished when the crash put an end to thebuilding mania, roofless, windowless, plasterless, falling to pieces andnever to be inhabited--landmarks of bankruptcy, whole streets ofdwellings built to lodge an imaginary population, and which will havefallen to dust long before they are ever needed, stuccoed palaces meantto be the homes of a rich middle class, and given over at derisory rentsto be the refuge of the very poor. In the Monti, ruin stares one in theface, and poverty has battened upon ruin, as flies upon garbage. 

But Trastevere escaped, being despised by the builders on account of itsdistance from the chief centres. It has even preserved something of theancient city in its looks and habits. Then, as now, the wine shops andcook shops opened directly upon the street, because they were, as theystill often are, mere single, vaulted chambers, having no communicationwith the inner house by door or stairway. The little inner court, wherethe well is, may have been wider in those days, but it must always havebeen a cool, secluded place, where the women could wrangle and tear oneanother's hair in decent privacy. In the days when everything went tothe gutter, it was a wise precaution to have as few windows as possiblelooking outward. In old Rome, as in Trastevere, there must have been anair of mystery about all dwelling-houses, as there is everywhere in theEast. In those days, far more than now, the head of the house was lordand despot within his own walls; but something of that power remains bytradition of right at the present time, and the patriarchal system isnot yet wholly dead. The business of the man was to work and fight forhis wife and children, just as to fight and hunt for his family were theoccupations of the American Indian. In return, he received absoluteobedience and abject acknowledgment of his superiority. Thegovernment-fed Indian and the Roman father of today do very littlefighting, working, or hunting, but in their several ways they stillclaim much of the same slavish obedience as in old times. One isinclined to wonder whether nowadays the independence of women is not dueto the fall in value of men, since it is no longer necessary to pursuewild beasts for food, since fighting is reduced to a science, taught inthree months, and seldom needed for a long time, and since work hasbecome so largely the monopoly of the nimble typewriter. Women askthemselves and others, with at least a show of justice, since man'soccupation is to sit still and think, whether they might not, with alittle practice, sit quite as still as he and think to as good apurpose. In America, for instance, it was one thing to fell big trees, build log huts, dam rivers, plough stony ground, kill bears, and fightIndians; it is altogether another to sit in a comfortable chair before aplate-glass window, and dictate notes to a dumb and skilfulstenographer. 

But with the development of women's independence, the air of privacy, not to say of mystery, disappears from the modern dwelling. InTrastevere things have not gone as far as that. One cannot tread thenarrow streets without wondering a little about the lives of the grave, black-haired, harsh-voiced people who go in and out by the darkentrances, and stand together in groups in Piazza Romana, or close toPonte Sisto, early in the morning, and just before midday, and again inthe cool of the evening. 

It seems to be a part of the real simplicity of the Italian Latin to puton a perfectly useless look of mystery on all occasions, and to assumethe air of a conspirator when buying a cabbage; and more than one giftedwriter has fallen into the error of believing the Italian character tobe profoundly complicated. One is too apt to forget that it needs muchdeeper duplicity to maintain an appearance of frankness under tryingcircumstances than to make a mystery of one's marketing and a profoundsecret of one's cookery. There are few things which the poor Italianmore dislikes than to be watched when he is buying and preparing hisfood, though he will ask any one to share it with him when it is ready;but he is almost as prone to hide everything else that goes on insidehis house, unless he has fair warning of a visit, and full time to makepreparation for a guest. In the feeling there is great decency andself-respect, as well as a wish to show respect to others. 

[Illustration: PONTE GARIBALDI]

To Romans, Trastevere suggests great names--Stefaneschi, Anguillara, Mattei, Raphael, Tasso. The story of the first has been told already. Straight from the end of the new bridge that bears the name ofGaribaldi, stands the ancient tower of the great Guelph house ofAnguillara that fought the Orsini long and fiercely, and went down atlast before them, when it turned against the Pope. And when he was deadthe Orsini bought the lands and strongholds he had given to hisso-called nephew, and set the eel of Anguillara in their own escutcheon, in memory of a struggle that had lasted more than a hundred years. TheAnguillara were seldom heard of after that; nor does anything remain ofthem today but the melancholy ruins of an ancient fortress on the lakeof Bracciano, not far from the magnificent castle, and the single towerthat bears their name in Rome. 

But Baracconi has discovered a story or a legend about one of them wholived a hundred years later, and who somehow was by that time lord ofCære, or Ceri, again, as some of his ancestors had been. It was whenCharles the Fifth came to Rome, and there were great doings; for it wasthen that the old houses that filled the lower Forum were torn down in afew days to make him a triumphal street, and many other things weredone. Then the Emperor gave a public audience in Rome, and out ofcuriosity the young Titta dell' Anguillara went in to see the imperialshow. There he saw that a few of the nobles wore their caps, and he, thinking himself as good as they, put on his own. The Grand Chamberlainasked him why he was covered. 'Because I have a cold, ' he answered, andlaughed. He was told that only Grandees of Spain might wear their capsin the Emperor's presence. 'Tell the Emperor, ' said the boy, 'that I, too, am a Grandee in my house, and that if he would take my cap from myhead, he must do it with his sword, ' and he laid his hand to the hilt ofhis own. And when the Emperor heard the story, he smiled and let himalone. 

Many years ago, before the change of government, the Trasteverinefamily, into whose possession the ancient tower had come, used to setout at Christmas-tide a little show of lay figures representing theNativity and the Adoration of the Kings, in the highest story of thestrange old place, and almost in the open air. It was a pretty and apeaceful sight. The small figures of the Holy Family, of the Kings, ofthe shepherds and their flocks, were modelled and coloured withwonderful skill, and in the high, bright air, with the little landscapeas cleverly made up as the figures, it all stood out clearly andstrangely lifelike. There were many of these Presepi, as they werecalled, in Rome at that season, but none so pretty as that in the gloomyold tower, of which every step had been washed with blood. 

Of all tales of household feud and vengeance and murder that can befound in old Rome, one of the most terrible is told of the Mattei, whosegreat palace used to stand almost opposite the bridge of SaintBartholomew, leading to the island, and not more than two hundred yardsfrom the Anguillara tower. It happened in the year 1555, about the timewhen Paul the Fourth, of inquisitorial memory, was elected Pope, thirtyyears before the sons of the Massimo murdered their father's unworthywife, and Orsini married Victoria Accoramboni; and the deeds were donewithin the walls of the old house of which a fragment still remains inthe Lungaretta, with a door surmounted by the chequered shield of theMattei. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO MATTEI

From a print of the last century]

At that time there were four brothers of the name, Marcantonio, Piero, Alessandro, and Curzio; and the first two quarrelled mortally, whereforePiero caused Marcantonio to be murdered by hired assassins. Of thesemen, Alessandro, who dearly loved both his murdered brother and hisyounger brother Curzio, slew one with his own hand, but the restescaped, and he swore a blood feud against Piero. Yet, little by little, his anger subsided, and there was a sort of armed peace between the two. 

Then it happened that Piero, who was rich, fell in love with his ownniece, the beautiful Olimpia, the dowerless daughter of his otherbrother Curzio; and Curzio, tempted by the hope of wealth, consented tothe match, and the dispensation of the Church was obtained for themarriage. It is not rare, even nowadays, for a man to marry his niece inEurope, whether they be Catholics or Protestants, but the Italians areopposed to such marriages; and Alessandro Mattei, pitying the lovelygirl, whose life was to be sold for money, and bitterly hating themurderer bridegroom, swore that the thing should not be. Yet he couldnot prevent the wedding, for Piero was rich and powerful, and of adetermined character. So Piero was married, and after the wedding, inthe evening, he gave a great feast in his house, and invited to it allthe kinsmen of the family, with their wives. 

And Alessandro Mattei came also, with his son, Girolamo, and bringingwith him two men whom he called his friends, but whom no one knew. Thesewere hired murderers, but Piero smiled pleasantly and made a pretenceof being well satisfied. The company feasted together, and drank oldwine, with songs and rejoicings of all sorts. Then Alessandro rose to gohome, for it was late, and Piero led him to the door of the hall to takeleave of him courteously, so that all the kinsfolk might see that therewas peace, for they were all looking on, some sitting in their placesand some standing up out of respect for the elder men as they went tothe door. Alessandro stood still, exchanging courtesies with hisbrother, while his servants brought him his cloak, and the arquebuse hecarried at night for safety; for he had his palace across the Tiber, where it stands today. Then taking the hand-gun, he spoke no more words, but shot his brother in the breast, and killed him, and fled, leavinghis son behind, for the young man had wished to stay till the end of thefeast, and the two hired assassins had been brought by his father toprotect him, though he did not know it. 

When they heard the shot, the women knew that there was blood, so theysprang up and put out the lights in an instant, that the men might notsee to kill one another; therefore Curzio, the bride's father, did notsee that his brother Alessandro had gone out after the killing. He creptabout with a long knife, feeling in the dark for the embroidered doubletwhich Alessandro wore, and when he thought that he had found it, hestruck; but it was Girolamo who was dressed like his father, and thetwo who were to watch him were on each side of him, and one of themfeeling that Curzio was going to strike, and knowing him also by thetouch of what he wore, killed him quietly before his blow went home, anddragged out Girolamo in haste, for the door was open, and there was somelight in the stairs, whence the servants had fled. But others had soughtAlessandro, and other blows had been dealt in the dark, and the brideherself was wounded, but not mortally. 

Girolamo and the man who had killed Curzio came to the Bridge of SaintBartholomew, where Alessandro was waiting, very anxious for his son; andwhen he saw him in the starlight he drew a long breath. But when he knewwhat had happened and how the murderer had killed Curzio to save theboy, Alessandro was suddenly angry, for he had loved Curzio dearly. Sohe quickly drew his dagger and stabbed the man in the breast, and threwhis body, yet breathing, over the bridge into the river. But that nighthe left Rome secretly and quickly, and he lived out his days an outlaw, while Girolamo, who was innocent of all, became the head of the Matteiin Rome. 

It is no wonder that the knife is a tradition in Trastevere. Even now itis the means of settling difficulties, but less often by treachery thanin the other regions. For when two young men have a difference it isusual for them to go together into some quiet inner court or walledgarden, and there they wind their handkerchiefs round their right wristsand round the hilt of the knife to get a good hold, and they muffletheir left arms in their jackets for a shield, and face each other tillone is dead. If it be barbarous, it is at least braver than stabbing inthe dark. 

Raphael is remembered in Trastevere for the beautiful little palace ofthe Farnesina, which he decorated for the great and generous banker, Agostino Chigi, and for the Fornarina, whose small house with its Gothicwindow stands near the Septimian gate, where the old Aurelian wallcrosses Trastevere and the Lungara to the Tiber. And he has madeTrastevere memorable for the endless types of beauty he found there, besides the one well-loved woman, and whom he took as models for hiswork. He lived at the last, not in the house on the Roman side, whichbelonged to him and is still called his, but in another, built byBramante, close to the old Accoramboni Palace, in the Piazza Rusticucci, before Saint Peter's, and that one has long been torn down. 

[Illustration: HOUSE BUILT FOR RAPHAEL BY BRAMANTE, NOW TORN DOWN]

We know little enough of that Margaret, called the Fornarina from herfather's profession; but we know that Raphael loved her blindly, passionately, beyond all other thoughts; as Agostino Chigi loved themagnificent Imperia for whom the Farnesina was built and made beautiful. And there was a time when the great painter was almost idle, out of lovefor the girl, and went about languidly with pale face and shadowed eyes, and scarcely cared to paint or draw. He was at work in the Vatican then, or should have been, and in the Farnesina, too; but each day, when hewent out, his feet led him away from the Pope's palace and across thesquare, by the Gate of the Holy Spirit and down the endless straightLungara towards the banker's palace; but when he reached it he went onto the Fornarina's house, and she was at the window waiting for him. Forher sake he refused to marry the great Cardinal Bibbiena's well-doweredniece, Maria, and the world has not ceased to believe that for too muchlove of the Fornarina he died. But before that, as Fabio Chigi tells, Pope Leo the Tenth, being distressed by the painter's love sickness, asked Agostino Chigi if there were not some way to bring him back towork. And the great banker, as anxious for his Farnesina as the Pope wasfor his Vatican, spirited away the lovely girl for a time, sheconsenting for her lover's sake. And Chigi then pretended to search forher, and comforted Raphael with news of her and promises of her return, so that after being half mad with anxiety he grew calmer, and worked fora time at his painting. But soon he languished, and the cure was worsethan the evil; so that one day Chigi brought the girl back to himunawares and went away, leaving them together. 

Of the end we know nothing, nor whether Margaret was with him when hedied; we know nothing, save that she outlived him, and died in her turn, and lies in a grave which no one can find. But when all Rome was insorrow for the dead man, when he had been borne through the streets tohis grave, with his great unfinished Transfiguration for a funeralbanner, when he had been laid in his tomb in the Pantheon, beside MariaBibbiena, who had died, perhaps, because he would not love her, thenthe pale Margaret must have sat often by the little Gothic window nearthe Septimian gate, waiting for what could not come any more. For shehad loved a man beyond compare; and it had been her whole life. 

[Illustration: MONASTERY OF SANT' ONOFRIO

From an old engraving]

If one comes from the Borgo by the Lungara, and if one turns up thesteep hill to the right, there is the place where Tasso died, seventy-five years after Raphael was gone. The small monastery of Sant'Onofrio, where he spent the last short month of his life, used to be alonely and beautiful place, and is remembered only for his sake, thoughit has treasures of its own--the one fresco painted in Rome by Lionardoda Vinci, and paintings by Domenichino and Pinturicchio in its porticoand little church, as well as memories of Saint Philip Neri, theRoman-born patron saint of Rome. All these things barely sufficed torestrain the government from turning it into a barrack for the citypolice a few years ago, when the name of one of Italy's greatest poetsshould alone have protected it. It was far from the streets andthoroughfares in older times, and the quiet sadness of its garden calledup the infinite melancholy of the poor poet who drew his last breath ofthe fresh open air under the old tree at the corner, and saw Rome thelast time, as he turned and walked painfully back to the little roomwhere he was to die. It is better to think of it so, when one has seenit in those days, than to see it as it is now, standing out in vulgarpublicity upon the modern avenue. 

There died the man who had sung, and wandered, and loved; who had beenslighted, and imprisoned for a madman; who had escaped and hiddenhimself, and had yet been glorious; who had come to Rome at last toreceive the laureate's crown in the Capitol, as Petrarch had beencrowned before him. His life is a strange history, full of discordantpassages that left little or no mark in his works, so that it is awonder how a man so torn and harassed could labour unceasingly for manyyears at a work so perfectly harmonious as 'Jerusalem Freed'; and itseems strange that the hot-headed, changeable southerner should havestood up as the determined champion of the Epic Unity against theschool of Ariosto, the great northern poet, who had believed indiversity of action as a fundamental principle of the Epic; it isstranger still and a proof of his power that Tasso should have earnedsomething like universal glory against the long-standing supremacy ofAriosto in the same field, in the same half-century, and living at thesame court. Everything in Tasso's life was contradictory, everything inhis works was harmonious. Even after he was dead, the contrasts of gloryand misery followed his bones like fate. He died in the arms of CardinalAldobrandini, the Pope's nephew, almost on the eve of his intendedcrowning in the Capitol; he was honoured with a magnificent funeral, andhis body was laid in an obscure corner, enclosed in a poor deal coffin. It was six years before the monks of Sant' Onofrio dug up the bones andplaced them in a little lead box 'out of pity, ' as the inscription onthe metal lid told, and buried them again under a poor slab that borehis name, and little else; and when a monument was at last made to himin the nineteenth century, by the subscriptions of literary societies, it was so poor and unworthy that it had better not have been set up atall. A curious book might be written upon the vicissitudes of greatmen's bones. 

Opposite the Farnesina stands the great Palazzo Corsini, once thehabitation of the Riario family, whose history is a catalogue ofmurders, betrayals, and all possible crimes, and whose only redeeminglight in a long history was that splendid and brave Catherine Sforza, married to one of their name, who held the fortress of Forlì so bravelyagainst Cæsar Borgia, who challenged him to single combat, which herefused out of shame, who was overcome by him at last, and broughtcaptive to the Vatican in chains of gold, as Aurelian brought Zenobia. In the days of her power she had lived in the great palace for a time. It looks modern now; it was once a place of evil fame, and is said tohave been one of the few palaces in Rome which contained one of thosedeadly shafts, closed by a balanced trap door that dropped the livingvictim who stepped upon it a hundred and odd feet at a fall, out ofhearing and out of sight for ever. From the Riario it was bought atlast, in 1738, by the Corsini, and when they began to repair it, theyfound the bones of the nameless dead in heaps far down among thefoundations. 

There also lived Christina, Queen of Sweden, of romantic and execrablememory, for twenty years; and here she died, the strangest compound ofgreatness, heroism, vanity and wickedness that ever was woman to thedestruction of man; ending her terrible life in an absorbing passion forart and literature which attracted to itself all that was most delicateand refined at the end of the seventeenth century; dabbling in alchemy, composing verses forgotten long ago, discoursing upon art with Bernini, dictating the laws of verse to the poet Guidi, collecting together avast library of rare books and a great gallery of great pictures, andof engravings and medals and beautiful things of every sort--the onlywoman, perhaps, who was ever like Lucrezia Borgia, and outdid her in allways. 

Long before her time, a Riario, the Cardinal of Saint George, had liketastes and drew about him the thinkers and the writers of his age, whenthe Renascence was at its climax and the Constable of Bourbon had notyet been shot down at the walls a few hundred yards from the Corsinipalace, bequeathing the plunder of Rome to his Spaniards and Germans. Here Erasmus spent those hours of delight of which he eloquently wrotein after years, and here, to this day, in the grand old halls whence theRiario sent so many victims to their deaths below, a learned andliterary society holds its meetings. Of all palaces in Rome in which shemight have lived, fate chose this one for Queen Christina, as if itsdestiny of contrasts past and future could best match her own. 

Much more could be told of Trastevere and much has been told already;how Beatrice Cenci lies in San Pietro in Montorio, how the lovelyFarnesina, with all its treasures, was bought by force by the Farnesefor ten thousand and five hundred scudi, --two thousand and one hundredpounds, --how the Region was swept and pillaged again and again byEmperors and nobles, and people and Popes, without end. 

But he who should wander through the Regions in their order, knowingthat the greatest is last, would tire of lingering in the long Lungaraand by the Gate of the Holy Spirit, while on the other side lies thegreat Castle of Sant' Angelo, and beyond that the Vatican, and SaintPeter's church; and for that matter, a great part of what has not beentold here may be found in precise order and ready to hand in all thosemodern guide books which are the traveller's first leading-strings as helearns to walk in Rome. 

 * * * * *

Yet here, on the threshold of that Region which contains many of theworld's most marvellous treasures of art--at the Gate of the HolySpirit, through which Raphael so often passed between love and work--Ishall say a few words about that development in which Italy led theworld, and something of the men who were leaders in the Renascence. 

Art is not dependent on the creations of genius alone. It is also theresult of developing manual skill to the highest degree. Without genius, works of art might as well be turned out by machinery; without manualskill, genius could have no means of expression. As a matter of fact, inour own time, it is the presence of genius, without manual skill, orfoolishly despising it, that has produced a sort of school called theimpressionist. 

To go back to first principles, the word Art, as every child knows, istaken directly from the Latin ars, artis, which the best Latindictionary translates or defines: 'The faculty of joining anythingcorporeal or spiritual properly or skilfully, ' and therefore: 'skill, dexterity, art, ability, ' and then: 'skill or faculty of the mind orbody that shows itself in performing any work, trade, profession, art, science. ' From the meaning of the Latin word we may eliminate whatrefers to spiritual things; not because literature, for instance, is notart, as well as music and the rest, but because we have to do withpainting, sculpture, architecture, metal working, and the like, in whichactual manual skill is a most integral element. 

Now it is always admitted that art grew out of handicraft, wheneverything was made by hand, and when the competition between workerswas purely personal, because each man worked for himself and not for acompany in which his individuality was lost. That is nowhere more clearthan in Italy, though the conditions were similar throughout Europeuntil the universal introduction of machinery. The transition fromhandicraft to art was direct, quick and logical, and at first itappeared almost simultaneously in all the trades. The Renascence appearsto us as a sort of glorious vision in which all that was beautifulsuddenly sprang into being again, out of all that was rough and chaoticand barbarous. In real fact the Renascence began among carpenters, andblacksmiths, and stone masons, and weavers, when they began to takepride in their work, when they began to try and ornament their owntools, when the joiner who knew nothing of the Greeks began to trace apattern with a red-hot nail on the clumsy wooden chest, when the smithdinted out a simple design upon the head of his hammer, when the masonchipped out a face or a leaf on the corner of the rough stone house, andwhen the weaver taught himself to make patterns in the stuff he wove. The true beginning of the Renascence was the first improvement ofhand-work after an age in which everything people used had been rougherand worse made than we can possibly imagine. Then one thing suggestedanother, and each generation found some new thing to do, till the resultwas a great movement and a great age. But there never was, and nevercould have been, any art at all without hand-work. Progress makes almosteverything by machinery, and dreams of abolishing hand-work altogether, and of making Nature's forces do everything, and provide everything foreverybody, so that nobody need work at all, and everybody may have alike share in what is to cost nobody anything. Then, in the dream, everybody will be devoted to what we vaguely call intellectual pursuits, and the human race will be raised to an indefinitely high level. Inreality, if such things were possible, we should turn into oysters, orinto something about as intelligent. It is the experience of all agesthat human beings will not work unless they are obliged to, anddegenerate rapidly in idleness, and there have not been many exceptionsto the rule. Art grew out of hand-work, but it grew in it, too, as aplant in the soil; when there is no more hand-work, there will be nomore art. The two belong to each other, and neither can do without theother. 

[Illustration: THE FORUM

Looking West]

Of course, I do not mean to say that there was a succession ofcenturies, or even one century, during which no pictures were painted inItaly, or no sculptures carved. The tradition of the arts survived, likethe tradition of Latin poetry, with the same result, that rude workswere produced in the early churches and convents. But there was no lifein those things; and when, after a long time, after the early Crusades, Byzantine artists came to Italy, their productions were even worse thanthose of the still ignorant Italians, because they were infinitely morepretentious, with their gildings and conventionalities andexpressionless types, and were not really so near the truth. What I meanis that the revival of real art came from a new beginning deep down andout of sight, among humble craftsmen and hard-working artisans, whofound out by degrees that their hands could do more than they had beentaught to do, and that objects of daily use need not be ugly or merelyplain in order to be strong and well made and serviceable. And as thisknowledge grew among them with practice and by experiment, they rose tothe power of using for new purposes of beauty the old methods ofpainting and sculpture, which had survived, indeed, but which were of novalue to the old-fashioned artists who had learned them from generationto generation, without understanding and without enthusiasm. 

The highest of the crafts in the Middle Age was goldsmithing. Whenalmost every other artistic taste had disappeared from daily life inthat rough time, the love of personal adornment had survived, and whenpainters and sculptors were a small band of men, trained to representcertain things in certain ways--trained like a church choir, in fact, tothe endless repetition of ancient themes--the goldsmiths had latitudeand freedom to their hearts' desire and so many buyers for their workthat their own numbers were not nearly so limited as those of 'artists'in the narrow sense. One chief part of their art lay in drawing andmodelling, another in casting metals, another in chiselling, and theywere certainly the draughtsmen of an age in which the art of drawing waspractically lost among painters; and it was because they learned how todraw that so many of them became great painters when the originality oftwo or three men of genius had opened the way. 

One says 'two or three, ' vaguely, but the art had grown out of infancywhen they appeared, and there was an enormous distance between Cimabue, whom people call the father of painting, and the Cosmas family, of whomthe last died about the time that Cimabue was born. But though Cimabuewas a noble, the Cosmas family who preceded him were artisans first andartists afterwards, and men of the people; and Giotto, whom Cimabuediscovered sketching sheep on a piece of slate with a pointed stone, wasa shepherd lad. So was Andrea Mantegna, who dominated Italian art ahundred and fifty years later--so was David, one of the greatest poetsthat ever lived, and so was Sixtus the Fifth, one of the strongest popesthat ever reigned--all shepherds. 

It is rather remarkable that although so many famous painters weregoldsmiths, none of the very greatest were. Among the goldsmiths wereOrcagna, Ghiberti, Ghirlandajo, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Francia, Verrocchio, Andrea del Sarto. But Benvenuto Cellini, the greatest ofgoldsmiths, was never a painter, and the very greatest painters werenever goldsmiths, for Cimabue, Giotto, Mantegna, Lionardo da Vinci, Perugino, Raphael, Michelangelo, all began in the profession that madethem the greatest artists of their age. It is very hard to get at anidea of what men thought about art in those times. Perhaps it would benear the truth to say that it was looked upon as a universal means ofexpression. What strikes one most in the great pictures of that time istheir earnestness, not in the sense of religious faith, but in thedetermination to do nothing without a perfectly clear and definitemeaning, which any cultivated person could understand, and at which evena child might guess. Nothing was done for effect, nothing was donemerely for beauty's sake. It was as if the idea of usefulness, risenwith art from the hand-crafts, underlay the intentions of beauty, or ofdevotion, or of history, which produced the picture. In those times, when the artist put in any accessory he asked himself: 'Does it meananything?' whereas most painters of today, in the same case, askthemselves: 'Will it look well?' The difference between the two pointsof view is the difference between jesting and being in earnest--betweenan art that compared itself with an ideal future, and the art of todaythat measures itself with an ideal past. The great painters of theRenascence appealed to men and to men's selves, whereas the greatpainters of today appeal chiefly to men's eyes and to that much of menwhich can be stirred through the eye only. 

It was not that those early artists were religious enthusiasts, moved bya spiritual faith such as that which inspired Fra Angelico and one ortwo others. Few of them were religious men; several of them, likePerugino, were freethinkers. It was not, I think, because they lookedupon art itself as a very sacred matter, not to be jested with, sincethey used their art against their enemies for revenge and ridicule. Itwas rather because everyone was in earnest then, and was forced to be bythe nature of the times; whereas people now are only relatively inearnest, and stake their money only where men once staked their lives. That was one reason. Another may be that the greatest painters of thosetimes were practically men of universal genius and were always men ofvast reading and cultivation, the equals and often the superiors of thelearned in all other branches of science, literature and art. They werenot only great painters, but great men and great thinkers, and far abovedoing anything solely 'for effect. ' Lionardo da Vinci has been calledthe greatest man of the fifteenth century--so has Michelangelo--so, perhaps, has Raphael. They seemed able to do everything, and they havenot been surpassed in what they did as painters, sculptors, architects, engineers, fortifiers of cities, mathematicians, thinkers. No onenowadays ever thinks of a painter as being anything but a painter, andpeople shrug their shoulders at the idea that an artist can do anythingof the kind called 'serious' in this age. 

[Illustration: EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF MARCUS AURELIUS]

One asks what were the surroundings, the customs, the habits, in whichthese men grew to be already great at an age when modern boys are atcollege. One asks whether that system of teaching or education, whateverit may have been, was not much more likely to make great men than ours. And the answer suggests itself: our teaching is for the many, and theteaching of that day was for the few. 

Let anyone try and imagine the childhood of Giotto as the account of ithas come down to us through almost all the authorities. He was born inthe year 1276--when Dante was about eleven years old. That was the timewhen the wars of Guelphs and Ghibellines were at their height. That wasthe year in which Count Ugolino della Gherardesca got back his lordshipover Pisa--where he was to be starved to death with his two sons and twograndsons some twelve years later. That was the time when four Popesdied in sixteen months--the time when the Sicilian Vespers drove Charlesof Anjou from Sicily for ever--when Guido da Montefeltro was fightingand betraying and fighting again--the time of Dante's early youth, inwhich fell most of those deeds for which he consigned the doers to helland their names to immortality. 

Imagine, then, what a shepherd's hut must have been in those days, in anarrow valley of the Tuscan hills--the small cottage built of unhewnstones picked up on the hillside, fitted together one by one, accordingto their irregular shapes, and cemented, if at all, with clay and mudfrom the river bed--the roof of untrimmed saplings tied together andthatched with chestnut boughs, held down by big stones, lest the windshould blow them away. The whole, dark brown and black with the richsmoke of brushwood burned in the corner to boil the big black cauldronof sheep's milk for the making of the rank 'pecorino' cheese. One squareroom, lighted from the door only. The floor, the beaten earth. The beds, rough-hewn boards, lying one above the other, like bunks, on shortstrong lengths of sapling stuck into the wall. For mattresses, armfulsof mountain hay. The people, a man, his wife and two or three children, dressed winter and summer in heavy brown homespun woollen andsheepskins. For all furniture, a home-made bench, black with age andsmoke. The food, day in, day out, coarse yellow meal, boiled thick inwater and poured out to cool upon the black bench, divided into portionsthen with a thin hide thong, crosswise and lengthwise, for each person ayellow square, and eaten greedily with unwashed hands that left a littlefor the great sheep-dog. The drink, spring water and the whey left fromthe cheese curds, drunk out of a small earthen pot, passed from mouthto mouth. A silent bunch of ignorant human beings, full of thought forthe morrow, and of care for the master's sheep that were herded togetherin the stone pen all round the hut; fighting the wolves in winter, andin summer time listening for the sound of war from the valley, whenGuelph and Ghibelline harried all the country, and killed every strayliving thing for food. And among these half-starved wretches was a boyof twelve or thirteen years, weak-jointed, short-winded, little betterthan a cripple and only fit to watch the sheep on summer days when thewolves were not hungry--a boy destined to be one of the greatestartists, one of the greatest architects, and one of the most cultivatedmen of that or any other age--Giotto. 

The contrast between his childhood and his manhood is so startling thatone cannot realize it. It means that in those days the way from nothingto much was short and straight for great minds--impossible andimpracticable for small ones. Great intelligences were not dwarfed tostumps by laborious school work, were not stuffed to a bursting point bycramming, were not artificially inflamed by the periodical blistering ofexaminations; but average intelligences had not the chance which ateaching planned only for the average gives them now. Talent, in theshape of Cimabue, found genius, in the form of Giotto, clothed in rags, sketching sheep with one stone on another; talent took genius and fed itand showed it the way, and presently genius overtopped talent by amountain's head and shoulders. Cimabue took Giotto from his father, gladto be rid of the misshapen child that had to be fed and could do nothingmuch in return; and from the smoky hut in the little Tuscan valley thelad was taken straight to the old nobleman painter's house in the mostbeautiful city of Italy, was handed over to Brunetto Latini, Dante'stutor, to be taught book-learning, and was allowed to spend the otherhalf of his time in the painting room, at the elbow of the greatestliving painter. 

The boy was a sort of apprentice-servant, of course, as all beginnerswere in those times. In the big house, he probably had a pallet bed inone of those upper dormitories where the menservants slept, and hedoubtless fed with them in the lower hall at first. They must havelaughed at his unmannerly ways, and at his surprise over every newdetail of civilized life, but he had a sharp tongue and could hold hisown in a word-fight. There were three tables in a gentleman's house inthe Middle Age, --the master's, which was served in different rooms, according to the weather and the time of year; secondly, the 'tinello, 'or canteen, as we should call it, for the so-called gentlemenretainers--among whom, by the bye, ranked the chief butler and the headgroom, besides the chaplain and the doctor; thirdly, the servants' hall, where all the lower people of the house fed together. Then, as now inold countries, the labour of a large household was indefinitelysubdivided, and no servant was expected to do more than one thing, andevery servant had an assistant upon whom he forced all the hard work. Ashepherd lad, brought in from the hills in his sheepskin coat, sheepskinbreeches, and leg swathings of rags and leather, would naturally be thebutt of such an establishment. On the other hand, the shepherd boy was agenius and had a tongue like a razor, besides being the favourite of theall-powerful master; and as it was neither lawful nor safe to lay handson him, his power of cutting speech made him feared. 

So he learned Latin with the man who had taught Dante, --and Dante wasadmitted to be the most learned man of his times, --and he ground thecolours and washed the brushes for Cimabue, and drew under the master'seye everything that he saw, and became, as the chronicler Villani saysof him, 'the most sovereign master of painting to be found in his time, and the one who most of all others took all figures and all action fromnature. ' And Villani was his contemporary, and knew him when he wasgrowing old, and recorded his death and his splendid funeral. 

One-half of all permanent success in art must always lie in themechanical part of it, in the understanding and use of the tools. Theywere primitive in Giotto's day, and even much later, according to ourestimate. Oil painting was not dreamt of, nor anything like a leadpencil for drawing. There was no canvas on which to paint. No one hadthought of making an artist's palette. Not one-tenth of the substancesnow used for colours were known then. A modern artist might find himselfin great difficulties if he were called upon to paint a picture withCimabue's tools. 

But to Giotto they must have seemed marvellous after his pointed stonepencil and his bit of untrimmed slate. Everything must have surprisedand delighted him in his first days in Florence--the streets, thehouses, the churches, the people, the dresses he saw; and the boy whohad begun by copying the sheep that were before his eyes on thehillside, instantly longed to reproduce a thousand things that pleasedhim. So, when he was already old enough to understand life and itsbeauty, he was suddenly transported to the midst of it, just where itwas most beautiful; and because he instantly saw that his master's artwas unreal and far removed from truth, dead, as it were, and bound handand foot in the graveclothes of Byzantine tradition, his first impulsewas to wake the dead in a blaze of life. And this he did. 

And after him, from time to time, when art seemed to be stiffening againin the clumsy fingers of the little scholars of the great, there came atrue artist, like Giotto, who realized the sort of deathlike trance intowhich art had fallen, and roused it suddenly to things undreamedof--from Giotto to Titian. And each did all that he meant to do. Butafterwards came Tintoretto, who said that he would draw likeMichelangelo and paint like Titian; but he could not, though he madebeautiful things: and he was the first great artist who failed to gofarther than others had gone before him; and because art must eitheradvance or go backward, and no one could advance any more, it began togo backward, and the degeneration set in. 

About three hundred years elapsed between Giotto's birth and Titian'sdeath, during which the world changed from the rough state of the MiddleAge to a very high degree of civilization; and men's eyes grew tired ofwhat they saw all the time, while many of the strong types which hadmade the change faded away. Men grew more alike, dress grew more alike, thoughts grew more alike. It was the beginning of that overspreadinguniformity which we have in our time, which makes it so very easy forany one man to be eccentric, but which makes it so very hard for any oneman to be really great. One might say that in those times humanityflowed in very small channels, which a strong man of genius could thwartand direct. But humanity now is a stream so broad that it is almost likean ocean, in which all have similar being, and the big fish come to thesurface, and spout and blow and puff without having any influence at allon the tide. 

There was hardly any such thing possible as eccentricity in Giotto'stime. When the dress and manners and language of every little towndiffered distinctly from those of the nearest village, every man dressedas he pleased, behaved as he had been taught, and spoke the dialect ofhis native place. There was a certain uniformity among the priesthood, whose long cassock was then the more usual dress of civilians in greatcities in times of peace and who spoke Latin among themselves and wroteit, though often in a way that would make a scholar's blood run cold. But there was no uniformity among other classes of men. A fine gentlemanwho chose to have his cloth tights of several colours, one leg green andone blue, or each leg in quarters of four colours, attracted noattention whatever in the streets; and if one noble affected simplehabits and went about in an old leathern jerkin that was rusty inpatches from the joints of his armour, the next might dress himself inrich silk and gold embroidery, and wear a sword with a fine enamelledhilt. No one cared, except for himself, and it must have been hardindeed to produce much effect by any eccentricity of appearance. Butthere was the enormous and constantly changing variety that takes anartist's eye at every turn, --which might make an artist then of a manwho nowadays would be nothing but a discontented observer with artistictastes. 

I do not think that these things have ever been much noticed as factorsin the development of European art. Consider what Florence, forinstance, was to the eye at that time. And then consider that, untilthat time, art had been absolutely prohibited from painting what it saw, being altogether a traditional business in which, as Burckhardt says, the artist had quite lost all freedom of mind, all pleasure and interestin his work, in which he no longer invented, but had only to reproduceby mechanical repetition what the Church had discovered for him, inwhich the sacred personages he represented had shrivelled to mereemblems, and the greater part of his attention and pride was directed tothe rich and almost imperishable materials in which alone he was allowedto work for the honour and glory of the Church. 

In the second Council of Nicea, held in the year 787, the question ofsacred pictures was discussed, and in the acts of the Council thefollowing statement is found:--

'It is not the invention of the painter which creates the picture, butan inviolable law, a tradition of the Church. It is not the painters, but the holy fathers, who have to invent and dictate. To them manifestlybelongs the composition, to the painter only the execution. '

It would be hard to find a clearer definition of the artist's place andwork before Giotto. 

Consider all these things, and then think of the sensations of the firstman upon whom it flashed all at once that he might be free and mightpaint everything he saw, not as monks dictated to him, but as he sawit, to the best of his strength and talent. He must have felt like acreature that had been starved, suddenly turned out free to roam througha world full of the most tempting things and with a capacity to enjoythem all. He did not realize his freedom completely at first; it wasimpossible for him to throw off at once all the traditions in which hehad been brought up and taught; but he realized enough to change thewhole direction of all the art that came after him. 

Two things are remarkable about the early Italian artists. With thesolitary exception of Cimabue--the first of the Renascence--none of themwas born rich, but, on the other hand, a great many of them were notborn poor either. Giotto and Mantegna were shepherd boys, it is true;but Michelangelo was the son of a small official of ancient family inthe provinces, the mayor of the little city of Chiusi e Caprese;Lionardo da Vinci's father was a moderately well-to-do land-holder;Raphael's was a successful painter, and certainly not in want. Secondly, a very great number of them made what must have been thought goodfortunes in those days, while they were still young men. Some, likeAndrea del Sarto, squandered their money and died in misery; one or two, like Fra Angelico, refused to receive money themselves for their workand handed over their earnings to a religious community. None, so far asI can find out, toiled through half a lifetime with neither recognitionnor pay, as many a great artist has done in our times--like theFrenchman Millet, for instance, whose Angelus fetched such a fabulousprice after his death. The truth is that what we mean by art had justbeen discovered, and it met with immediate and universal appreciation, and the result was a demand for it which even a greater number ofpainters could not have oversatisfied. Consequently, there was plenty todo for every man of genius, and there were people not only willing topay great sums for each work, but who disputed with each other for thepossession of good paintings, and quarrelled for what was equivalent tothe possession of great artists. 

Another element in the lives of these men, as in the lives of all whorose to any eminence in those days, was the great variety thatcircumstances introduced into their existence. Change and variety arefavourable to creative genius as they are unfavourable to uncreativestudy. The scholar and the historian are best left among their books fortwenty years at a time, to execute the labour of patient thought whichneeds perpetual concentration on one subject. If Gibbon had continued tobe an amateur soldier and a man of the world, as he began, he might havewritten a history, but it would not have been the most astonishinghistory of modern times. In Macaulay's brilliant and often too creativework, one sees the influence of his changing political career, to thedetriment of sober study. For the more the creative man sees and livesin his times, the more he is impelled to create. In the midst of hisbest years of painting, Lionardo da Vinci was called off to buildcanals, and Cæsar Borgia kept him busy for two years in planning andconstructing fortifications. Immediately before that time he hadfinished his famous Last Supper, in Milan, and immediately afterwards hepainted the Battle of Anghiari--now lost--which was the picture of histhat most strongly impressed the men of his day. 

Similarly, Michelangelo was interrupted in his work when, the Constableof Bourbon having sacked Rome, the Medici were turned out of Florence, and the artist was employed by the Republic to fortify and defend thecity. It was betrayed, and he escaped and hid himself--and the nextgreat thing he did was the Last Judgment, in the Sixtine Chapel. He didstirring work in wild times, besides painting, and hewing marble, andbuilding Saint Peter's. 

That brings one back to thinking how much those men knew. Theiruniversal knowledge seems utterly unattainable to us, with all ourmodern machinery of education. Michelangelo grew up in a suburb ofFlorence, to which his father moved when he was a child, at a notary'sdesk, his father trying to teach him enough law to earn him alivelihood. Whenever he had a chance, he escaped to draw in a corner, orto spend forbidden hours in an artist's studio. He was taught Latin andarithmetic by an old schoolmaster, who was probably a priest, and afriend of his father's. At fourteen he earned money in Ghirlandajo'sstudio, which means that he was already an artist. At twenty-five he wasprobably the equal of any living man as sculptor, painter, architect, engineer and mathematician. Very much the same might be said ofLionardo. One asks in vain how such enormous knowledge was acquired, andbecause there is no answer, one falls back upon wild theories aboutuntaught genius. But whatever may be said of painting and sculpture, neither architecture nor engineering, and least of all the mathematicsso necessary to both, can be evolved from the inner consciousness. 

Men worked harder then than now, and their teachers and their toolshelped them less, so that they learned more thoroughly what they learnedat all. And there was much less to distract a man then, when he haddiscovered his own talent, while there was everything to spur him. Amusements were few, and mostly the monopoly of rich nobles; but successwas quick and generous, and itself ennobled the men who attained toit--that is, it instantly made him the companion, and often the friend, of the most cultivated men and women of the day. Then, as now, successmeant an entrance into 'society' for those whose birth had placed themoutside of it. But 'society' was different then. It consisted chiefly ofmen who had fought their own way to power, and had won it by asuperiority both intellectual and physical, and of women who oftenrealized and carried out the unsatisfied intellectual aspirations oftheir husbands and fathers. For wherever men have had much to do, andhave done it successfully, what we call culture has been more or lessthe property of the women. In those times, the men were mostly occupiedin fighting and plotting, but the beautiful things produced by newlydiscovered art appealed to them strongly. Women, on the other hand, hadnothing to do. With the end of the Middle Age, the old-fashionedoccupations of women, such as spinning, weaving and embroidering withtheir maids, went out of existence, and the mechanical work was absorbedand better done by the guilds. Fighting was then a large part of life, but there was something less of the petty squabbling and killing betweensmall barons, which kept their women constant prisoners in remotecastles, for the sake of safety; and there was war on a larger scalebetween Guelph and Ghibelline, Emperor and Pope, State and State. Thewomen had more liberty and more time. There were many women students inthe universities, as there are now, in Italy, and almost always havebeen, and there were famous women professors, whose lectures wereattended by grown men. No one was surprised at that, and there was noloud talk about women's rights. Nobody questioned the right of women tolearn as much as they could, where-ever anything was taught. There weregreat ladies, good and bad, like Vittoria Colonna and Lucrezia Borgia, who were scholars, and even Greek scholars, and probably equal to anystudents of their time. Few ladies of Michelangelo's day did not knowLatin, and all were acquainted with such literature as there was--Dante, Macchiavelli, Aretino, Ariosto and Petrarch, --for Tasso came later, --theTuscan minor poets, as well as the troubadours of Provence--not tomention the many collections of tales, of which the scenes were destinedto become the subjects of paintings in the later days of the Renascence. 

Modern society is the enemy of individuality, whether in dress, taste orcriticism, and the fear of seeming different from other people isgreater than the desire to rise higher than other people by purelypersonal means. In the same way, socialism is the enemy of all personaldistinction, whatever the socialists may say to the contrary, and istherefore opposed to all artistic development and in favour of all thatis wholesale, machine-made, and labour-saving. And nobody will ventureto say that modern tendencies are not distinctly socialistic. 

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI

The Baths of Diocletian remodelled by Michelangelo]

We are almost at the opposite extreme of existence from the earlyRenascence. That was the age of small principalities; ours is the day ofgreat nations. Anyone who will carefully read the history of the MiddleAge and of the Renascence will come to the inevitable conclusion thatthe greatest artists and writers of today are very far from being therivals of those who were great then. Shakespeare was almost thecontemporary of Titian; there has been neither a Shakespeare nor aTitian since, nor any writer nor artist in the most distant mannerapproaching them. Yet go backward from them, and you will find Dante, asgreat as Shakespeare, and at least three artists, Michelangelo, Lionardoda Vinci and Raphael, quite as great as Titian. They lived in a societywhich was antisocialistic, and they were the growth of a period in whichall the ideas of civilized mankind tended in a direction diametricallyopposed to that taken by our modern theories. This is undeniable. Thegreatest artists, poets and literary men are developed where allconditions most develop individuality. The modern state, in whichindividuality is crushed by the machinery of education in order that allmen may think alike, favours the growth of science alone; and scientificmen have the least individuality of all men who become great, becausescience is not creative like art and literature, nor destructive likesoldiering, but inquisitive, inventive and speculative in the firstplace, and secondly, in our age, financial. In old times, when adiscovery was made, men asked, 'What does it mean? To what will itlead?' Now, the first question is, 'What will it be worth?' That doesnot detract from the merit of science, but it shows the general tendencyof men's thoughts. And it explains two things, namely, why there are noartists like Michelangelo nor literary men like Shakespeare in ourtimes--and why the majority of such artists and literary men as we haveare what is commonly called reactionaries, men who would prefer to goback a century or two, and who like to live in out-of-the-way places inold countries, as Landor lived in Florence, Browning in Venice, Stevenson in Samoa, Liszt in Rome, --besides a host of painters andsculptors, who have exiled themselves voluntarily for life in Italy andFrance. The whole tendency of the modern world is scientific andfinancial, and the world is ruled by financiers and led by a financialsociety which honours neither art nor literature, but looks upon both asamusements which it can afford to buy, and which it is fashionable tocultivate, but which must never for a moment be considered as equal inimportance to the pursuit of money for its own sake. 

It was the great scope for individuality, the great prizes to be won byindividuality, the honour paid to individuality, that helped the earlypainters to their high success. It was the abundance of material, hitherto never used in art, the variety of that material, in an age whenvariety was the rule and not the exception, it was the richness of thatmaterial, not in quantity and variety only, but in individual quality, that made early paintings what we see. It was their genuine and truelove of beauty, and of nature and of the eternal relations betweennature and beauty, that made those men great artists. It was thehampering of individuality, the exhaustion and disappearance of materialand the degeneration of a love of beauty to a love of effect, that putan end to the great artistic cycle in Italy, and soon afterwards in therest of the world, with Rembrandt and Van Dyck, the last of the reallygreat artists. 

Progress is not civilization, though we generally couple the two wordstogether, and often confound their values. Progress has to do with whatwe call the industrial arts, their development, and the consequentincrease of wealth and comfort. Civilization means, on the other hand, among many things, the growth and perfecting of art, in the singular;the increase of a general appreciation of art; the refinement of mannerswhich follows upon a widespread improvement of taste; the generalelevation of a people's thoughts above the hard conditions in which agreat people's struggles for existence, preëminence and wealth takeplace. 

Progress, in its right acceptation, ought also to mean some sort ofmoral progress--such, for instance, as has transformed our ownEnglish-speaking race in a thousand years or more from a stock of verydangerous pirates to a law-abiding people--if we may fairly say as muchas that of ourselves. 

Civilization has nothing to do with morality. That is rather a shockingstatement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by sayingthat civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The earlyChristians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans oftheir time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly calledthe Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what wecall cultivation, Alcibiades was immeasurably superior to Saint Paul, Peter the Hermit or Abraham Lincoln, though Alcibiades had no moralityto speak of and not much conscience. Moreover, it is a fact that greatreformers of morals have often been great enemies of art and destroyersof the beautiful. Fra Bartolommeo, who is thought by many to haveequalled Raphael in the latter's early days, became a follower ofSavonarola, burned all his wonderful drawings and studies, and shuthimself up in a monastery to lead a religious life; and though heyielded after several years to the command of his superiors, and beganpainting again, he confined himself altogether to devotional subjects aslong as he lived, and fell far behind Raphael, who was certainly not anexemplary character, even in those days. 

In Europe, and in the Latin languages, there is a distinction, and auniversally accepted one, between education and instruction. It issomething like that which I am trying to make clear between Civilizationand Progress. An 'instructed man' means a man who has learned much butwho may have no manners at all, may eat with his knife, forget to washhis hands, wear outlandish clothes, and be ignorant even of the ordinaryforms of politeness. An 'educated person, ' on the contrary, may knowvery little Latin, and no Greek, and may be shaky in the multiplicationtable; but he must have perfect manners to deserve the designation, andtact, with a thorough knowledge of all those customs and outward formswhich distinguish what calls itself civilized society from the rest ofthe world. Anyone can see that such instruction, on the one hand, andsuch education, on the other, are derived from wholly differentsources, and must lead to wholly different results; and it is as commonnowadays to find men who have the one without the other, as it ever wasin ancient Greece or Rome. I should like to assert that it is morecommon, since Progress is so often mistaken for Civilization and tacitlysupposed to be able to do without it, and that Diogenes would not besuch a startling exception now as he was in the days of Alexander theGreat. But no one would dare to say that Progress cannot go on in a highstate of Civilization. All that can be stated with absolute certainty isthat they are independent of each other, since Progress means 'going on'and therefore 'change'; whereas Civilization may remain at the same highlevel for a very long period, without any change at all. Compare our owncountry with China, for instance. In the arts--the plural 'arts'--inapplied science, we are centuries ahead of Asia; but our manners arerough and even brutal compared with the elaborate politeness of theChinese, and we should labour in vain to imitate the marvellousproductions of their art. We may prefer our art to that of the far East, though there are many critics who place the Japanese artists much higherthan our own; but no one can deny the superior skill of the Asiatics inthe making of everything artistic. 

Nor must we undervalue in art the importance of the minor and specialsort of progress which means a real and useful improvement in methodsand materials. That is doubtless a part, a first step, in the generalprogress which tends ultimately to the invention of machinery, butwhich, in its development, passes through the highest perfection ofmanual work. 

The first effect of this sort of progress in art was to give men ofgenius new and better tools, and therefore a better means of expression. In a way, almost every painter of early times was an inventor, and hadto be, because for a long time the methods and tools of painting wereabsurdly insufficient. Every man who succeeded had discovered some newway of grinding and mixing colours, of preparing the surface on which heworked, of using the brush and the knife, and of fixing the finishedpicture by means of varnishes. The question of what painters call thevehicle for colour was always of immense importance. Long before Giottobegan to work there seem to have been two common ways of painting, namely, in fresco, with water-colours, and on prepared surfaces by meansof wax mixed with some sort of oil. 

In fresco painting, the mason, or the plasterer, works with the painter. A surface as large as the artist expects to use during a few hours iscovered with fresh stucco by the mason, and thoroughly smoothed with asmall trowel. Stucco, as used in Italy, is a mixture of slaked lime andwhite marble dust, or very fine sand which has been thoroughly sifted. If stained to resemble coloured or veined marbles, and immediatelyironed till it is dry with hot smooth irons, the surface of the mass ishardened and polished to such a degree that it is almost impossible todistinguish it from real marble without breaking into it. Waxing givesit a still higher polish. But if water-colours are used for painting apicture upon it, and if the colours are laid on while the stucco isstill damp, they unite with the lime, and slowly dry to a surface whichis durable, but neither so hard nor so polished as that produced whenthe stucco is ironed. The principal conditions are that the stucco mustbe moist, the wall behind it absolutely dry and the colours very thinand flowing. Should the artist not cover all that has been prepared forhis day's work, the remainder has to be broken out again and laid onfresh the next day. It is now admitted that the wall-paintings of theancients were executed in this way. As it was impossible for the artistat any time to have the whole surface of the freshly stuccoed wall athis disposal in order to draw his picture before painting it, he eitherdrew the design in red upon the rough dry plaster, and then had thestucco laid over it in bits, or else he made a cartoon drawing of thework in its full size. The outlines were then generally pricked out witha stout pin, and the cartoon cut up into pieces of convenientdimensions, so that the painter could lay them against the fresh stuccoand rub the design through, or pounce it, as we should say, withcharcoal dust, like a stencil. He then coloured it as quickly as hecould. If he made a mistake, or was not pleased with the effect, therewas no remedy except the radical one of breaking off the stucco, layingit on fresh, and beginning over again. It was clearly impossible topaint over the same surface again and again as can be done in oilpainting. 

No one knows exactly when eggs were first used in fresco painting, nordoes it matter much. Some people used the yolk and the white together, some only one or the other, but the egg was, and is, always mixed withwater. Some artists now put gum tragacanth into the mixture. It is thenused like water in water-colour work, but is called 'tempera' or'distemper. ' The effect of the egg is to produce an easy flow of thecolour with so little liquid that the paint does not run on the surface, as it easily does in ordinary water-colours. The effect of the yellowyolk of the egg upon the tints is insignificant, unless too much beused. By using egg, one may paint upon ordinary prepared canvas aseasily as with oils, which is impossible with water-colour. 

As for the early paintings upon panels of wood, before oils were used, they were meant to be portable imitations of fresco. The wood wasaccordingly prepared by covering it with a thin coating of fine whitecement, or stucco, which was allowed to dry and become perfectly hard, because it was of course impossible to lay it on fresh every day insuch small quantities. The vehicle used could therefore not be water, which would have made the colours run. The most common practice of theByzantine and Romanesque schools seems to have been to use warm meltedwax in combination with some kind of oil, the mixture being kept readyat hand over a lighted lamp, or on a pan of burning charcoal. There areartists in Europe, still, who occasionally use wax in this way, thoughgenerally mixed with alcohol or turpentine, and the result is said to bevery durable. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted many pictures in this way. 

With regard to using oils on a dry surface in wall painting, instead offresco, Lionardo da Vinci tried it repeatedly with the result that manyof his wall paintings were completely lost within thirty or forty yearsafter they had been painted. The greatest of those which have survivedat all, the Last Supper in Milan, has had to be restored so often thatlittle of the original picture remains untouched. 

The enormous value of linseed oil and nut oil as a vehicle was apparentas soon as it was discovered in Holland. Its great advantages are that, unlike water or egg, it will carry a large quantity of colour upon thecanvas at the first stroke, that it dries slowly, so that the sameground may be worked over without haste while it is still fresh, andthat it has a very small effect in changing the tints of the originalpaints used. One may see what value was attached to its use from thefact that those who first brought it to Italy worked in secret. AndreaCastagno, surnamed the Assassin, learned the method from his bestfriend, Domenico Veneziano, and then murdered him while he was singing aserenade under a lady's window, in order to possess the secret alone. But it soon became universally known and made a revolution in Italianpainting. 

In the older times, when rare and valuable pigments were used, as wellas large quantities of pure gold, the materials to be employed and theirvalue were stipulated for in the contract made between the painter andhis employer before the picture was begun, and an artist's remunerationat that time was much of the nature of a salary, calculated on anapproximate guess at the time he might need for the work. That was, ofcourse, a survival from the time of the Byzantine artists, to whom goldand silver and paints were weighed out by the ecclesiastics for whomthey painted, and had to be accounted for in the finished picture. Thereis a story told of an artist's apprentice, who made a considerable sumof money by selling the washings of his master's brushes when the latterwas using a great quantity of ultramarine; and that shows the costlinessof mere paints at that time. As for the more valuable materials, thegreat altar picture in Saint Mark's, in Venice, is entirely composed ofplates of pure gold enamelled in different colours, and fastened in asort of mosaic upon the wood panel as required, the lights and shadesbeing produced by hatching regular lines through the hard enamel with asharp instrument. The whole technical history of painting lies betweenthat sort of work and the modern painter's studio. 

Before oil painting became general, artists were largely dependent oncommissions in order to do any work except drawing. Fresco needed awall, and work done in that manner could not be removed from place toplace. The old-fashioned panel work with its gold background was soexpensive that few artists could afford to paint pictures on the merechance of selling them. But the facilities and the economy of puretempera work, and work in oils, soon made easel pictures common. 

Between the time of Giotto and that of Mantegna another means ofexpression, besides painting, was found for artists, if not by accident, by the ingenuity of the celebrated goldsmith, Maso Finiguerra, who wasthe first man in Italy, and probably the first in the world, to take offupon paper impressions in ink from an engraved plate. 

[Illustration: THE PALATINE]

The especial branch of goldsmithing which he practised was what theItalians still call 'niello' work, or the enamelling of designs uponprecious metals. The method of doing such work is this. Upon the pieceto be enamelled the design is first carefully drawn with a fine point, precisely as in silver chiselling, and corrected till quite perfect inall respects. This design is then cut into the metal with very sharptools, evenly, but not to a great depth. When completely cut, theenamelling substance, which is generally sulphate of silver, is placedupon the design in just sufficient quantities, and the whole piece ofwork is then put into a furnace and heated to such a point that theenamel melts and fills all the cuttings of the design, while the metalitself remains uninjured. This is an easier matter than might besupposed, because gold and silver, though soft under the chisel, willnot melt except at a very high temperature. When the enamel has cooled, the whole surface is rubbed down to a perfect level, and the designappears with sharp outlines in the polished metal. 

Now anyone who has ever worked with a steel point on bright metal knowshow very hard it is to judge of the correctness of the drawing by merelylooking at it, because the light is reflected in all directions intoone's eyes, not only from untouched parts of the plate, but from thefreshly cut lines. The best way of testing the work is to blacken itwith some kind of colour that is free from acid, such as a mixture oflampblack and oil, to rub the surface clean so as to leave the ink onlyin the engraved lines, and then take an impression of the drawing upondamp paper. That is practically what Finiguerra did, and in so doing hediscovered the art of engraving. Probably goldsmiths had done the samebefore him, as they have always done since, but none of them had thoughtof drawing upon metal merely for the sake of the impression it wouldmake, and without any intention of using the metal afterwards. Withinfifty years of Finiguerra's invention very beautiful engravings weresold all over Italy, and many famous painters engraved their ownworks--foremost among these, Mantegna and Botticelli. 

Early Italian art rose thus by regular steps, from the helpless, traditional, imitative work of the Romanesque and Byzantine artists toits highest development. It then passed a succession of climaxes in themasterpieces of Lionardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, andthence descended gradually to the miserably low level of the eighteenthcentury. 

It is easy to trace the chief objects which painting had in view in itssuccessive phases. Tradition, Reality and Illusion were the three. Cimabue was still a Traditionist. Giotto was the first Realist. Mantegnafirst aimed at the full illusion which finished art is capable ofproducing, and though not so great a man as Giotto, was a much greaterpainter. Then came Lionardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, the men ofuniversal genius, who could make use of tradition without beingcommonplace, who could be realistic without being coarse, and whounderstood how to produce illusion without being theatrical. In thedecay of Italian art what strikes one most strongly is the combinationof the three faults which the great men knew how to avoid--coarseness, commonplace thought and theatrical execution. 

[Illustration: PALAZZO DEI CONSERVATORI

From a print of the last century]

Cimabue had found out that it was possible to paint sacred pictureswithout the dictation of priests, as prescribed by the Council of Nice. The idea discovered by Giotto, or rather the fact, namely, that naturecould be copied artistically, produced a still greater revolution, andhe had hosts of scholars and followers and imitators. But they werenothing more, or at the most it may be said that they developed his ideato the furthest with varying success. It was realism--sometimes a kindof mystic evocation of nature, disembodied and divinely pure, as inBeato Angelico; often exquisitely fresh and youthful, as in his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, whose vast series of frescoes half fills the Camposantoof Pisa--sometimes tentative and experimental, or gravely grand, as inMasaccio, impetuous and energetic as in Fra Lippo Lippi, fanciful as inBotticelli--but still, always realism, in the sense of using naturedirectly, without any distinct effort at illusion, the figures mostlytaken from life, and generally disposed in one plane, the detailsminute, the landscapes faithful rather than suggestive. 

The lives of those men were all typical of the times in which theylived, and especially the life of the holy man we call Beato Angelico, of saintly memory, that of the fiery lay brother, Filippo Lippi, whoseastounding talents all but redeemed his little less surprising sins--andlastly that of Andrea Mantegna. 

The first two stand out in tremendous contrast as contemporaries--therealist of the Soul, and the realist of the Flesh, the Saint and theSinner, the Ascetic and the Sensualist. 

Beato Angelico--of his many names, it is easier to call him by the onewe know best--was born in 1387. At that time the influence of the Empirein Italy was ended, and that of the Popes was small. The Emperors andthe Popes had in fact contended for the control of municipal rights inthe free Italian cities; with the disappearance of those rights underthe Italian despots the cause of contention was gone, as well as thepartial liberty which had given it existence. The whole country was cutup into principalities owned and ruled by tyrants. Dante had been deadabout sixty years, and the great imperial idea which he had developed inhis poem had totally failed. The theoretical rights of man, as usual inthe world's history, had gone down before the practical strength ofindividuals, whose success tended, again, to call into activity otherindividuals, to the general exaltation of talent for the generaloppression of mediocrity. In other words, that condition had beenproduced which is most favourable to genius, because everything betweengenius and brute strength had been reduced to slavery in the socialscale. The power to take and hold, on the one hand, and the power toconceive and execute great works on the other, were as necessary to eachother as supply and demand; and all moral worth became a matter ofdetail compared with success. 

In such a state of the world, a man of creative genius who chanced to bea saint was an anomaly; there was no fit place for him but a monastery, and no field for his powers but that of Sacred Art. It was as naturalthat Angelico should turn monk as that Lippo Lippi, who had been madehalf a monk against his will, should turn layman. 

In the peaceful convent of Saint Mark, among the Dominican brethren, Beato Angelico's character and genius grew together; the devout artistand the devotional mystic were inseparably blended in one man, and hewho is best remembered as a famous painter was chosen by a wise Pope tobe Archbishop of Florence, for his holy life, his gentle character andhis undoubted learning. 

He could not refuse the great honour outright; but he implored the Popeto bestow it upon a brother monk, whom he judged far more worthy thanhimself. He was the same consistent, humble man who had hesitated to eatmeat at the Pope's own table without the permission of the prior of hisconvent--a man who, like the great Saint Bernard, had given up aprosperous worldly existence in pure love of religious peace. It was nowonder that such a man should become the realist of the angels and asort of angel among realists--himself surnamed by his companions the'Blessed' and the 'Angelic. '

Beside him, younger than he, but contemporary with him, stands out hisopposite, Filippo Lippi. He was not born rich, like Angelico. He cameinto the world in a miserable by-way of Florence, behind a Carmeliteconvent. His father and mother were both dead when he was two years old, and a wretchedly poor sister of his father took care of him as best shecould till he was eight. When she could bear the burden no longer, shetook him to the door of the monastery, as orphans were taken in thosedays, and gave him over to the charity of the Carmelite fathers. Mostof the boys brought to them in that way grew up to be monks, and some ofthem became learned; but the little Filippo would do nothing but scrawlcaricatures in his copybook all day long, and could not be induced tolearn anything. But he learned to draw so well that when the prior sawwhat he could do, he allowed him to paint; and at seventeen the lad whowould not learn to read or write knew that he was a great artist, andturned his back on the monastery that had given him shelter, and on thepartial vows he had already taken. He was the wildest novice that everwore a frock. He had almost missed the world, since a little moreinclination, a little more time, might have made a real monk of him. Buthe had escaped, and he took to himself all the world could give, andrevelled in it with every sensation of his gifted, sensuous nature. Itwas only when he could not get what he wanted that he had curiousreturns of monkish reasoning. The historian of his life says that hewould give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whateverinclination chanced to be predominant at the moment; but if he could byno means accomplish his wishes, he would then depict the object whichattracted his attention and he would try, by reasoning and talking withhimself, to diminish the violence of his inclination. 

There was no lack of adventure in his life, either. Once, at Ancona, onthe Adriatic, he ventured too far out to sea in an open boat, and heand his companions were picked up by a Barbary pirate and carried off toAfrica. But for his genius he might have ended his days there, insteadof spending only eighteen months in slavery. A clever drawing of thepirate chief, made on a whitewashed wall with a bit of charcoal from abrazier, saved him. The Moor saw it, was delighted, set him to paint anumber of portraits, in defiance of Moses, Mahomet and the Koran, andthen, by way of reward, brought him safe across the water to Naples andgave him his liberty. 

He painted more pictures, earned money, and worked his way back toFlorence. As long as he worked at all he did marvels, but a pretty facewas enough to make him forget his art, his work and the Princes andDukes who employed him. Cosimo de Medici once shut him up with hispicture, to keep him at it; he tore the sheets of his bed into strips, knotted them together, escaped by the window--and was of courseforgiven. The nuns of Saint Margaret employed him to paint analtar-piece for them; he persuaded them to let the most beautiful oftheir novices sit as a model for one of the figures; he made love toher, of course, and ran away with her, leaving the picture unfinished. It is characteristic of him that though he never forsook her, he refusedthe Pope's offer of a dispensation from his early vows which would haveenabled him to marry her--for he hated all ties and bonds alike, and aregular marriage would have seemed to him almost as bad as slavery inAfrica. 

Lippo represented one extreme of character, Beato Angelico the other. Between them were many men of almost equal genius, but of more commontemper, such as Botticelli, who was Lippo's pupil, or Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Angelico. Of Sandro Botticelli we know at least that heresembled his master in one respect--he positively refused to learnanything from books, and it was in sheer despair that his father, Filipepe, apprenticed the boy to a goldsmith, who rejoiced in thenickname of Botticello--'the little tun'--perhaps on account of hisrotund figure, and it was from this first master of his that the boycame to be called 'Botticello's Sandro. ' The goldsmith soon saw that theboy was a born painter, and took him to Lippo Lippi to be taught. BothBotticelli and Gozzoli, like many first-rate artists of that time, werequiet, hard-working men, devoted to their art, and not remarkable foranything else. The consequence is that little is known about theirlives. It is natural that we should know most about the men who weremost different from their companions, such as Michelangelo on the onehand, and Benvenuto Cellini on the other, or Beato Angelico and LippoLippi, or the clever Buffalmacco--whose practical jokes were told byBoccaccio and Sacchetti, and have even brought him into modernliterature--and Lionardo da Vinci. Then, as now, there were two typesof artists, considered as men; there were Bohemians and scholars. Lionardo and Michelangelo were grave and learned students; so was BeatoAngelico in a sense limited to theology. But Benvenuto, Lippo Lippi andBuffalmacco were typical Bohemians. As for the latter, he seems scarcelyever to have painted a picture without playing off a practical jest uponhis employer, and he began his career by terrifying his master, whoinsisted upon waking him to work before dawn. He fastened tiny waxtapers upon the backs of thirty black beetles, and as soon as he heardthe old man stirring and groping in the dark, he lighted the tapersquickly, and drove the beetles into the room, through a crack under thedoor, and they ran wildly hither and thither on the pavement. The mastertook them for demons come to carry off his soul; he almost lost hissenses in a fit, and he used half the holy water in Florence to exorcisethe house. But ever afterwards he was too much frightened to get upbefore daylight, and Buffalmacco slept out the long night in peace. 

Andrea Mantegna, the great painter and engraver, who made the final stepin the development of pictorial art in Italy, was a shepherd's son, likeGiotto, born about one hundred years after Giotto's death. Similarconditions and a similar bent of genius produced different results indifferent centuries. Between Giotto and Mantegna the times had changed;men lived differently, thought differently and saw differently. 

How Mantegna got into the studio of the learned master Squarcione ofPadua is not known. The shepherd lad may have strayed in on a summer'sday, when the door was open, and attracted the painter's attention andinterest. One of the greatest living painters today was a Bavarianpeasant boy, who used to walk ten miles barefoot to the city and back onSundays, carrying his shoes to save them, in order to go into the freegalleries and look at the pictures; and somehow, without money, norcredit, nor introduction, he got into the studio of a good master, andbecame a great artist. Mantegna may have done the same. At all events, he became old Squarcione's favourite pupil. 

But when he was inside the studio, he found there a vast collection ofantique fragments of sculpture, which the master had got together fromall sources, and which the pupils were drawing. He was set to drawingthem, too, as the best way of learning how to paint. 

That was the logical manifestation and characteristic expression ofRenascence, which was a second birth of Greek and Roman art, science andliterature--one might call it, in Italy, the second birth of civilizedman. It brought with it the desire and craving for something more thanrealism, together with the means of raising all art to the higher levelrequired in order to produce beautiful illusions. Men had found time toenjoy as well as to fight and pray. In other words, they fought andprayed less, and the result was that they had more leisure. The womenhad begun to care for artistic things much earlier, and they had taughttheir children to care for them, and the result was a general tendencyof taste to a higher level. Genius may be an orphan and a foundling, buttaste is the child of taste. Genius is the crude, creative force; butthe gentle sense of appreciation, neither creative nor crude, butreceptive, is most often acquired at home and in childhood. A full-grownman may learn to be a judge and a critic, but he cannot learn to havetaste after he is once a man. Taste belongs to education rather than toinstruction, and it is the mother that educates, not the schoolmaster. 

That faculty of taste was what Italy had acquired between the time ofCimabue and the time of Mantegna--roughly speaking, between the year1200 and the year 1450--between the first emancipation of art from theold Byzantine and Romanesque thraldom and the time when the new art hadso overspread the country that engravings of the most famous picturesbegan to be sold in the streets in every important city in Italy. Only afew years after Mantegna's death, Albert Dürer, the great painterengraver of Nüremberg, appeared before the council of Venice to try andget a copyright for his engravings, which were being so cleverly forgedby the famous Raimondi that the copies were sold in the Piazza of SaintMark as originals. In passing, it is interesting to remember that Dürer, whose engravings now sell for hundreds of dollars each, sold themhimself at his own house for prices varying between the values offifteen and twenty-five cents, according to the size of the plate. TheCouncil of Venice refused him the copyright he asked, but interdictedthe copyist from using Dürer's initials. 

The immense sale of prints popularized art in Italy at the very timewhen the first great printing houses, like the Aldine, were popularizinglearning. Culture, in the same sense in which we use the word, becamepreëminently the fashion. Everyone wished to be thought clever, and ageneration grew up which not only read Latin authors with pleasure, wrote Latin correctly, and had some acquaintance with Greek, but whichtook a lively interest in artistic matters, and constituted a realpublic for artists, a much larger and a much more critical one thancould be found today among an equal population in any so-calledcivilized country. The era of collectors began then, and Mantegna's oldmaster was the first of them. Every man of taste did his best to getpossession of some fragment of antique sculpture, everyone boughtengravings, everyone went to see the pictures of the greatmasters--everyone tried to get together a little library of printedbooks. It took two hundred and fifty or three hundred years to developthe Renascence, but what it produced in Italy alone has not beensurpassed, and in many ways has not been equalled, in the four hundredyears that have followed it. 

With its culmination, individualities, even the strongest, became lessdistinctly defined, and the romantic side of the art legend was ended. It is so in all things. The romance of the ocean belongs to those whofirst steered the perilous course that none had dared before; many havebeen in danger by the sea, many have perished in the desperate trial ofthe impossible, but none can be Columbus again; many have done bravedeeds in untracked deserts, but none again can be the pioneers who firstwon through to our West. The last may be the greatest, but the firstwill always have been the first, the daring, the romantic, who did whatno man had done before them. 

And so it is also in the peaceful ways of art. Giotto, Beato Angelico, Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, never attained to the greatness of Lionardo orMichelangelo or Raphael. Sober criticism can never admit that they did, whatever soft-hearted enthusiasts may say and write. But those earliermen had something which the later ones had not, both in merit and ingenius. They fought against greater odds, with poorer weapons, and wheretheir strength failed them, heart and feeling took the place ofstrength; and their truth and their tenderness went straight to theheart of their young world, as only the highest perfection of illusioncould appeal to the eyes of the critical, half-sceptic generation thatcame after them. 

And so, although it be true that art is not dependent on genius alone, but also on mechanical skill, yet there is something in art which isdependent on genius and on nothing else. It is that something whichtouches, that something which creates, that something which itself islife; that something which belongs, in all ages, to those who grope tothe light through darkness; that something of which we almost lose sightin the great completeness of the greatest artists, but which hovers likea halo of glory upon the brows of Italy's earliest, truest and tenderestpainters. 

[Illustration]

REGION XIV BORGO

Borgo, the 'Suburb, ' is the last of the fourteen Regions, and is one ofthe largest and most important of all, for within its limits stand SaintPeter's, the Vatican, and the Mausoleum of Hadrian--the biggest church, the biggest palace and the biggest tomb in the whole world. 

To those who know something of Rome's great drama, the Castle of Sant'Angelo is the most impressive of all her monuments. Like the Colosseum, it stands out in its round strength alone, sun-gilt and shadowy brownagainst the profound sky. Like the great Amphitheatre, it has beenbuffeted in the storms of ages and is war-worn without, to the highestreach of a mounted man, and dinted above that by every missile inventedin twelve hundred years, from the slinger's pebble or leaden bullet tothe cannon ball of the French artillery. Like the Colosseum, it is thecrestless trunk of its former self. But it has life in it still, whereasthe Colosseum died to a ruin when Urban the Eighth showed his successorhow to tear down the outer wall and build a vast palace with a hundredthpart of the great theatre. 

Sant' Angelo is a living fortress yet, and nearly a thousand years havepassed, to the certain knowledge of history, since it was ever a singleday unguarded by armed men. Thirty generations of men at arms have stoodsentry within its gates since Theodora Senatrix, the strong and sinful, flashed upon history out of impenetrable darkness, seized the fortressand made and unmade popes at her will, till, dying, she bequeathed thedomination to her only daughter, and her name to the tale of Romantyranny. 

The Castle has been too often mentioned in these pages to warrant longdescription of it here, even if any man who has not lived for yearsamong its labyrinthine passages could describe it accurately. The greatdescending corridor leads in a wide spiral downwards to the central spotwhere Hadrian lay, and in the vast thickness of the surroundingfoundations there is but stone, again stone and more stone. From themain entrance upwards the fortress is utterly irregular within, full ofgloomy chambers, short, turning staircases, dark prisons, endlesscorridors; and above are terraces and rooms where much noble blood hasbeen shed, and where many limbs have been racked and tortured, andbattlements from which men good and bad, guilty and innocent, have beendropped a rope's length by the neck to feed the crows. 

Here died Stephen Porcari, the brave and spotless; here died CardinalCarafa for a thousand crimes; and here Lorenzo Colonna, caught andcrushed in the iron hands of Sixtus the Fourth, laid his bruised head, still stately, on the block--'a new block, ' says Infessura, who lovedhim and buried him, and could not forget the little detail. The story isworth telling, less for its historical value than for the strangeexactness with which it is all set down. 

Pope Sixtus, backed by the Orsini, was at war with the Colonna to theend of his reign; but once, on a day when there was truce, he seems tohave said in anger that he cared not whom the Colonna served nor withwhom they allied themselves. And Lorenzo Colonna, Protonotary Apostolic, with his brothers, took the Pope at his word, and they joined forceswith the King of Naples, fortifying themselves in their stronghold ofMarino, whence the eldest son of the family still takes his title. ThePope, seeing them in earnest and fearing King Ferdinand, sent an embassyof two cardinals to them, entreating them to be reconciled with theChurch. But they answered that they would not, for his Holiness hadgiven them permission to ally themselves with whom they pleased, andrefused them money for service, and they said that they could not livewithout pay--a somewhat ironical statement for such men as the Colonna, who lived rather by taking than by giving an equivalent for anythingreceived. 

[Illustration: CASTLE OF SANT' ANGELO]

Then the Pope made war upon King Ferdinand, and when there had been muchbloodshed, and plundering and burning on both sides, Prospero Colonnaquarrelled with the Duke of Calabria, who was on Ferdinand's side andfor whom he had been fighting, and came over to the Church, and so theColonna were restored to favour, and the Pope made a treaty with theKing against Venice, and so another year passed. 

But after that the quarrel was renewed between Pope Sixtus and LorenzoColonna, on pretext that a certain part of the agreement to which theyhad come had not been executed by the Protonotary; and while the matterwas under discussion, the Cardinal of Saint George, nephew of the greatCount Jerome Riario, sent word privately to the Protonotary Colonna, warning him either to escape from Rome or to be on his guard if heremained, 'because some one was plotting against him, and hated him. 'Wherefore Lorenzo shut himself up in the dwelling of Cardinal Colonna, between the Colonna palace and Monte Cavallo on the Quirinal hill, andmany young men, attached to the great house, began to watch in arms, day and night, turn and turn about. And when this became known, theOrsini also began to arm themselves and keep watch at Monte Giordano. Scenting a struggle, a Savelli, siding with Colonna, struck the firstblow by seizing forty horses and mules of the Orsini in a farm buildingon the Tivoli road; and immediately half a dozen robber Barons joinedSavelli, and they plundered right and left, and one of them wrote a longand courteous letter of justification to the Pope. But Orsini retortedswiftly, 'lifting' horses and cattle that belonged to his enemies andmaking prisoners of their retainers. Among others he took two men whobelonged to the Protonotary. And the latter, unable to leave Rome insafety, began to fortify himself in the Cardinal's house with manyfighting men, and with many strange weapons, 'bombardelle, cerobottane, 'and guns and catapults. Whereupon the Pope sent for Orsini, andcommanded him, as the faithful adherent of the Church, to go and takethe Protonotary prisoner to his house. But while Orsini was marshallinghis troops with those of Jerome Riario, at Monte Giordano and in Campode' Fiori, the Pope sent for the municipal officers of the city andexplained that he meant to pardon the Protonotary if the latter wouldcome to the Vatican humbly and of his own free will; and certain ofthese officers went to the Protonotary as ambassadors, to explain this. To them he answered, in the presence of Stephen Infessura, thechronicler who tells the story, that he had not fortified himselfagainst the Church, but against private and dangerous enemies, againstwhom he had been warned, and that he had actually found that his housewas spied upon by night; but that he was ready to carry out the terms ofthe old agreement, and finally, that he was ready to go freely to thePope, trusting himself wholly to His Holiness, without any earnest orpledge for his safety, but that he begged the Pope not to deliver himinto the hands of the Orsini. Yet even before he had spoken, the Orsiniwere moving up their men, by way of Saint Augustine's Church, which isnear Piazza Navona. Nevertheless Colonna, the Protonotary, mounted hishorse to ride over to the Vatican. 

But John Philip Savelli stood in the way, and demanded of the officerswhat surety they would give for Colonna; and they promised him safetyupon their own lives. Then Savelli answered them that they shouldremember their bond, for if Colonna did not come back, or if he shouldbe hurt, he, Savelli, would be avenged upon their bodies. And Colonnarode out, meaning to go to the Pope, but his retainers mounted theirhorses and rode swiftly by another way and met him, and forced him back. For they told him that if he went, his end would be near, and that theythemselves would be outlawed; and some said that before they would lethim go, they would cut him to pieces themselves rather than let hisenemies do it. And furiously they forced him back, him and his horse, through the winding streets, and brought him again into the stronghold, and bade the officers depart in peace. 

And the second time two of the officers returned and told theProtonotary to come, for he should be safe. And again he mounted hishorse, and struck with the flat of his blade a man who hindered him, andleaped the barrier raised for defence before the palace and rode away. And again his own men mounted and followed him, and overtook him at thecross of Trevi, near by. And one, a giant, seized his bridle and forcedhim back, saying, 'My Lord, we will not let you go! Rather will we cutyou in quarters ourselves; for you go to ruin yourself and us also. '

But when they had him safe within the walls, he wrung his hands, andcried out that it was they who, by hindering him, were destroyingthemselves and him. But many answered, 'If you had gone, you would neverhave come back. ' And it was then the twenty-first hour of the day, andthere were left three hours before dark. 

But the Pope, seeing that Colonna did not come, commanded the Orsini tobring him by force, as they might, even by slaying the people, if thepeople should defend him; and he ordered them to burn and pillage theregions of Monti, Trevi and Colonna. And with Orsini there were some ofthose fierce Crescenzi, who still lived in Rome. And they all marchedthrough the city, bearing the standard of the Church, and they passed byTrevi and surrounded the house on Monte Cavallo, and proclaimed the banagainst all men who should help the Protonotary; wherefore many of thepeople departed in fear. Then Orsini first leapt the barrier, and hishorse was killed under him by a bombard that slew two men also; andimmediately all the Colonna's men discharged their firearms andcatapults and killed sixteen of their enemies. But the Orsini advancedupon the house. 

Then, about the twenty-third hour, the Colonna were weary of fightingagainst so many, and their powder was not good, so that they fell backfrom the main gateway, and the Orsini rushed in and filled the archedways around the courtyard, and set fire to the hay and straw in thestables, and fought their way up the stairs, sacking the house. 

They found the Protonotary in his room, wounded in the hand and sittingon a chest, and Orsini told him that he was a prisoner and must come. 'Slay me, rather, ' he answered. But Orsini bade him surrender and haveno fear. And he yielded himself up, and they took him away through thesmoking house, slippery with blood. They found also John PhilipSavelli, and they stripped him of the cuirass he wore, and setting theirswords to him, bade him cry, 'Long live Orsini!' And he answered, 'Iwill not say it. ' Then they wounded him deep in the forehead and smoteoff both his hands, and gave him many wounds in face and body, and lefthim dead. And they plundered all the goods of Cardinal Colonna, hisplate, his robes, his tapestries, his chests of linen, and they evencarried off his cardinal's hat. 

So the Protonotary, on the faith of Orsini, was led away to the Pope inhis doublet, but some one lent him a black cloak on the way. And as theywent, Jerome Riario rode beside him and jeered at him, crying out, 'Ha, ha! thou traitor, I shall hang thee by the neck this night!' But Orsinianswered Jerome, and said, 'Sir, you shall hang me first!' for he hadgiven his word. And more than once on the way, Riario, drunk with blood, drew his dagger to thrust it into Colonna, but Orsini drove him off, andbrought his prisoner safely to the Pope. And his men sacked the quarterof the Colonna; and among other houses of the Colonna's retainers whichwere rifled they plundered that of Paul Mancino, near by, whosedescendant was to marry the sister of Mazarin; and also, among thenumber, the house of Pomponius Letus, the historian, from whom they tookall his books and belongings and clothes, and he went away in hisdoublet and buskins, with his stick in his hand, to make complaintbefore the municipality. 

Then for a whole month all that part of Rome which was dominated by theColonna was given over to be pillaged and burned by their enemies, whilein still Sant' Angelo, the tormentors slowly tore Lorenzo Colonna topieces, so that the Jewish doctor who was called in to prolong his lifesaid that nothing could save him, for his limbs were swollen and piercedthrough and through, and many of his bones were broken, and he was fullof many deep wounds. Yet in the end, lest he should die a natural death, they prepared the new block and the axe to cut off his head. 

'Moreover, ' says Infessura, in his own language, 'on the last day ofJune, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the mosthappy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off bythe most cruel Nero--on that very day, about an hour and a half aftersunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused theProtonotary Colonna to be beheaded in the Castle; and there were presentthe Senator and the Judge of the crime. And when the Protonotary was ledout of prison early in the morning to the grating above the Castle, heturned to the soldiers who were there and told them that he had beengrievously tormented, wherefore he had said certain things not true. Andimmediately afterwards, when he was in the closed place below, where hewas beheaded, the Senator and Judge sat down as a Tribunal, and causedto be read the sentence which they passed against him, although nomanner of criminal procedure had been observed, since all theconfessions were extorted under torture, and he had no opportunity ofdefending himself. ' Therefore, when this sentence had been read, theProtonotary addressed those present and said: 'I wish no one to beinculpated through me. I say this in conscience of my soul, and if Ilie, may the devil take me, now that I am about to go out of this life;and so thou, Notary who hast read the sentence, art witness of this, andye all are witnesses, and I leave the matter to your conscience, thatyou should also proclaim it in Rome, --that those things written in thissentence are not true, and that what I have said I have said under greattorture, as ye may see by my condition. ' He would not let them bind hishands, but knelt down at the block, and forgave the executioner, whoasked his pardon. And then he said in Latin, 'Lord, into thy hands Icommend my spirit, ' and called thrice upon Christ the Saviour, and atthe third time, the word and his head were severed together from hisbody. 

Then they placed the body in a wooden coffin and took it to Santa MariaTranspontina, the first church on the right, going from the Castletoward Saint Peter's, and when none came to take it away, they sent wordto his mother. And she, white-haired and tearless, with burning eyes, came; and she took her son's head from the coffin and held it up to thepeople, saying, 'Behold the justice of Sixtus, ' and she laid it in itsplace tenderly; and with torches, and the Confraternities, and manypriests, the body was taken to the Church of the Holy Apostles, andburied in the Colonna Chapel near the altar. 

But before it was buried it was seen in the coffin, and taken out, andlaid in it again, and all saw the torments which the man had suffered inhis feet, which were swollen and bound up with rags; and also thefingers of his hands had been twisted, so that the inside was turnedclean outwards, and on the top of his head was a wound, where priestsmake the tonsure, as though the scalp had been raised by a knife; and hewas dressed in a cotton doublet, yet his own had been of fine blacksilk. Also they had put on him a miserable pair of hose, torn from thehalf of the leg downwards; and a red cap with a trencher was upon hishead, and it was rather a long cap, and the narrator believed that thegaolers had dressed him thus as an insult. 'And I Stephen, the scribe, saw it with my eyes, and with my hands I buried him, with Prosper ofCicigliano, who had been his vassal; and no other retainers of theColonna would have anything to do with the matter, out of fear, as Ithink. '

Five hundred years had passed since Theodora's day, four hundred moreare gone since Lorenzo the Protonotary laid his head upon the block, andstill the tradition of terror and suffering clings to Sant' Angelo, andfurnishes the subject of an all but modern drama. Such endurance in thecharacter of a building is without parallel in the history ofstrongholds, and could be possible only in Rome, where the centuriespass as decades, and time is reckoned by the thousand years. 

[ILLUSTRATION: HOSPITAL OF SANTO SPIRITO

From a print of the last century]

The main and most important memories in the Region of Borgo, apart fromthe Castle, and Saint Peter's and the Vatican, are those connected withthe Holy Office, the hospital and insane asylum of Santo Spirito, andwith the Serristori barracks. In Rome, to go to Santo Spirito means togo mad. It is the Roman Bedlam. But there is another association withthe name, and a still sadder one. There, by the gate of the long, lowhospital, is still to be seen the Rota--the 'wheel'--the revolvingwooden drum, with its small aperture, corresponding to an opening in thegrating, through which many thousand infants have been passed bystarving women to the mystery within, to a nameless death, or to grow upto a life almost as nameless and obscure. The mother, indeed, received aticket as a sort of receipt by which she could recognize her child ifshe wished, but the children claimed were very few. Within, they werereceived by nursing Sisters, and cared for, not always wisely, butalways kindly, and some of them grew up to happy lives. Modern charity, in its philistinism and well-regulated activity, condemns such wholesalereadiness to take burdens which might sometimes be borne by those wholay them down. But modern charity, in such condemnation, does not takejust account of a mother's love, and believes that to receive namelesschildren in such a way would 'encourage irresponsibility, ' if not vice. And yet in Rome, where half the population could neither read nor write, infanticide was unknown, and fewer children were passed in through theRota yearly than are murdered in many a modern city. For the last thingthe worst mother will do is to kill her child; last only before thatwill she part with it. Which was more moral, the unrestricted charity ofthe Rota, or the unrestricted, legal infanticide of the old-fashioned'baby-farm, ' where superfluous children were systematically starved todeath by professional harpies?

On by the Borgo Santo Spirito, opposite the old church of thePenitentiaries, stands the Palazzo Serristori, memorable in therevolutionary movement of 1867. It was then the barracks of the PapalZouaves--the brave foreign legion enlisted under Pius the Ninth, inwhich men of all nations were enrolled under officers of the best bloodin Europe, hated more especially by the revolutionaries because theywere foreigners, and because their existence, therefore, showed aforeign sympathy with the temporal power, which was a denial of therevolutionary theory which asserted the Papacy to be without friends inEurope. Wholesale murder by explosives was in its infancy then as a fineart; but the spirit was willing, and a plot was formed to blow up thecastle of Sant' Angelo and the barracks of the Zouaves. The castleescaped because one of the conspirators lost heart and revealed thetreachery; but the Palazzo Serristori was partially destroyed. Theexplosion shattered one corner of the building. It was said that thefuse burned faster than had been intended, so that the catastrophe cametoo soon. At all events, when it happened, about dark, only themusicians of the band were destroyed, and few of the regiment were inthe building at all, so that about thirty lives were sacrificed, wherethe intention had been to destroy many hundreds. In the more sanecondition of Europe today, it seems to us amazing that Pius the Ninthshould have been generally blamed for signing the death warrant of thetwo atrocious villains who did the deed, and for allowing them to beexecuted. The fact that he was blamed, and very bitterly, gives someidea of the stupid and senseless prejudice against the popes which wasthe result of Antonelli's narrow and reactionary policy. 

[Illustration]

LEO THE THIRTEENTH

We commonly speak of the nineteenth century as an age of superiorcivilization. The truth of the assertion depends on what civilizationmeans, but there is no denying that more blood has been shed bycivilized nations during the last one hundred and twenty years than inany equal period of the world's history. Anyone may realize the fact bysimply recalling the great wars which have devastated the world sincethe American Revolution. 

But the carnage was not uninterrupted. The record of death is divided inthe midst by the thirty years of comparative peace which followed thebattle of Waterloo and preceded the general revolution of 1848. Napoleonhad harried the world, from Moscow to Cairo, from Vienna to Madrid, pouring blood upon blood, draining the world's veins dry, exhaustingthe destroying power of mankind in perpetual destruction. When he wasgone, Europe was utterly worn out by his terrible energy, and collapsedsuddenly in a state of universal nervous prostration. Then came the longpeace, from 1815 to 1848. 

During that time the European nations, excepting England, were governedby more or less weak and timid sovereigns, and it was under their feeblerule that the great republican idea took root and grew, like a cuttingfrom the stricken tree of the French Revolution, planted in the heart ofEurope, nurtured in secret, and tended by devoted hands to a newmaturity, but destined to ruin in the end, as surely as the parentstock. 

Those thirty and odd years were a sort of dull season in Europe--anextraordinarily uneventful period, during which the republican idea wasgrowing, and during which the monarchic idea was decaying. Halfwaythrough that time--about 1830--Joseph Mazzini founded the Society ofYoung Italy, in connection with the other secret societies of Europe, and acquired that enormous influence which even now is associated withhis name. Mazzini and Garibaldi meant to make a republic of Italy. TheHouse of Savoy did not at that time dream of a united Italian Kingdom. The most they dared hope was the acquisition of territory on the northby the expulsion of the Austrians. England and circumstances helped theSavoy family in their sudden and astonishing rise of fortune; for atthat time Austria was the great military nation of Europe, while Francewas the naval power second to England, and through the Bourbons, Italywas largely under the influence of Austria. England saw that thecreation of an independent friendly power in the Mediterranean wouldboth tend to diminish Austria's strength by land, and would check Francein her continued efforts to make the shores of the Mediterranean hers. 

She therefore encouraged Italy in revolution, and it is generallybelieved that she secretly furnished enormous sums of money, through SirJames Hudson, minister in Turin, to further the schemes of Mazzini. Theprofound hatred of Catholics which was so much more marked in Englandthen than now, produced a strong popular feeling there in favour of therevolutionaries, who inveighed against all existing sovereignties ingeneral, but were particularly bitter against the government of thePopes. The revolution thus supported by England, and guided by such menas Mazzini and Garibaldi, made progress. The legendary nature of Rome, as mistress of the world, appealed also to many Italians, and 'Rome'became the catchword of liberty. The situation was similar in otherEuropean countries; secret societies were as active, and to therevolutionaries the result seemed as certain. 

But the material of monarchic opposition was stronger elsewhere than inItaly. Prussia had Hohenzollerns and Austria had Hapsburgs--races thathad held their own and reigned successfully for hundreds of years. Thesmaller German principalities had traditions of conservative obedienceto a prince, which were not easily broken. On the other hand, in Italythe government of the Bourbons and their relatives was a barbarousmisrule, of which the only good point was that it did not oppress thepeople with taxes, and in Rome the Pontifical chair had been occupied bya succession of politically insignificant Popes from Pius the Seventh, Napoleon's victim, to Gregory the Sixteenth. There was no force in Italyto oppose the general revolutionary idea, except the conservatism ofindividuals, in a country which has always been revolutionary. Much thesame was true of France. But in both countries there were would-bemonarchs waiting in the background, ready to promote any change wherebythey might profit--Louis Napoleon, and the Kings of Sardinia, CharlesAlbert first, and after his defeat by the Austrians and his abdication, the semi-heroic, semi-legendary Victor Emmanuel. 

Gregory the Sixteenth died in 1846, and Pius the Ninth was elected inhis stead--a man still young, full of the highest ideals and of mosthonest purpose; enthusiastic, a man who had begun life in militaryservice and was destined to end it in captivity, and upon whom it waseasy to impose in every way, since he was politically too credulous forany age, and too diffident, if not too timid, for the age in which helived. His private virtues made him a model to the Christian world, while his political weakness made him the sport of his enemies. The onlystable thing in him was his goodness; everything else was in perpetualvacillation. In every true account of every political action of Pius theNinth, the first words are, 'the Pope hesitated. ' And he hesitated tothe last--he hesitated through a pontificate of thirty-two years, heoutreigned the 'years of Peter, ' and he lost the temporal power. 

The great movement came to a head in 1848. A year of revolutions, riots, rebellions and new constitutions. So perfectly had it been organizedthat it broke out almost simultaneously all over Europe--in France, Italy, Prussia and Austria. Just when the revolution was rife Pius theNinth proclaimed an amnesty. That was soon after his election, and hevacillated into a sort of passive approval of the Young Italian party. It was even proposed that Italy should become a confederation of freestates under the presidency of the Pope. No man in his senses believedin such a possibility, but at that time an unusual number of people werenot in their senses; Europe had gone mad. 

Everyone knows the history of that year, when one Emperor, severalKings, and numerous princes and ministers scattered in all directions, like men running away from a fire that is just going to reach a quantityof explosives. The fire was the reaction after long inactivity. Pius theNinth fled like the rest, when his favourite minister, Count Rossi, hadbeen stabbed to death on the steps of the Cancelleria. Some of thesovereigns got safely back to their thrones. The Pope was helped back byFrance and kept on his throne, first by the Republic, and then, with oneshort intermission, by Louis Napoleon. In 1870, the French needed alltheir strength for their own battles, and gave up fighting those of theVatican. 

During that long period, from 1849 to 1870, Pius the Ninth governed Romein comparative security, in spite of occasional revolutionary outbreaks, and in kindness if not in wisdom. Taxation was insignificant. Work wasplentiful and well paid, considering the country and the times. Charities were enormous. The only restriction on liberty was political, never civil. Reforms and improvements of every kind were introduced. When Gregory the Sixteenth died, Rome was practically a mediæval city;when the Italians took it, twenty-four years later, it was a fairlycreditable modern capital. The government of Pius the Ninth waspaternal, and if he was not a wise father, he was at all events thekindest of men. The same cannot be said of Cardinal Antonelli, his primeminister, who was the best hated man of his day, not only in Europe andItaly, but by a large proportion of Churchmen. He was one of thosestrong and unscrupulous men who appeared everywhere in Europe asreactionaries in opposition to the great revolution. On a smallerscale--perhaps because he represented a much smaller power--he is to beclassed with Disraeli, Metternich, Cavour and Bismarck. In palliation ofmany of his doings, it should be remembered that he was not a priest;for the Cardinalate is a dignity not necessarily associated with thepriesthood, and Antonelli was never ordained. He was a fighter and aschemer by nature, and he schemed and fought all his life for thepreservation of the temporal power in Rome. He failed, and lived to seehis defeat, and he remained till his death immured in the Vatican withPius the Ninth. He used to live in a small and almost mean apartment, opening upon the grand staircase that leads up from the court of SaintDamasus. 

When the Italians entered Rome through the breach at the Porta Pia, Italy was unified. It is a curious fact that Italy was never at any timeunified except by force. The difference between the unification underJulius Cæsar and Augustus, and the unification under Victor Emmanuel, isvery simple. Under the first Cæsars, Rome conquered the Italians; underthe House of Savoy, the Italians conquered Rome. 

The taking of Rome in 1870 was the deathblow of mediævalism; and thepassing away of King Victor Emmanuel and of Pope Pius the Ninth was theend of romantic Italy, if one may use the expression to designate thecharacter of the country through all that chain of big and little eventswhich make up the thrilling story of the struggle for Italian unity. After the struggle for unity, began the struggle for life--moredesperate, more dangerous, but immeasurably less romantic. There is allthe difference between the two which lies between unsound banking andperilous fighting. The long Pontificate of Pius the Ninth came to aclose almost simultaneously with the reign and the life of VictorEmmanuel, first King of United Italy, after the Pope and the King hadfaced each other during nearly a third of the century, two politicalenemies of whom neither felt the slightest personal rancour against theother. On his death-bed, the King earnestly desired the Pope's partingblessing, but although the Pope gave it, the message arrived too late, for the old King was dead. Little more than a month later, Pius theNinth departed this life. That was the end of the old era. 

The disposition of Europe in the year 1878, when Leo the Thirteenth wascrowned, was strongly anti-Catholic. England had reached the height ofher power and influence, and represented to the world thescientific-practical idea in its most successful form. She was thentraversing that intellectual phase of so-called scientific atheism ofwhich Huxley and Herbert Spencer were the chief teachers. Their viewseems not to have been so hostile to the Catholic Church in particularas it was distinctly antagonistic to all religion whatsoever. Peoplewere inclined to believe that all creeds were a thing of the past, andthat a scientific millennium was at hand. No one who lived in those dayscan forget the weary air of pity with which the Huxleyites and theSpencerians spoke of all humanity's beliefs. England's enormouspolitical power somehow lent weight to the anti-religious theories ofthose two leading men of science, which never really had the slightesthold upon the believing English people. Italians, for instance, readilyasserted that England had attained her position among nations by thepractice of scientific atheism, and classed Darwin the discoverer withSpencer the destroyer; for all Latins are more or less bornAnglomaniacs, and naturally envy and imitate Anglo-Saxon character, evenwhile finding fault with them, just as we envy and imitate Latin art andfashions. Under a German dynasty and a Prime Minister of Israelitishname and extraction, the English had become the ideal after which halfof Europe hankered in vain. England's influence was then distinctlyanti-Catholic. 

Germany, fresh in unity, and still quivering with the long-forgottendelight of conquest, was also, as an Empire, anti-Catholic, and theKultur Kampf, which was really a religious struggle, was at its height. Germany's religions are official at the one extreme and popular at theother; but there is no intermediate religion to speak of--and what weshould call cultured people, scientific men, the professorial class, arelargely atheistic. 

For some time after the proclamation of the Empire, Germany meantPrussia to the rest of the world--Prussia officially evangelical, privately sceptical, the rigid backbone of the whole German militarymammoth. The fact that about one-third of the population of the Empireis Catholic was overlooked by Prussia and forgotten by Europe. 

France--Catholic in the provinces--was Paris just then--republicanParis. And all French Republics have been anti-Catholic, as all Frenchmonarchies have been the natural allies of the Vatican, as institutions, though individual Kings, like Francis the First, have opposed the Popesfrom time to time. France, in 1878, was recovering with astonishingvitality from her defeat, but the new growth was unlike the old. Thedefinite destruction of the old France had taken place in 1870; and thenew France bore little resemblance to the old. It was, as it is now, Catholic, but anti-papal. 

The smaller northern powers, Scandinavia and Holland, were anti-Catholicof course. Russia has always been the natural enemy of the CatholicChurch. Of the remaining European nations, only Austria could be said tohave any political importance, and even she was terrorized by the newGerman Empire. 

Italy had been the scene of one of those quick comedies of nationalself-transformation which start trains of consequences rather thanproduce immediately great results. One may call it a comedy, not in adepreciating sense, but because the piece was played out to a successfulissue with little bloodshed and small hindrance. It had been laid downas a principle by the playwrights that the Vatican was the natural enemyof Italian unity; and the playwrights and principal actors, Cavour, Garibaldi and others, were all atheists. The new Italy of their creationwas, therefore, an anti-Catholic power, while the whole Italian people, below the artificial scientific level, were, as they are now, profoundly, and even superstitiously, religious. That was the state ofthe European world when Leo the Thirteenth was elected. 

[Illustration: POPE LEO XIII. 

From the Portrait by Lenbach]

The Popes have always occupied an exceptional position as compared withother sovereigns. There is not, indeed, in the history of any nation orcommunity any record of an office so anomalous. To all intents andpurposes Christianity is a form of socialism, the Church is a democracy, and the government of the Popes has been despotic, in the propersense, --that is, it has been one of 'absolute authority. ' It is probablynot necessary to say anything about the first statement, which few, Ifancy, will be inclined to deny. Pure socialism means community ofproperty, community of social responsibility, and community ofprinciples. As regards the democratic rules by which the Church governsitself, there cannot be two ways of looking at them. Peasant and princehave an equal chance of wearing the triple crown; but in history it willbe found that it has been more often worn by peasants than by princes, and most often by men issuing from the middle classes. Broadly, therequirements have always been those answered by personal merit ratherthan by any other consideration. The exceptions have perhaps been many, and the abuses not a few, but the general principle cannot be denied, and the present Pope came to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity by muchthe same steps as the majority of his predecessors. Since his elevationto the pontificate the Pecci family have established, beyond a doubt, their connection with the noble race of that name, long prominent inSiena, and having an ancient and historical right to bear arms and thetitle of count--a dignity of uncertain value in Italy, south of theTuscan border, but well worth having when it has originated in thenorthern part of the country. 

Joachim Vincent Pecci, since 1878 Pope, under the name of Leo theThirteenth, was born at Carpineto, in the Volscian hills, in 1810. Hisfather had served in the Napoleonic wars, but had already retired to hisnative village, where he was at that time a landed proprietor ofconsiderable importance and the father of several children. Carpinetolies on the mountain side, in the neighbourhood of Segni, in a rockydistrict, and in the midst of a country well known to Italians as theCiociaria. This word is derived from 'cioce, ' the sandals worn by thepeasants in that part of the country, in the place of shoes, and boundby leathern thongs to the foot and leg over linen strips which serve forstockings. The sandal indeed is common enough, or was common not longago, in the Sabine and Samnian hills and in some parts of the Abruzzi, but it is especially the property of the Volscians, all the way fromMontefortino, the worst den of thieves in Italy, down to the Neapolitanfrontier. Joachim Pecci was born with a plentiful supply of that rough, bony, untiring mountaineer's energy which has made the Volscians whatthey have been for good or evil since the beginning of history. 

Those who have been to Carpineto have seen the dark old pile in whichthe Pope was born, with its tower which tops the town, as the dwellingsof the small nobles always did in every hamlet and village throughoutthe south of Europe. For the Pecci were good gentlefolk long ago, andthe portraits of Pope Leo's father and mother, in their dress of thelast century, still hang in their places in the mansion. His Holinessstrongly resembles both, for he has his father's brow and eyes, and hismother's mouth and chin. In his youth he seems to have been a very darkman, as clearly appears from the portrait of him painted when he wasNuncio in Brussels at about the age of thirty-four years. The familytype is strong. One of the Pope's nieces might have sat for a portraitof his mother. The extraordinarily clear, pale complexion is also afamily characteristic. Leo the Thirteenth's face seems cut of livealabaster, and it is not a figure of speech to say that it appears toemit a light of its own. 

Born and bred in the keen air of the Volscian hills, he is a southernItalian, but of the mountains, and there is still about him something ofthe hill people. He has the long, lean, straight, broad-shouldered frameof the true mountaineer, the marvellously bright eye, the eaglefeatures, the well-knit growth of strength, traceable even in extremeold age; and in character there is in him the well-balanced combinationof a steady caution with an unerring, unhesitating decision, whichappears in those great moments when history will not wait for littlemen's long phrases, when the pendulum world is swinging its full stroke, and when it is either glory or death to lay strong hands upon itsweight. But when it stops for a time, and hangs motionless, the littlemen gather about it, and touch it boldly, and make theories about itsnext unrest. 

In the matter of physique, there is, indeed, a resemblance between Leothe Thirteenth, President Lincoln and Mr. Gladstone--long, sinewy menall three, of a bony constitution and indomitable vitality, with largeskulls, high cheek-bones, and energetic jaws--all three men of greatphysical strength, of profound capacity for study, of melancholicdisposition, and of unusual eloquence. It might almost be said thatthese three men represent three distinct stages of one type--the real ormaterial, the intellectual and the spiritual. From earliest youth eachof the three was, by force of circumstances, turned to the directionwhich he was ultimately to follow. Lincoln was thrown upon facts for hiseducation; Gladstone received the existing form of education in itshighest development, while the Pope was brought up under the dominationof spiritual thoughts at a time when they had but lately survived theFrench Revolution. Born during the height of the conflict between beliefand unbelief, Leo the Thirteenth, by a significant fatality, was raisedto the pontificate when the Kultur Kampf was raging and the attention ofthe world was riveted on the deadly struggle between the Roman CatholicChurch and Prince Bismarck--a struggle in which the great chancellorfound his equal, if not his master. 

The Pope spent his childhood in the simple surroundings of Carpineto, than which none could be simpler, as everyone knows who has ever visitedan Italian country gentleman in his home. Early hours, constantexercise, plain food and farm interests made a strong man of him, withplenty of simple common sense. As a boy he was a great walker andclimber, and it is said that he was excessively fond of birding, theonly form of sport afforded by that part of Italy, and practised therein those times, as it is now, not only with guns, but by means of nets. It has often been said that poets and lovers of freedom come morefrequently from the mountains and the seashore than from a flat inlandregion. Leo the Thirteenth ranks high among the scholarly poets of ourday, and is certainly conspicuous for the liberality of his views. Aslong as he was in Perugia, it is well known that he received theofficers of the Italian garrison and any government officials of rankwho chanced to be present in the city, not merely now and then, or in aformal way, but constantly and with a cordiality which showed how muchhe appreciated their conversation. It may be doubted whether in ourcountry an acknowledged leader of a political minority would eitherchoose or dare to associate openly with persons having an officialcapacity on the other side. 

But the stiff mannerism of the patriarchal system which survived untilrecently from the early Roman times gave him that formal tone andauthoritative manner which are so characteristic of his conversation inprivate. His deliberate but unhesitating speech makes one think ofGoethe's 'without haste, without rest. ' Yet his formality is not of theslow and circumlocutory sort; on the contrary, it is energeticallyprecise, and helps rather than mars the sound casting of each idea. Theformality of strong people belongs to them naturally, and is theexpression of a certain unchanging persistence; that of the weak ismostly assumed for the sake of magnifying the little strength they have. 

The Pope's voice is as distinctly individual as his manner of speaking. It is not deep nor very full, but, considering his great age, it iswonderfully clear and ringing, and it has a certain incisiveness ofsound which gives it great carrying power. Pius the Ninth had asbeautiful a voice, both in compass and richness of quality, as anybaritone singer in the Sixtine choir. No one who ever heard him intonethe 'Te Deum' in Saint Peter's, in the old days, can forget the grandtones. He was gifted in many ways--with great physical beauty, with arare charm of manner, and with a most witty humour; and in character hewas one of the most gentle and kind-hearted men of his day, as he wasalso one of the least initiative, so to say, while endowed with the highmoral courage of boundless patience and political humility. Leo theThirteenth need speak but half a dozen words, with one glance of hisflashing eyes and one gesture of his noticeably long arm andtransparently thin hand, and the moral distance between his predecessorand himself is at once apparent. There is strength still in everymovement, there is deliberate decision in every tone, there is loftyindependence in every look. Behind these there may be kindliness, charity, and all the milder gifts of virtue; but what is apparent is asort of energetic, manly trenchancy which forces admiration rather thanawakens sympathy. 

[Illustration: LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN]

When speaking at length on any occasion he is eloquent, but with theeloquence of the dictator, and sometimes of the logician, rather thanthat of the persuader. His enunciation is exceedingly distinct in Latinand Italian, and also in French, a language in which he expresseshimself with ease and clearness. In Latin and Italian he chooses hiswords with great care and skill, and makes use of fine distinctions, inthe Ciceronian manner, and he certainly commands a larger vocabularythan most men. 

His bearing is erect at all times, and on days when he is well his stepis quick as he moves about his private apartments. 'Il Papa corresempre, '--'the Pope always runs'--is often said by the guards andfamiliars of the antechamber. A man who speaks slowly but moves fast isgenerally one who thinks long and acts promptly--a hard hitter, as weshould familiarly say. 

It is not always true that a man's character is indicated by his dailyhabits, nor that his intellectual tendency is definable by the qualitiesof his temper or by his personal tastes. Carlyle was one instance of thecontrary; Lincoln was another; Bismarck was a great third, with his ironhead and his delicate feminine hands. All men who direct, control orinfluence the many have a right to be judged by the world according totheir main deeds, to the total exclusion of their private lives. Thereare some whose public actions are better than their private ones, out ofall proportion; and there are others who try to redeem the patent sinsof their political necessities by the honest practice of their privatevirtues. In some rare, high types, head, heart and hand are balanced toone expression of power, and every deed is a mathematical function ofall three. 

Leo the Thirteenth probably approaches as nearly to such superiority asany great man now living. As a statesman, his abilities are admitted tobe of the highest order; as a scholar he is undisputedly one of thefirst Latinists of our time, and one of the most accomplished writers inLatin and Italian prose and verse; as a man, he possesses the simplicityof character which almost always accompanies greatness, together with ahealthy sobriety of temper, habit and individual taste rarely found inthose beings whom we might call 'motors' among men. It is commonly saidthat the Pope has not changed his manner of life since he was a simplebishop. He is, indeed, a man who could not easily change either hishabits or his opinions; for he is of that enduring, melancholic, slow-speaking, hard-thinking temperament which makes hard workers, andin which everything tends directly to hard work as a prime object, evenwith persons in whose existence necessary labour need play no part, andfar more so with those whose smallest daily tasks hew history out ofhumanity in the rough state. 

Of the Pope's statesmanship and Latinity the world knows much, and issure to hear more, while he lives--most, perhaps, hereafter, whenanother and a smaller man shall sit in the great Pope's chair. For he isa great Pope. There has not been his equal, intellectually, for a longtime, nor shall we presently see his match again. The era ofindividualities is not gone by, as some pretend. Men of middle age haveseen in a lifetime Cavour, Louis Napoleon, Garibaldi, Disraeli, Bismarck, Leo the Thirteenth--and the young Emperor of Germany. Withthe possible exception of Cavour, who died, poisoned as some say, beforehe had lived out his life, few will deny that of all these the presentPope possesses, in many respects, the most evenly balanced andstubbornly sane disposition. That fact alone speaks highly for thejudgment of the men who elected him, in Italy's half-crazed days, immediately after the death of Victor Emmanuel. 

At all events, there he stands, at the head of the Holy Roman Catholicand Apostolic Church, as wise a leader as any who in our day has wieldedpower; as skilled, in his own manner, as any who hold the pen; andbetter than all that, as straightly simple and honest a Christian man asever fought a great battle for his faith's sake. 

Straight-minded, honest and simple he is, yet keen, sensitive and noblycautious; for there is no nobility in him who risks a cause for thevanity of his own courage, and who, in blind hatred of his enemies, squanders the devotion of those who love him. In a sense, today, thegreater the man the greater the peacemaker, and Leo the Thirteenth rankshighest among those who have helped the cause of peace in this century. 

In spite of his great age, the Holy Father enjoys excellent health, andleads a life full of occupations from morning till night. He rises veryearly, and when, at about six o'clock in the morning, his valet, PioCentra, enters his little bedroom, he more often finds the Pope risenthan asleep. He is accustomed to sleep little--not more than four orfive hours at night, though he rests a short time after dinner. We aretold that sometimes he has been found asleep in his chair at hiswriting-table at dawn, not having been to bed at all. Of late hefrequently says mass in a chapel in his private apartments, and the massis served by Pio Centra. On Sundays and feast-days he says it in anotherchapel preceding the throne-room. The little chapel is of smalldimensions, but by opening the door into the neighbouring room a numberof persons can assist at the mass. The permission, when given, isobtained on application to the 'Maestro di Camera, ' and is generallyconceded only to distinguished foreign persons. After saying masshimself, the Holy Father immediately hears a second one, said by one ofthe private chaplains on duty for the week, whose business it is to takecare of the altar and to assist. Frequently he gives the communion withhis own hand to those who are present at his mass. After mass hebreakfasts upon coffee and goat's milk, and this milk is supplied fromgoats kept in the Vatican gardens--a reminiscence of Carpineto and ofthe mountaineer's early life. 

Every day at about ten he receives the Secretary of State, CardinalRampolla, and converses with him for a good hour or more upon currentaffairs. On Tuesdays and Fridays the Secretary of State receives theDiplomatic Corps in his own apartments, and on those days the UnderSecretary confers with the Pope in his chief's place. The acting prefectof the 'Holy Apostolic Palaces' is received by the Pope when he hasbusiness to expound. On the first and third Fridays of each month theMaggiordomo is received, and so on, in order, the cardinal prefects ofthe several Roman congregations, the Under Secretaries, and all othersin charge of the various offices. In the papal antechamber there is alist of them, with the days of their audiences. 

During the morning the Pope receives cardinals, bishops and ambassadorswho are going away on leave, or who have just returned, princes andmembers of the Roman nobility, and distinguished foreigners. At teno'clock he takes a cup of broth brought by Centra. At two in theafternoon, or a little earlier, he dines, and he is most abstemious, although he has an excellent digestion. His private physician, DoctorGiuseppe Lapponi, has been heard to say that he himself eats more at onemeal than the Holy Father eats in a week. Every day, unless indisposed, some one is received in private audience. These audiences are usuallyfor the cardinal prefects of the congregations, the patriarchs, archbishops and bishops who are in Rome at the time, and distinguishedpersonages. 

When the weather is fine the Pope generally walks or drives in thegarden. He is carried out of his apartments to the gate in asedan-chair by the liveried 'sediarii, ' or chair-porters; or if he goesout by the small door known as that of Paul the Fifth, the carriageawaits him, and he gets into it with the private chamberlain, who isalways a monsignore. It is as well to say here, for the benefit ofnon-Catholics, that 'monsignori' are not necessarily bishops, nor evenconsecrated priests, the title being really a secular one. Two NobleGuards of the corps of fifty gentlemen known under that name ride besidethe carriage doors. The closed carriage is a simple brougham, having thePope's coat of arms painted on the door, but in summer he occasionallygoes out in an open landau. He drives several times round the avenues, and when he descends, the officer of the Guards dismounts and opens thecarriage door. He generally walks in the neighbourhood of the Chinesepavilion and along the Torrione, where the papal observatory is built. 

Leo the Thirteenth is fond of variety--and no wonder, shut up for lifeas he is in the Vatican; he enjoys directing work and improvements inthe gardens; he likes to talk with Vespignani, the architect of the HolyApostolic Palaces, who is also the head of the Catholic party in theRoman municipality, to go over the plans of work he has ordered, to givehis opinion, and especially to see that the work itself is executed inthe shortest possible time. Time is short for a pope; Sixtus the Fifth, who filled Rome and Italy with himself, reigned only five years;Rodrigo Borgia eleven years; Leo the Tenth, but nine. 

[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF ACQUA FELICE]

In 1893 the Pope began to inhabit the new pavilion designed and built byVespignani in pure fifteenth-century style. It is built against theTorrione, the ancient round tower constructed by Saint Leo the Fourthabout the year 850. In 1894 Leo the Thirteenth made a further extension, and joined another building to the existing one by means of a loggia, onthe spot once occupied by the old barracks of the papal gendarmes, whoare still lodged in the gardens, and whose duty it is to patrol theprecincts by day and night. Indeed, the fact that two dynamiters werecaught in the garden in 1894 proves that a private police is necessary. 

During the great heat of summer the Pope, after saying mass, goes intothe garden about nine in the morning and spends the whole day there, receiving everyone in the garden pavilion he has built for himself, justas he would receive in the Vatican. He dines there, too, and restsafterward, guarded by the gendarmes on duty, to whom he generally sendsa measure of good wine--another survival of a country custom; and in thecool of the day he again gets into his carriage, and often does notreturn to the Vatican till after sunset, toward the hour of Ave Maria. 

In the evening, about an hour later, --at 'one of the night, ' accordingto the old Roman computation of time, --he attends at the recitation ofthe rosary, or evening prayers, by his private chaplain, and he requireshis immediate attendants to assist also. He then retires to his room, where he reads, studies or writes verses, and at about ten o'clock heeats a light supper. 

While in the garden he is fond of talking about plants and flowers withthe director of the gardens. He walks with the officer of the NobleGuards and with the private chamberlain on duty. He speaks freely ofcurrent topics, tells anecdotes of his own life and visits the gazelles, goats, deer and other animals kept in the gardens. From the cupola ofSaint Peter's the whole extent of the grounds is visible, and when thePope is walking, the visitors, over four hundred feet above, stop towatch him. He has keen eyes, and sees them also. 'Let us showourselves!' he exclaims on such occasions. 'At least they will not beable to say that the Pope is ill!'

The Pope's favourite poets are Virgil and Dante. He knows long passagesof both by heart, and takes pleasure in quoting them. When FatherMichael, the apostolic prefect to Erithrea, was taking his leave, withthe other Franciscans who accompanied him to Africa, his Holinessrecited to them, with great spirit, Dante's canto upon St. Francis. 

The Pope reads the newspapers, passages of interest being marked for himby readers in order to save time. He frequently writes letters to thebishops, and composes encyclicals in a polished and Ciceronian style ofLatin. The encyclicals are printed at the private press of the Vatican, an institution founded by him and furnished with all modernimprovements. They are first published in the 'Osservatore Romano, ' theofficial daily paper of the Vatican, and then finally translated intoItalian and other languages, and sent out to the bishops abroad. Leo theThirteenth likes to see and talk with men of letters, as well as to readtheir books. Two years ago he requested Professor Brunelli of Perugia tobuy for him the poetical works of the Abbé Zanella. The request ischaracteristic, for his Holiness insisted upon paying for the book, likeanyone else. 

When great pilgrimages are to be organized, the first step taken is toform committees at the place of origin. The leader of the pilgrimage isusually the head of the diocese, who then writes to Rome to make thearrangements. The Committee on Pilgrimages provides quarters for thepilgrims, at the Lazaret of Saint Martha, or elsewhere, that they may beproperly lodged and fed. On the occasion of the celebrated Frenchworkingmen's pilgrimage, the great halls in the Belvedere wing, including the old quarters of the engineer corps, and of the artilleryand the riding-school, were opened as dining-halls, where the pilgrimscame morning and evening to their meals; the kitchen department and thegeneral superintendence were in charge of Sisters, and everything wasdirected by the Roman Committee of Pilgrimages. The visitors werereceived by the Circolo, or Society of Saint Peter's, and by the firstArtisan Workmen's Association, the members of which waited at table, wearing aprons. The Circolo has an office for pilgrimages whichfacilitates arrangements with the railways, and provides lodgings inhotels, inns and private houses in Rome for the well-to-do; but theGeneral Committee on Pilgrimages provides lodgings for the poor. Thehead of the pilgrimage also makes arrangements for the mass which theHoly Father celebrates for the pilgrims, and for the audience whichfollows. If the pilgrimage is large, the mass is said in Saint Peter's;if small, in the Vatican, either in the Loggia of the Beatification orin the Sala Ducale. At the audience the pilgrims place their offeringsin the Pope's hands, and he blesses the rosaries, crosses and otherobjects of devotion, and gives small silver medals in memory of theoccasion. 

Since 1870 the Pope has not conducted the solemn services either inSaint Peter's or in the Sixtine Chapel. The only services of this kindin which he takes part are those held in the Sixtine Chapel on theanniversary of the death of Pius the Ninth, and on the anniversary ofhis own coronation, March 3. At these two functions there are alsopresent the Sacred College, the bishops and prelates, the Romannobility, the Knights of Malta, the Diplomatic Corps in full dress, andany foreign Catholic royal princes who may chance to be in Rome at thetime. At the 'public' consistories, held with great pomp in the SalaRegia, the Pope gives the new hat to each new cardinal; but there arealso 'private' consistories held in the beautiful Sala del Concistoro, near the hall of the Swiss Guards, at the entrance to the Pope'sapartments. 

Moreover, the Pope appears at beatifications and canonizations, andduring the present pontificate these have been generally held in theHall of Beatifications, a magnificent room with a tribune, above theportico of Saint Peter's, turned into a chapel for the occasion, withinnumerable candles and lamps, the transparency of the beatified person, called the Gloria, and standards on which are painted representations ofmiracles. The last of these ceremonies was held in Saint Peter's, withclosed doors, but in the presence of an enormous concourse, with thegreatest pomp, the whole of the Noble Guard and the Palatine Guardturning out, and order being preserved by the Swiss Guards, thegendarmes, and the vergers of the basilica, known as the 'Sanpietrini. '

In Holy Week, in order to meet the wants of the many eminent and devoutCatholics who then flock to Rome, the Holy Father celebrates mass two orthree times in the Sala Ducale, which is then turned into a chapel. During these masses motetts are sung by the famous Sixtine choir, underthe direction of the old Maestro Mustafa, once the greatest soprano ofthe century, but at the same time so accomplished a musician as to haveearned the common name of 'Palestrina redivivus. ' It is to be regrettedthat he has never allowed any of his beautiful compositions to bepublished. On such occasions as Christmas Day or the feast of SaintJoachim, by whose name the Pope was christened, he receives the Collegeof Cardinals, the bishops present in Rome, many prelates, the heads ofreligious bodies, some officers of the old pontifical army and of theguards, and the dignitaries of the papal court, in his own privatelibrary, where he talks familiarly with each in turn, and quite withoutceremony. Reigning sovereigns, princes and distinguished persons arereceived in the grand throne-room, where the throne is covered with redvelvet, with coats of arms at the angles of the canopy. Upon a largepier-table, in the rococo style, between the windows and opposite thethrone, stands a great crucifix of ivory and ebony, between twocandlesticks. The carpet used at such times was presented by Spain. Before the Emperor of Germany's visit the Pope himself gave particulardirections for the dressing of the throne and the arrangement of therooms. 

When great personages are received their suites are also presented, after which the Pope retires with his guest to the small privatethrone-room. 

Before coming to the Pope's presence it is necessary to pass throughmany anterooms, the Sala Clementina, the hall of the palfrenieri andsediarii, --that is, of the grooms and chair-porters, --the hall of thegendarmes, the antechamber of the Palatine Guard, that of the officerson duty, the hall of the Arras, that of the chamberlains and NobleGuards and at last the antechamber of the Maestro di Camera--there areeight in all. Persons received in audience are accompanied by the'camerieri segreti, ' who do the honours in full dress, wearing theirchains and carrying their staves. 

The private library is a spacious room lined with bookcases made of ayellow wood from Brazil, some of which are curtained. Busts of severalformer Popes stand upon marble columns. 

To the Pope's bedroom, only his private valet and his secretaries haveaccess. It is of small dimensions, and contains only a bed, in analcove adorned with graceful marble columns, a writing-table, anarm-chair and kneeling stool, and one wardrobe. 

Besides these, there is his private study, in which the table and chairstand upon a little carpeted platform, other tables being placed on eachside upon the floor, together with an extremely uncomfortable butmagnificent straight-backed arm-chair, which is one of the gifts offeredon the occasion of the episcopal jubilee. There is, moreover, a littleroom containing only a lounge and an old-fashioned easy-chair with'wings' and nothing else. It is here that the Holy Father retires totake his afternoon nap, and the robust nature of his nerves is proved bythe fact that he lies down with his eyes facing the broad light of thewindow. 

The private apartment occupies the second floor, according to Italianreckoning, though we Americans should call it the third; it is on alevel with Raphael's loggie. The floor above it is inhabited by CardinalRampolla, the Secretary of State. 

The 'pontifical court, ' as it is called, consists (1898) of CardinalRampolla, the Secretary of State; Cardinal Mario Mocenni, thepro-prefect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, a personage of the highestimportance, who has sole control of everything connected with theVatican palace and all the vast mass of adjoining buildings; theMaggiordomo, who, besides many other functions, is the manager of themuseums, galleries and inhabited apartments; the Maestro di Camera, whonearly corresponds to a master of ceremonies, and superintends allaudiences; the almoner and manager of the papal charities, assisted by adistinguished priest, who is also a lawyer, formerly secretary to thewell-known Monsignor de Merode; a monk of the Dominican order, whosupervises the issuing of books printed at the Vatican; a chief steward;four private secretaries, who take turns of service lasting a week foreach, and are always with the Pope, and finally the chief of the Vaticanpolice. Moreover, his Holiness has his private preacher, who deliverssermons before him in Advent and Lent, and his confessor, both of whomare always Capuchin monks, in accordance with a very ancient tradition. 

It must not be supposed by the uninitiated that these few persons in anyway represent the central directive administration of the CatholicChurch. On the contrary, the only one of them who is occupied in thatlarger field is Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State. The othersare, strictly speaking, the chief personages of the pontificalhousehold, as we should say. But their offices are not sinecures. ThePope's restless energy extracts work from the men about him as onesqueezes water from a sponge. In the days of Pius the Ninth, after thefall of the temporal power, the Vatican was overrun and overcrowded withuseless but well-paid officials, officers and functionaries great andsmall, who took refuge there against the advancing wave of change. WhenLeo the Thirteenth had been on the throne only a few weeks, there wassold everywhere a comic print representing the Pope, with a huge broom, sweeping all the useless people pell-mell down the steps of the Vaticaninto the Piazza of Saint Peter's. As often happens, the caricaturist sawthe truth. In a reign that has lasted twenty years, Leo the Thirteenthhas done away with much that was useless, worthless and old-fashioned, and much that cumbered the narrow patch of earth on which so important apart of the world's business is transacted. He is a great simplifier ofdetails, and a strong leveller of obstructions, so that his successor inthe pontificate will find it a comparatively easy thing to keep themechanism in order in its present state. 

[Illustration: THE VATICAN FROM THE PIAZZA OF SAINT PETER'S]

The strictest economy, even to the minutest details, is practised in theVatican. It appears certain that the accounts of the vast household haveoften been inspected by the Pope, whose prime object is to prevent anywaste of money where so much is needed for the maintenance of churchinstitutions in all parts of the world. In the midst of outwardmagnificence the papal establishment is essentially frugal, for thesplendid objects in the Pope's apartments, even to many of the articlesof furniture, are gifts received from the faithful of all nations. Butthe money which pours into the Vatican from the contributions ofCatholics all over Christendom is only held in trust, to be expended insupport of missions, of poor bishoprics, and of such devout andcharitable organizations as need help, wherever they may be. Thatnothing may be lost which can possibly be applied to a good purpose isone of Leo the Thirteenth's most constant occupations. He has thatmarvellous memory for little things which many great leaders andsovereigns have had; he remembers not only faces and names, but figuresand facts, with surprising and sometimes discomfiting accuracy. 

In his private life, as distinguished from his public and politicalcareer, what is most striking is the combination of shrewdness andsimplicity in the best sense of both words. Like Pius the Ninth, he hasmost firmly set his face against doing anything which could be construedas financially advantageous to his family, who are good gentlefolk, andwell to do in the world, but no more. All that he has as Pope he holdsin trust for the Church in the most literal acceptation of the term. Thecontributions of Catholics, on being received, are immediately investedin securities bearing interest, which securities are again sold as maybe necessary for current needs, and expended for the welfare of CatholicChristianity. Every penny is most carefully accounted for. These moneysare generally invested in Italian national bonds--a curious fact, andindicative of considerable confidence in the existing state of things, as well as a significant guarantee of the Vatican's good faith towardsthe monarchy. It is commonly said in Rome among bankers that the Vaticanmakes the market price of Italian bonds. Whether this be true or not, itis an undeniable fact that the finances of the Vatican are under thedirect and exceedingly thrifty control of the Pope himself. To someextent we may be surprised to find so much plain common sense survivingin the character of one who has so long followed a spiritual career. Weshould not have looked for such practical wisdom in Pius the Ninth. Butthe times are changed since then, and are most changed in most recenttimes. The head of the Catholic Church today must be a modern man, astatesman, and an administrator; he must be able to cope withdifficulties as well as heresies; he must lead his men as well as guidehis flock; he must be the Church's steward as well as her consecratedarch-head; he must be the reformer of manners as well as the preserverof faith; he must be the understander of men's venial mistakes as wellas the censor of their mortal sins. 

Battles for belief are no longer fought only with books and dogmas, opinions and theories. Everything may serve nowadays, from money, whichis the fuel of nations, to wit, which is the weapon of the individual;and the man who would lose no possible vantage must have both a heavyhand and a light touch. 

By his character and natural gifts, Leo the Thirteenth is essentiallyactive rather than contemplative, and it is not surprising that thechief acts of his pontificate should have dealt rather with politicalmatters than with questions of dogma and ecclesiastical authority. Ithas certainly been the object of the present Pope to impress upon theworld the necessity of Christianity in general, and of the RomanCatholic Church in particular, as a means of social redemption and afactor in political stability. This seems to be his inmost conviction, as shown in all his actions and encyclical letters. One is impressed, atevery turn, by the strength of his belief in religion and in his ownmission to spread it abroad. In regard to forms of faith, the opinionsof mankind differ very widely, but the majority of intelligent men nowliving seem to hold a more or less distinct faith of one sort oranother, and to require faith of some sort in their fellow-men. Commonatheism has had its little day, and is out of fashion. It is certainlynot possible to define that which has taken the place of thepseudo-scientific materialism which plagued society twenty or thirtyyears ago, and it is certainly beyond the province of this book toexamine into the current convictions with which we are to begin thetwentieth century. 

Unprejudiced persons will not, however, withhold their admiration inreviewing the life of a man who has devoted his energies, hisintelligence and his strength, not to mention the enormous power wieldedby him as the head of the Church, to the furtherance and accomplishmentof ends which so many of us believe to be good. For the pontificate ofLeo the Thirteenth has differed from that of his predecessor in that ithas been active rather than passive. While Pius the Ninth was the headof the Church suffering, Leo the Thirteenth is the leader of the Churchmilitant. This seems to be the reason why he has more than once beenaccused of inconsistency in his actions, notably in his instructions toFrench Catholics, as compared with the position he has maintainedtowards the Italian government. People seem to forget that, whereas thequestion of temporal power is deeply involved in the latter case, it hasnothing whatever to do with the former, and as this question is the onemost often brought up against the papacy and discussed in connectionwith it by people who seem to have very little idea of its realmeaning, it may be as well to state here at once the Pope's own view ofit. 

'The temporary sovereignty is not absolutely requisite for the existenceof the papacy, since the Popes were deprived of it during severalcenturies, but it is required in order that the pontiff's independencemay display itself freely, without obstacles, and be evident andapparent in the eyes of the world. It is the social form, so to say, ofhis guardianship, and of his manifestation. It is necessary--not toexistence, but to a right existence. The Pope who is not a sovereign isnecessarily a subject, because (in the social existence of a monarchy)there is no mean term between subject and sovereign. A Pope who is asubject of a given government is continually exposed to its influenceand pressure, or at least to influences connected with political aimsand interests. '

[Illustration: RAPHAEL'S "TRANSFIGURATION"]

The writer from whom these lines are quoted comes to the natural andlogical conclusion that this is not the normal position which should beoccupied by the head of the Church. I may remark here that the same viewis held in other countries besides Italy. The Emperor of Russia is theundisputed head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Queen Victoria occupies, by the British Constitution, almost exactly the same position towardsthe Anglican Church. In practice, though certainly not in theory, it isthe evident purpose of the young German Emperor, constitutionally orunconstitutionally, to create for himself the same dominant pontificalposition in regard to the Churches of the German Empire. It seemssomewhat unjust, therefore, that the Popes, whose right to thesovereignty of Rome was for ages as undisputed as that of any King orEmperor in Europe, though secondary in itself to their ecclesiasticalsupremacy, should be blamed for protesting against what was undoubtedlya usurpation so far as they were concerned, although others may lookupon it as a mere incident in the unification of a free people. Moreover, since the unification was accomplished, the vanquished Popeshave acted with a fairness and openness which might well be imitated inother countries. The Italians, as a nation, possess remarkable talentand skill in conspiracy, and there is no organization in the worldbetter fitted than that of the Roman Catholic Church for secretlyorganizing and carrying out a great political conspiracy, if any suchthing were ever attempted. The action of the Popes, on the contrary, hasbeen fair and above board. 

Both Pius the Ninth and Leo the Thirteenth have stated their grievancesin the most public manner, and so far have they been from attempting toexercise their vast influence in directing the politics of Italy thatthey have enjoined upon Italian Catholics to abstain from politicalcontests altogether. Whether in so doing they have pursued a wise courseor not, history will decide, probably according to the taste of thehistorian; but the fact itself sufficiently proves that they have giventheir enemies more than a fair chance. This seems to have been the formtaken by their protests; and this is a fair answer to the principalaccusation brought by non-Catholics against the Pope, namely, that he isready to sacrifice everything in an unscrupulous attempt to regainpossession of temporal power. In other matters Leo the Thirteenth hasalways shown himself to be a statesman, while Pius the Ninth was thevictim of his own meek and long-suffering character. To enter into theconsideration of the political action of the Pope during the lastfifteen years, would be to review the history of the world during thattime. To give an idea of the man's character, it would be sufficient torecall three or four of the principal situations in which he has beenplaced. A volume might be written, for instance, on his action in regardto the German Army Bill, his position towards Ireland, his arbitrationin the question of the Caroline Islands, and his instructions to FrenchCatholics. 

It is extremely hard to form a fair judgment from documents alone, andespecially from those documents which most generally come before thepublic, namely, articles in such reviews as the _Contemporary Review_, on the one hand, and the _Civiltà Cattolica_ on the other. Indeed, thestatements on either side, if accepted without hesitation, would renderall criticisms futile. Devout Roman Catholics would answer that mattersof faith are beyond criticism altogether; but the writers in the_Contemporary_, for instance, will, with equal assurance, declarethemselves right because they believe that they cannot be wrong. Itwould be better to consult events themselves rather than the currentopinions of opposite parties concerning them, to set aside theconsideration of the aims rightly or wrongly attributed to Leo theThirteenth, and to look only on the results brought about by his policyin our time. In cases where actions have a merely negative result, it isjust to consider the motive alone, if any criticism is necessary, andhere there seems to be no particular reason for doubting the Pope'sstatement of his own case. For instance, in connection with Ireland, thePope said, in the document known as 'The Circular Letter of thePropaganda': 'It is just that the Irish should seek to alleviate theirafflicted condition; it is just that they should fight for their rights, nor is it denied them to collect money to alleviate the condition of theIrish. ' In regard to the same matter, the 'Decree of the Holy Office'reads as follows: 'The Holy See has frequently given opportune adviceand counsel to the Irish people (upon whom it has always bestowedespecial affection), whenever its affairs seem to require it, by whichcounsel and advice they might be enabled to defend and vindicate theirrights without prejudice to justice, and without disturbing the publicpeace. ' A fairer statement of the rights of men, and a more expressinjunction against public disturbance of any kind, could hardly beexpressed in two short sentences. 

Outside of Italy the position of Leo the Thirteenth in Rome is notgenerally understood. Most people suppose that the expression 'theprisoner in the Vatican, ' which he applies to himself, and which is verygenerally applied to him by the more ardent of Italian Catholics, is amere empty phrase, and that his confinement within his small dominion ispurely a matter of choice. This is not the case. So far as the politicaltheory of the question is concerned, it is probable that the Pope wouldnot in any case be inclined to appear openly on Italian territory unlesshe showed himself as the official guest of King Humbert, who wouldnaturally be expected to return the visit. To make such an officialvisit and such an appearance would be in fact to accept the Italiandomination in Rome, a course which, as has already been noticed, wouldbe contrary to the accepted Catholic idea of the social basis necessaryfor the papacy. It would not necessarily be an uncatholic act, however, but it would certainly be an unpapal one. No one would expect theex-Empress of the French, for instance, to live openly in Paris, asthough the Parisians had never been her subjects, and as though sheaccepted the Republic in a friendly and forgiving spirit. And the caseis to all intents and purposes exactly identical. 

[Illustration: LOGGIE OF RAPHAEL IN THE VATICAN]

But this is not all. It is unfortunately true that there is another andmuch better reason why Leo the Thirteenth cannot show himself in thestreets of Rome. It is quite certain that his life would not be safe. The enthusiastic friends of Italy who read glowing accounts of thedevelopment of the new kingdom and write eloquent articles in the samestrain will be utterly horrified at this statement, and will, moreover, laugh to scorn the idea that the modern civilized Italian could conspireto take the life of a harmless and unoffending old man. They will bequite right. The modern civilized Italians would treat the Pope with thegreatest respect and consideration if he appeared amongst them. Most ofthem would take off their hats and stand aside while he drove by, and agreat many of them would probably go down upon their knees in thestreets to receive his blessing. The King, who is a gentleman, andtolerant of religious practices, would treat the head of the Church withrespect. The Queen, who is not only religious, but devout, would hailthe reappearance of the pontiff with enthusiasm. But unfortunately forthe realization of any such thing, Rome is not peopled only by moderncivilized Italians, nor Italy either. There is in the city a very largebody of social democrats, anarchists and the like, not to mention thesmall nondescript rabble which everywhere does its best to bringdiscredit upon socialistic principles--a mere handful, perhaps, butlargely composed of fanatics and madmen, people half hysterical fromfailure, poverty, vice and an indigestion of so-called 'free thought. 'There have not been many sovereigns nowadays whose lives have not beenattempted by such men at one time or another. Within our own memory anEmperor of Russia, a President of the French Republic and two Presidentsof the United States have been actually murdered by just such men. TheKing of Italy, and the Emperor William the First, Napoleon the Third, Queen Victoria and Alexander the Third have all been assailed by suchfanatics within our own recollection, and some of them have narrowlyescaped death. Not one of them, with the exception of Alexander theThird, has been so hated by a small and desperate body of men as Leo theThirteenth is hated by the little band which undoubtedly exists in Italytoday. I will venture to say that it is a matter of continualsatisfaction to the royal family of Italy, and to the Italiangovernment, that the Pope should really continue to consider himself aprisoner within the precincts of the Vatican, since it is quite certainthat if he were to appear openly in Rome the Italian authorities wouldnot, in the long run, be able to protect his life. 

After all that has been said and preached upon the subject by thefriends of Italy, it would be a serious matter indeed if the Pope, taking a practical advantage of his theoretic liberty, should be done todeath in the streets of Rome by a self-styled Italian patriot. No onewho thoroughly understands Rome at the present day is ignorant that suchdanger really exists, though it will no doubt be promptly denied byItalian ministers, newspaper correspondents or other intelligent butenthusiastic persons. The hysterical anarchist is unfortunately to bemet with all over the world at the present day, side by side with thescientific social democrat, and too often under his immediateprotection. Indeed, a great number of the acts of Leo the Thirteenth, ifnot all of them, have been directed against the mass of social democracyin all its forms, good, bad and indifferent; and to the zeal of hispartisans in endeavouring to carry out his suggestions must beattributed some of the strong utterances of the Church's adherents uponmatters political. 

The question of 'assent and obedience' to the Holy See in matters notrelating to dogma and faith is, perhaps, the most important of all thosein which the papacy is now involved. There appears to be a decidedtendency to believe that Catholics ascribe to the Holy See a certaindegree of infallibility in regard to national policy and localelections. The Pope's own words do not inculcate a blind obedience asnecessary to the salvation of the voter, though it is expressly declareda grave offence to favour the election of persons opposed to the RomanCatholic Church and whose opinions may tend to endanger its position. The idea that the Pope's political utterances can ever be considered asex cathedrâ is too illogical to be presented seriously to the world bythinking men. Leo the Thirteenth is undoubtedly a first-rate statesman, and it might be to the advantage not only of all good Catholics but ofall humanity, and of the cause of peace itself, to follow his advice innational and party politics whenever practicable. To bind oneself tofollow the political dictation of Leo the Thirteenth, and to considersuch obedience to the Pope as indispensable to salvation, would be tocreate a precedent. Pius the Ninth was no statesman at all, and thereare plenty of instances in history of Popes whose political advice wouldhave been ruinous, if followed, though it was often formulated moreauthoritatively and more dictatorially than the injunctions from time totime imparted to Catholics by Leo the Thirteenth. An Alexander the Sixthwould be an impossibility in our day; but in theory, if another RodrigoBorgia should be elected to the Holy See, one should be as much bound toobey his orders in voting for the election of the President of theUnited States as one can possibly be to obey those of Leo theThirteenth, seeing that the divine right to direct the politicalconsciences of Catholics, if it existed at all, would be inherent in thepapacy as an institution, and not merely attributed by mistaken peopleto the wise, learned and conscientious man who is now the head of theCatholic Church. But the Pope's utterances have lately been interpretedby his too zealous adherents to mean that every Catholic subject orcitizen throughout the world, who has the right to vote in his owncountry, must give that vote in accordance with the dictates of theChurch as a whole, and of his bishop in particular, under pain ofcommitting a very grave offence against Catholic principles. A state inwhich every action of man, public or private, should be guided solelyand entirely by his own religious convictions would no doubt be an idealone, and would approach the social perfection of a millennium. But inthe mean time a condition of society in which society itself should beguided by such political opinions as any one man, human and limited, canderive from his own conscience, pure and upright though it be, would beneither logical nor desirable. There are points in the universalstruggle for life which do not turn upon questions of moral right andwrong, and which every individual has a preëminent and inherent right todecide for himself. 

Anyone who undertakes to speak briefly of such a personage as Leo theThirteenth, and of such a question as the 'assent and obedience' ofCatholics in matters not connected with morals or belief, lays himselfopen to the accusation of superficiality. We are all, however, obligedto deal quickly and decisively, in these days, with practical matters ofwhich the discussion at length would fill many volumes. Most of uscannot do more than form an opinion based upon the little knowledge wehave, express it as best we may, and pass on. The man who spends alifetime in the study of one point, the specialist in fact, is often tooignorant of all other matters to form any general opinion worthexpressing. Humanity is too broad to be put under a microscope, toostrong to be treated like a little child. No one man, today, in this dayof many Cæsars, can say surely and exactly what should be rendered toeach of them. 

Leo the Thirteenth is the leader of a great organization of Christianmen and women spreading all over the world; the leader of a vast body ofhuman thought; the leader of a conservative army which will play a largepart in any coming struggle between anarchy and order. He may not behere to direct when the battle begins, but he will leave a strongposition for his successor to defend, and great weapons for him towield, since he has done more to simplify and strengthen the Church'sorganization than a dozen Popes have done in the last two centuries. Menof such character fight the campaigns of the future many times over intheir thoughts while all the world is at peace around them, and when thetime comes at last, though they themselves be gone, the spirit theycalled up still lives to lead, the sword they forged lies ready forother hands, the roads they built are broad and straight for the marchof other feet, and they themselves, in their graves, have their share inthe victories that save mankind from social ruin. 

[Illustration]

THE VATICAN

The Mons Vaticanus is sometimes said to have received its name from'vaticinium, ' an oracle or prophecy; for tradition says that Numa chosethe Vatican hill as a sacred place from which to declare to the peoplethe messages he received from the gods. It is not, however, one of theseven hills on which ancient Rome was built, but forms a part of a ridgebeginning with the Janiculum and ending with Monte Mario, all of whichwas outside the ancient limits of the city. In our day the name isapplied only to the immense pontifical palace adjacent to, and connectedwith, the basilica of Saint Peter's. 

The present existence of this palace is principally due to Nicholas theFifth, the builder pope, whose gigantic scheme would startle a modernarchitect. His plan was to build the Church of Saint Peter's as astarting point, and then to construct one vast central 'habitat' for thepapal administration, covering the whole of what is called the Borgo, from the Castle of Sant' Angelo to the cathedral. In ancient times aportico, or covered way supported on columns, led from the bridge to thechurch, and it was probably from this real structure that Nicholas beganhis imaginary one, only a small part of which was ever completed. Thatsmall portion alone comprises the basilica and the Vatican Palace, whichtogether form by far the greatest continuous mass of buildings in theworld. The Colosseum is 195 yards long by 156 broad, including thethickness of the walls. Saint Peter's Church alone is 205 yards long and156 broad, so that the whole Colosseum would easily stand upon theground-plan of the church, while the Vatican Palace is more than half aslong again. 

Nicholas the Fifth died in 1455, and the oldest parts of the presentVatican Palace are not older than his reign. They are generally known asTorre Borgia, from having been inhabited by Alexander the Sixth, whodied of poison in the third of the rooms now occupied by the library, counting from the library side. The windows of these rooms look upon thelarge square court of the Belvedere, and that part of the palace is notvisible from without. 

Portions of the substructure of the earlier building were no doubtutilized by Nicholas, and the secret gallery which connects the Vaticanwith the mausoleum of Hadrian is generally attributed to Pope John theTwenty-third, who died in 1417; but on the whole it may be said that theVatican Palace is originally a building of the period of the Renascence, to which all successive popes have made additions. 

The ordinary tourist first sees the Vatican from the square as heapproaches from the bridge of Sant' Angelo. But his attention is fromthe first drawn to the front of the church, and he but vaguely realizesthat a lofty, unsymmetrical building rises on his right. He pauses, perhaps, and looks in that direction as he ascends the long, low stepsof the basilica, and wonders in what part of the palace the Pope'sapartments may be, while the itinerant vender of photographs shakesyards of poor little views out of their gaudy red bindings, very much asLeporello unrolls the list of Don Giovanni's conquests. If the picturepeddler sees that the stranger glances at the Vatican, he forthwithpoints out the corner windows of the second story and informs his victimthat 'Sua Santità' inhabits those rooms, and promptly offers photographsof any other interior part of the Vatican but that. The tourist looks upcuriously, and finally gets rid of the fellow by buying what he does notwant, with the charitable intention of giving it to some dear buttiresome relative at home. And ever afterward, perhaps, he associateswith his first impression of the Vatican the eager, cunning, scapegracefeatures of the man who sold him the photographs. 

To fix a general scheme of the buildings in the mind one must climb tothe top of the dome of the church and look down from the balcony whichsurrounds the lantern. The height is so great that even the greatdimensions of the biggest palace in the world are dwarfed in the deepperspective, and the wide gardens look small and almost insignificant. But the relative proportions of the buildings and grounds appearcorrectly, and measure each other, as it were. Moreover, it is now sohard to obtain access to the gardens at all that the usual way of seeingthem is from the top of Saint Peter's, from an elevation of four hundredfeet. 

To the average stranger 'the Vatican' suggests only the museum ofsculpture, the picture-galleries and the Loggie. He remembers, besidesthe works of art which he has seen, the fact of having walked a greatdistance through straight corridors, up and down short flights of marblesteps, and through irregularly shaped and unsymmetrically disposedhalls. If he had any idea of the points of the compass when he entered, he is completely confused in five minutes, and comes out at last withthe sensation of having been walking in a labyrinth. He will find ithard to give anyone an impression of the sort of building in which hehas been, and certainly he cannot have any knowledge of thetopographical relations of its parts. Yet in his passage through themuseums and galleries he has seen but a very small part of the whole, and, excepting when in the Loggie, he probably could not once have stoodstill and pointed in the direction of the main part of the palace. 

[Illustration: BELVEDERE COURT OF THE VATICAN GALLERY

From a print of the last century]

In order to speak even superficially of it all, it is indispensable toclassify its parts in some way. Vast and irregular it is at its twoends, toward the colonnade and toward the bastions of the city, but theintervening length consists of two perfectly parallel buildings, eachover three hundred and fifty yards long, about eighty yards apart, andyoked in the middle by the Braccio Nuovo of the Museum and a part ofthe library, so as to enclose two vast courts, the one known asBelvedere, --not to be confused with the Belvedere in the Museum, --andthe other called the Garden of the Pigna, from the pine-cone whichstands at one end of it. 

Across the ends of these parallel buildings, and toward the city, a hugepile is erected, about two hundred yards long, very irregular, andcontaining the papal residence and the apartments of several cardinals, the Sixtine Chapel, the Pauline Chapel, the Borgia Tower, the Stanze andLoggie of Raphael, and the Court of Saint Damasus. At the other end ofthe parallelogram are grouped the equally irregular but more beautifulbuildings of the old Museum, of which the windows look out over thewalls of the city, and which originally bore the name of Belvedere, onaccount of the lovely view. This is said to have been a sort ofsummer-house of the Borgia, not then connected with the palace by thelong galleries. 

It would be a hopeless and a weary task to attempt to trace the historyof the buildings. Some account of the Pope's private apartments hasalready been given in these pages. They occupy the eastern wing of thepart built round the Court of Damasus; that is to say, they are at theextreme end of the Vatican, nearest the city, and over the colonnade, and the windows of the Pope's rooms are visible from the square. Thevast mass which rises above the columns to the right of Saint Peter's isonly a small part of the whole palace, but is not the most modern, byany means. It contains, for instance, the Sixtine Chapel, which isconsiderably older than the present church, having been built by Sixtusthe Fourth, whose beautiful bronze monument is in the Chapel of theSacrament, in Saint Peter's. It contains, too, Raphael's Stanze, orhalls, and Bramante's famous Loggie, the beautiful architecture of whichis a frame for some of Raphael's best work. 

[Illustration: MICHELANGELO'S "LAST JUDGMENT"]

But any good guide book will furnish all such information, which itwould be fruitless to give in such a work as this. In the pages ofMurray the traveller will find, set down in order and accurately, theages, the dimensions, and the exact positions of all the parts of thebuilding, with the names of the famous artists who decorated each. Hewill not find set down there, however, what one may call the atmosphereof the place, which is something as peculiar and unforgettable, thoughin a different way, as that of Saint Peter's. It is quite unlikeanything else, for it is part of the development of churchmen'sadministration to an ultimate limit in the high centre of churchmanism. No doubt there was much of that sort of thing in various parts of Europelong ago, and in England before Henry the Eighth, and it is to be foundin a small degree in Vienna to this day, where the traditions of thedeparted Holy Roman Empire are not quite dead. It is hard to define it, but it is in everything; in the uniforms of the attendants, in theirold-fashioned faces, in the spotless cleanliness of all theVatican--though no one is ever to be seen handling a broom--in thenoiselessly methodical manner of doing everything that is to be done, inthe scholarly rather than scientific arrangement of the objects in themuseum and galleries--above all, in the visitor's own sensations. No onetalks loudly among the statues of the Vatican, and there is a feeling ofbeing in church, so that one is disagreeably shocked when a guide, conducting a party of tourists, occasionally raises his voice in orderto be heard. It is all very hard to define, while it is quite impossibleto escape feeling it, and it must ultimately be due to the dominatinginfluence of the churchmen, who arrange the whole place as though itwere a church. An American lady, on hearing that the Vatican is said tocontain eleven thousand rooms, threw up her hands and laughinglyexclaimed, 'Think of the housemaids!' But there are no housemaids in theVatican, and perhaps the total absence of even the humblest feminineinfluence has something to do with the austere impression whicheverything produces. 

On the whole, the Vatican may be divided into seven portions. These arethe pontifical residence, the Sixtine and Pauline chapels, the picturegalleries, the library, the museums of sculpture and archæology, theoutbuildings, including the barracks of the Swiss Guards, and, lastly, the gardens with the Pope's Casino. Of these the Sixtine Chapel, thegalleries and museums, and the library, are incomparably the mostimportant. 

The name Sixtine is derived from Sixtus the Fourth, as has been said, and is usually, but not correctly, spelled 'Sistine. ' The library wasfounded by Nicholas the Fifth, whose love of books was almost equal tohis passion for building. The galleries are representative of Raphael'swork, which predominates to such an extent that the paintings of almostall other artists are of secondary importance, precisely as Michelangelofilled the Sixtine Chapel with himself. As for the museums, the objectsthey contain have been accumulated by many popes, but their existenceought, perhaps, to be chiefly attributed to Julius the Second and Leothe Tenth, the principal representatives of the Rovere and Medicifamilies. 

On the walls of the Sixtine Chapel there are paintings by such men asPerugino, Luca Signorelli, Botticelli, and Ghirlandajo, as well as by anumber of others; but Michelangelo overshadows them all with his ceilingand his 'Last Judgment. ' There is something overpowering about him, andthere is no escaping from his influence. He not only covers great spaceswith his brush, but he fills them with his masterful drawing, and makesthem alive with a life at once profound and restless. One does not feel, as with other painters, that a vision has been projected upon a flatsurface; one rather has the impression that a mysterious reality of lifehas been called up out of senseless material. What we see is notimaginary motion represented, but real motion arrested, as it were, inits very act, and ready to move again. Many have said that the man'swork was monstrous. It was monstrously alive, monstrously vigorous; attimes over-strong and over-vital, exaggerative of nature, but neverreally unnatural, and he never once overreached himself in an effort. Nomatter how enormous the conception might be, he never lacked the meansof carrying it to the concrete. No giantism of limb and feature wasbeyond the ability of his brush; no astounding foreshortening was toomuch for his unerring point; no vast perspective was too deep for hisknowledge and strength. His production was limited only by the length ofhis life. Great genius means before all things great and constantcreative power; it means wealth of resource and invention; it meansquantity as well as quality. No truly great genius, unless cut short byearly death, has left little of itself. Besides a man's one greatmasterpiece, there are always a hundred works of the same hand, farbeyond the powers of ordinary men; and the men of Michelangelo's dayworked harder than we work. Perhaps they thought harder, too, being moreoccupied with creation, at a time when there was little, than we arewith the difficult task of avoiding the unintentional reinvention ofthings already invented, now that there is so much. The latter is a realdifficulty in our century, when almost every mine of thought has beenworked to a normal depth by minds of normal power, and it needs all theruthless strength of original genius to go deeper, and hew and blast away through the bedrock of men's limitations to new veins of treasurebelow. 

It has been said of Titian by a great French critic that 'he absorbedhis predecessors and ruined his successors. ' Michelangelo absorbed noone and ruined no one; for no painter, sculptor or architect everattempted what he accomplished, either before him or after him. No saneperson ever tried to produce anything like the 'Last Judgment, ' themarble 'Moses, ' or the dome of Saint Peter's. Michelangelo stood aloneas a creator, as he lived a lonely man throughout the eighty-nine yearsof his life. He had envy but not competition to deal with. There is norivalry between his paintings in the Sixtine Chapel and those of themany great artists who have left their work beside his on the samewalls. 

The chapel is a beautiful place in itself, by its simple and nobleproportions, as well as by the wonderful architectural decorations ofthe ceiling, conceived by Michelangelo as a series of frames for hispaintings. Beautiful beyond description, too, is the exquisite marblescreen. No one can say certainly who made it; it was perhaps designed bythe architect of the chapel himself, Baccio Pintelli. There are a fewsuch marvels of unknown hands in the world, and a sort of romance clingsto them, with an element of mystery that stirs the imagination, in adreamy way, far more than the gilded oak tree in the arms of Sixtus theFourth, by which the name of Rovere is symbolized. Sixtus commanded, and the chapel was built. But who knows where Baccio Pintelli lies? Orwho shall find the grave where the hand that carved the lovely marblescreen is laid at rest?

[Illustration: SIXTINE CHAPEL]

It is often dark in the Sixtine Chapel. The tourist can rarely choosehis day, and not often his hour, and, in the weary traveller'shard-driven appreciation, Michelangelo may lose his effect by theaccident of a thunder shower. Yet of all sights in Rome, the SixtineChapel most needs sunshine. If in any way possible, go there at noon ona bright winter's day, when the sun is streaming in through the highwindows at the left of the 'Last Judgment. ' Everyone has heard of thepicture before seeing it, and almost everybody is surprised ordisappointed on seeing it for the first time. Then, too, the world'sideas about the terrific subject of the painting have changed sinceMichelangelo's day. Religious belief can no more be judged by thestandard of realism. It is wiser to look at the fresco as a work of artalone, as the most surprising masterpiece of a master draughtsman, andas a marvellous piece of composition. 

In the lower part of the picture, there is a woman rising from her gravein a shroud. It has been suggested that Michelangelo meant to representby this figure the Renascence of Italy, still struggling with darkness. The whole work brings the times before us. There is the Christian Heavenabove, and the heathen Styx below. Charon ferries the souls across thedark stream; they are first judged by Minos, and Minos is a portrait ofa cardinal who had ventured to judge the rest of the picture before itwas finished. There is in the picture all the whirling confusion ofideas which made that age terrible and beautiful by turns, devout andunbelieving, strong and weak, scholarly upon a foundation of barbarism, and most realistic when most religious. You may see the reflectedconfusion in the puzzled faces of most tourists who look at the 'LastJudgment' for the first time. A young American girl smiles vaguely atit; an Englishman glares, expressionless, at it through an eyeglass, with a sort of cold inquiry--'Oh! is that all?' he might say; a Germanbegins at Paradise at the upper left-hand corner, and works his waythrough the details to hell below, at the right. But all are inwardlydisturbed, or puzzled, or profoundly interested, and when they go awaythis is the great picture which, of all they have seen, they rememberwith the most clearness. 

And as Michelangelo set his great mark upon the Sixtine, so Raphael tookthe Stanze and the Loggie for himself--and some of the halls of thepicture-galleries too. Raphael represented the feminine element incontrast with Michelangelo's rude masculinity. There hangs the great'Transfiguration, ' which, all but finished, was set up by the youngpainter's body when he lay in state--a picture too large for thesentiment it should express, while far too small for the subject itpresents--yet, in its way, a masterpiece of composition. For in ameasure Raphael succeeded in detaching the transfigured Christ from thecrowded foreground, and in creating two distinct centres of interest. The frescoes in the Stanze represent subjects of less artisticimpossibility, and in painting them Raphael expended in beauty of designthe genius which, in the 'Transfiguration, ' he squandered in attemptingto overcome insuperable difficulties. Watch the faces of yourfellow-tourists now, and you will see that the puzzled expression isgone. They are less interested than they were before the 'LastJudgment, ' but they are infinitely better pleased. 

Follow them on, to the library. They will enter with a look ofexpectation, and presently you will see disappointment and weariness intheir eyes. Libraries are for the learned, and there are but a handfulof scholars in a million. Besides, the most interesting rooms, theBorgia apartments, have been closed for many years and have onlyrecently been opened again after being wisely and well restored underthe direction of Leo the Thirteenth. 

Two or three bad men are responsible for almost all the evil that hasbeen said and written against the characters of the Popes in the MiddleAge. John the Twelfth, of the race of Theodora Senatrix, Farnese ofNaples and Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard, who was Alexander the Sixth, arethe chief instances. There were, indeed, many popes who were notperfect, who were more or less ambitious, avaricious, warlike, timid, headstrong, weak, according to their several characters; but it canhardly be said that any of them were, like those I have mentioned, really bad men through and through, vicious, unscrupulous and daringlycriminal. 

According to Guicciardini, Alexander the Sixth knew nothing of CæsarBorgia's intention of poisoning their rich friend, the Cardinal ofCorneto, with whom they were both to sup in a villa on August 17, 1503. The Pope arrived at the place first, was thirsty, asked for drink, andby a mistake was given wine from a flask prepared and sent by Cæsar forthe Cardinal. Cæsar himself came in next, and drank likewise. The Popedied the next day, but Cæsar recovered, though badly poisoned, to findhimself a ruined man and ultimately a fugitive. The Cardinal did nottouch the wine. This event ended an epoch and a reign of terror, and itpilloried the name of Borgia for ever. Alexander expired in the thirdroom of the Borgia apartments, in the raving of a terrible delirium, during which the superstitious bystanders believed that he wasconversing with Satan, to whom he had sold his soul for the papacy, andsome were ready to swear that they actually saw seven devils in the roomwhen he was dying. The fact that these witnesses were able to count thefiends speaks well for their coolness, and for the credibility of theirtestimony. 

It has been much the fashion of late years to cry down the Vaticancollection of statues, and to say that, with the exception of the'Torso' it does not contain a single one of the few great masterpiecesknown to exist, such as the 'Hermes of Olympia, ' the 'Venus of Medici, 'the 'Borghese Gladiator, ' the 'Dying Gaul. ' We are told that the'Apollo' of the Belvedere is a bad copy, and that the 'Laocoön' is nobetter, in spite of the signatures of the three Greek artists, one oneach of the figures; that the 'Antinous' is a bad Hermes; and so on tothe end of the collection, it being an easy matter to demolish the moreinsignificant statues after proving the worthlessness of the principalones. Much of this criticism comes to us from Germany. But a German cancriticise and yet admire, whereas an Anglo-Saxon usually despises whathe criticises at all. Isaac D'Israeli says somewhere that certainopinions, like certain statues, require to be regarded from a properdistance. Probably none of the statues in the Vatican is placed as thesculptor would have placed it to be seen to advantage. Michelangelobelieved in the 'Laocoön, ' and he was at least as good a judge as mostmodern critics, and he roughed out the arm that was missing, --his sketchlies on the floor in the corner, --and devoted much time to studying thegroup. It is true that he is said to have preferred the torso of the'Hercules, ' but he did not withhold his admiration of the other goodthings. Of the 'Apollo' it is argued that it is insufficiently modelled. Possibly it stood in a very high place and did not need much modelling, for the ancients never wasted work, nor bestowed it where it could notbe seen. However that may be, it is a far better statue, excepting thebad restorations, than it is now generally admitted to be, though it isnot so good as people used to believe that it was. Apparently there aretwo ways of looking at objects of art. The one way is to look for thefaults; the other way is to look for the beauties. It is plain that itmust be the discovery of the beauty which gives pleasure, while thecriticism of shortcomings can only flatter the individual's vanity. There cannot be much doubt but that Alcibiades got more enjoyment out oflife than Diogenes. 

The oldest decorated walls in the palace are those by Fra Angelico inthe Chapel of Nicholas. For some reason or other this chapel at one timeceased to be used, the door was walled up and the very existence of theplace was forgotten. In the last century Bottari, having read about itin Vasari, set to work to find it, and at last got into it through thewindow which looks upon the roof of the Sixtine Chapel. The story, whichis undoubtedly true, gives an idea of the vastness of the palace, andcertainly suggests the probability of more forgotten treasures of artshut up in forgotten rooms. 

One other such at least there is. High up in the Borgia Tower, above theStanze of Raphael, is a suite of rooms once inhabited by CardinalBibbiena, of the Chigi family, and used since then by more than oneAssistant Secretary of State. There is a small chapel there, with awindow looking upon an inner court. This was once the luxuriouscardinal's bath-room, and was beautifully painted by Raphael in fresco, with mythological subjects. In 1835, according to Crowe andCavalcaselle, Passavant saw it as it had originally been, with frescoesstill beautiful, though much damaged, and the marble bath still in itsplace in a niche painted with river gods. In one of the Vatican'speriodical fits of prudery the frescoes were completely hidden with awooden wainscot, the bath-tub was taken away and the room was turnedinto a chapel. It is believed, however, that the paintings still existbehind their present covering. 

The walk through the Museum is certainly one of the most wonderful inthe world. There are more masterpieces, perhaps, in Florence; possiblyobjects of greater value may be accumulated in the British Museum; butnowhere in the world are statues and antiquities so well arranged as inthe Vatican, and perhaps the orderly beauty of arrangement has as muchto do as anything else with the charm which pervades the whole. One isbrought into direct communication with Rome at its best, brilliant withthe last reflections of Hellenic light; and again one is brought intocontact with Rome at its worst, and beyond its worst, in its decay anddestruction. Amid the ruin, too, there is the visible sign of a newgrowth in the beginnings of Christianity, from which a new power, a newhistory, a new literature and a new art were to spring up and blossom, and in the rude sculpture of the Shepherd, the Lamb and the Fishes liesthe origin of Michelangelo's 'Moses' and 'Pietà. ' There, too, one mayread, as in a book, the whole history of death in Rome, graven in thelong lines of ancient inscriptions, the tale of death when there was nohope, and its story when hope had begun in the belief in theresurrection of the dead. There the sadness of the sorrowing Romancontrasts with the gentle hopefulness of the bereaved Christian, and thesentiment and sentimentality of mankind during the greatest of theworld's developments are told in the very words which men and womendictated to the stone-cutter. To those who can read the inscriptions theimpression of direct communication with antiquity is very strong. Forthose who cannot there is still a special charm in the long successionof corridors, in the occasional glimpses of the gardens, in themagnificence of the decorations, as well as in the statues and fragmentswhich line the endless straight walls. One returns at last to the outerchambers, one lingers here and there, to look again at something one hasliked, and in the end one goes out remembering the place rather than theobjects it contains, and desiring to return again for the sake of thewhole sensation one has had rather than for any defined purpose. 

At the last, opposite the iron turnstile by which visitors are counted, there is the closed gate of the garden. It is very hard to get admissionto it now, for the Pope himself is often there when the weather is fine. In the Italian manner of gardening, the grounds are well laid out, andproduce the effect of being much larger than they really are. They arenot, perhaps, very remarkable, and Leo the Thirteenth must sometimeslong for the hills of Carpineto and the freer air of the mountains, ashe drives round and round in the narrow limits of his small domain, orwalks a little under the shade of the ilex trees, conversing with hisgardener or his architect. Yet those who love Italy love itsold-fashioned gardens, the shady walks, the deep box-hedges, the stifflittle summer-houses, the fragments of old statues at the corners, andeven the 'scherzi d'acqua, ' which are little surprises of finewater-jets that unexpectedly send a shower of spray into the face of theunwary. There was always an element of childishness in the practicaljesting of the last century. 

When all is seen, the tourist gets into his cab and drives down theempty paved way by the wall of the library, along the basilica, and outonce more to the great square before the church. Or, if he be too strongto be tired, he will get out at the steps and go in for a few minutes tobreathe the quiet air before going home, to get the impression of unity, after the impressions of variety which he has received in the Vatican, and to take away with him something of the peace which fills thecathedral of Christendom. 

[Illustration]

SAINT PETER'S

We have an involuntary reverence for all witnesses of history, be theyanimate or inanimate, men, animals, or stones. The desire to leave awork behind is in every man and man-child, from the strong leader whoplants his fame in a nation's marrow, and teaches unborn generations tocall him glorious, to the boy who carves his initials upon his desk atschool. Few women have it. Perhaps the wish to be remembered is whatfills that one ounce or so of matter by which modern statisticiansassert that the average man's brain is heavier than the average woman's. The wish in ourselves makes us respect the satisfaction of it which thefew obtain. Probably few men have not secretly longed to see their namesset up for ages, like the 'Paulus V. Borghesius' over the middle of theportico of Saint Peter's, high above the entrance to the most vastmonument of human hands in existence. Modesty commands the respect of afew, but it is open success that appeals to almost all mankind. Pasquinlaughed:--

 'Angulus est Petri, Pauli frons tota. Quid inde? Non Petri, Paulo stat fabricata domus. '

Which means:--

 'The corner is Peter's, but the whole front Paul's. Not being Peter's, the house is built for Paul. '

The thing itself, the central cathedral of Christendom, is so enormousthat many who gaze on it for the first time do not even notice thathugely lettered papal name. The building is so far beyond any familiarproportions that at first sight all details are lost upon its broadfront. The mind and judgment are dazed and staggered. The earth shouldnot be able to bear such weight upon its crust without cracking andbending like an overloaded table. On each side the colonnades runcurving out like giant arms, always open to receive the nations that goup there to worship. The dome broods over all, like a giant's headmotionless in meditation. The vastness of the structure takes hold of aman as he issues from the street by which he has come from Sant' Angelo. In the open space, in the square and in the ellipse between thecolonnades and on the steps, two hundred thousand men could be drawn upin rank and file, horse and foot and guns. Excepting it be on somespecial occasion, there are rarely more than two or three hundredpersons in sight. The paved emptiness makes one draw a breath ofsurprise, and human eyes seem too small to take in all the flatnessbelow, all the breadth before, and all the height above. Taken together, the picture is too big for convenient sight. The impression itself movesunwieldily in the cramped brain. A building almost five hundred feethigh produces a monstrous effect upon the mind. Set down in words, adescription of it conveys no clear conception; seen for the first time, the impression produced by it cannot be put into language. It issomething like a shock to the intelligence, perhaps, and not altogethera pleasant one. Carried beyond the limits of a mere mistake, exaggeration becomes caricature; but when it is magnified beyondhumanity's common measures, it may acquire an element approaching toterror. The awe-striking giants of mythology were but magnified men. Thefirst sight of Saint Peter's affects one as though, in the everydaystreets, walking among one's fellows, one should meet with a man fortyfeet high. 

Involuntarily we conceive that Saint Peter's has always stood where itstands, and it becomes at once, in our imaginations, the witness of muchwhich it really never saw. Its calm seems meant to outlast history; onethinks that, while the Republic built Rome, and Augustus adorned it, andNero burned it on the other side of the Tiber, the cathedral of theworld was here, looking on across the yellow water, conscious of its owneternity, and solemnly indifferent to the ventures and adventures ofmankind. 

It is hard to reduce the great building in imagination to the littlebasilica built by Constantine the sentimentalist, on the site of Nero'scircus; built by some other man perhaps, for no one knows surely; but alittle church, at best, compared with many of those which Saint Peter'sdwarfs to insignificance now. To remind men of him the effigy of thatsame Constantine sits on a marble charger there, on the left, beneaththe portico, behind the great iron gate, with head thrown back, andlifted hand, and marble eyes gazing ever on the Cross. Some say that hereally embraced Christianity only when dying. The names of the churchesfounded by him in Constantinople are all sentimentally ambiguous, fromSophia, 'wisdom, ' to Anastasia, 'resurrection, ' or revival, and hence'spring. ' It is strange that the places of worship built by him in Rome, if they were really his work, should bear such exceedingly definitedesignations and direct dedications as Saint Peter's, Saint John's, Saint Paul's and the Church of the Holy Cross. At all events, whether hebelieved much or little, Christianity owes him much, and romance isindebted to him for almost as much more. But for Constantine there mighthave been no Charlemagne, no Holy Roman Empire. 

In old times criminals of low degree used to be executed on theEsquiline, and were buried there, unburned, unless their bodies wereleft to wither upon the cross in wind and sun, as generally happened. The place was the hideous feeding ground of wild dogs and carrion birds, and witches went there by night to perform their horrid rites. It wasthere that Canidia and her companion buried a living boy up to the neckthat they might make philters of his vitals. Everyone must remember theend of Horace's imprecation:--

 "... Insepulta membra different lupi, Et Esquilinæ alites. "

Then came Mæcenas and redeemed all that land; turned it into a garden, and beautified it; uprooted the mouldering crosses, whereon still hungthe bones of dead slaves, and set out trees in their stead; piled thirtyfeet of clean earth upon the shallow graves of executed murderers and ofgenerations of thieves, and planted shrubbery and flowers, and madewalks and paths and shady places. 

Therefore it happened that the southern spur of the Janiculum becameafter that time a place of execution and cruel death. The city had nevergrown much on that side of the Tiber, --that is to say, on the rightbank, --and the southern end of the long hill was a wilderness of sandand brushwood. 

[Illustration: MAMERTINE PRISON]

In the deep Mamertine prison, behind the Tabulary of the Forum, it wascustomary to put to death only political misdoers, and their bodies werethen thrown down the Gemonian steps. 'Vixerunt, ' said Cicero, grimly, when Catiline's fellow conspirators lay there dead; and perhaps thesword that was to fall upon his own neck was even then forged. Theprison is still intact. The blood of Vercingetorix and of Sejanus is onthe rocky floor. Men say that Saint Peter was imprisoned here. Butbecause he was not of high degree Nero's executioners led him out acrossthe Forum and over the Sublician bridge, up to the heights of Janiculum. He was then very old and weak, so that he could not carry his cross, ascondemned men were made to do. When they had climbed more than half-wayup the height, seeing that he could not walk much farther, theycrucified him. He said that he was not worthy to suffer as the Lord hadsuffered, and begged them to plant his cross with the head downward inthe deep yellow sand. The executioners did so. The Christians who hadfollowed were not many, and they stood apart weeping. 

When he was dead, after much torment, and the sentinel soldier had goneaway, they took the holy body, and carried it along the hillside, andburied it at night close against the long wall of Nero's circus, on thenorth side, near the place where they buried the martyrs killed daily byNero's wild beasts and in other cruel ways. They marked the spot, andwent there often to pray. Lately certain learned men have said that hewas crucified in the circus itself, but the evidence is slight comparedwith the undoubted weight of a very ancient tradition, and turns uponthe translation of a single word. 

Within two years Nero fell and perished miserably, scarcely able to takehis own life to escape being beaten to death in the Forum. In a littlemore than a year there were four emperors in Rome; Galba, Otho andVitellius followed one another quickly; then came Vespasian, and thenTitus, with his wars in Palestine, and then Domitian. At last, nearlythirty years after the apostle had died on the Janiculum, there was abishop called Anacletus, who had been ordained priest by Saint Peterhimself. The times being quieter then, this Anacletus built a littleoratory, a very small chapel, in which three or four persons could kneeland pray over the grave. And that was the beginning of Saint Peter'sChurch. But Anacletus died a martyr too, and the bishops after him allperished in the same way up to Eutichianus, whose name means somethinglike 'the fortunate one' in barbarous Greek-Latin, and who was indeedfortunate, for he died a natural death. But in the mean time certainGreeks had tried to steal the holy body, so that the Roman Christianscarried it away for nineteen months to the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian, after which they brought it back again and laid it in its place. Andagain after that, when the new circus was built by Elagabalus, they tookit once more to the same catacombs, where it remained in safety for along time. 

Now came Constantine, in love with religion and inclined to thinkChristianity best, and made a famous edict in Milan, and it is said thathe laid the deep foundations of the old Church of Saint Peter's, whichafterward stood more than eleven hundred years. He built it over thelittle oratory of Anacletus, whose chapel stood where the saint's bodyhad lain, under the nearest left-hand pillar of the canopy that coversthe high altar, as you go up from the door. Constantine's church wasfounded, on the south side, within the lines of Nero's circus, outsideof it on the north side, and parallel with its length. Most churches arebuilt with the apse to the east, but Constantine's, like the presentbasilica, looked west, because from time immemorial the bishop of Rome, when consecrating, stood on the farther side of the altar from thepeople, facing them over it. And the church was consecrated by PopeSylvester the First, in the year 326. 

Constantine built his church as a memorial and not as a tomb, because atthat time Saint Peter's body lay in the catacombs, where it had beentaken in the year 219, under Elagabalus. But at last, in the days ofHonorius, disestablisher of heathen worship, the body was brought backfor the last time, with great concourse and ceremony, and laid where itor its dust still lies, in a brazen sarcophagus. 

Then came Alaric and the Vandals and the Goths. But they respected thechurch and the Saint's body, though they respected Rome very little. AndOdoacer extinguished the flickering light of the Western Empire, andDietrich of Bern, as the Goths called Theodoric of Verona, founded theGothic kingdom, and left his name in the Nibelungenlied and elsewhere. At last arose Charles, who was called the 'Great' first on account ofhis size, and afterwards on account of his conquests, which exceededthose of Julius Cæsar in extent; and this Charlemagne came to Rome, andmarched up into the Church of Constantine, and bowed his enormous heightfor Leo the Third to set upon it the crown of the new empire, which wasever afterwards called the Holy Roman Empire, until Napoleon wiped outits name in Vienna, having girt on Charlemagne's sword, and founded anempire of his own, which lasted a dozen years instead of a thousand. 

So the ages slipped along till the church was in bad repair and indanger of falling, when Nicholas the Fifth was Pope, in 1450. He calledAlberti and Rossellini, who made the first plan; but it was the greatJulius the Second who laid the first stone of the present basilica, according to Bramante's plan, under the northeast pillar of the dome, where the statue of Saint Veronica now stands. The plan was changed manytimes, and it was not until 1626, on the thirteen hundredth anniversaryof Saint Sylvester's consecration, that Urban the Eighth consecratedwhat we now call the Church of Saint Peter. 

We who have known Saint Peter's since the old days cannot go in underthe portico without recalling vividly the splendid pageants we have seenpass in and out by the same gate. Even before reaching it we glance upfrom the vast square to the high balcony, remembering how from therePius the Ninth used to chant out the Pontifical benediction to the cityand the world, while in the silence below one could hear the breathingof a hundred thousand human beings. 

[Illustration: PANORAMA

From the Orti Farnesiani]

That is all in ghostland now, and will soon be beyond the reach ofmemory. In the coachhouses behind the Vatican, the old state coaches aremouldering; and the Pope, in his great sedia gestatoria, the bearers, the fan-men, the princes, the cardinals, the guards and the people willnot in our time be again seen together under the Roman sky. Old-fashioned persons sigh for the pageantry of those days when they goup the steps into the church. 

The heavy leathern curtain falls by its own weight, and the air issuddenly changed. A hushed, half-rhythmic sound, as of a world breathingin its sleep, makes the silence alive. The light is not dim orineffectual, but very soft and high, and it is as rich as floating golddust in the far distance, and in the apse, an eighth of a mile from thedoor. There is a blue and hazy atmospheric distance, as painters callit, up in the lantern of the cupola, a twelfth of a mile above thepavement. 

It is all very big. The longest ship that crosses the ocean could lie inthe nave between the door and the apse, and her masts from deck to truckwould scarcely top the canopy of the high altar, which looks so smallunder the super-possible vastness of the immense dome. We unconsciouslymeasure dwellings made with hands by our bodily stature. But there is alimit to that. No man standing for the first time upon the pavement ofSaint Peter's can make even a wide guess at the size of what he seesunless he knows the dimensions of some one object. 

Close to Filarete's central bronze door a round disk of porphyry issunk in the pavement. That is the spot where the emperors of the HolyRoman Empire were crowned in the old church; Charlemagne, FrederickBarbarossa and many others received the crown, the Chrism and theblessing here, before Constantine's ancient basilica was torn down lestit should fall of itself. For he did not build as Titus built--if, indeed, the old church was built by him at all. 

A man may well cast detail of history to the winds and let his mindstand free to the tremendous traditions of the place, since so much ofthem is truth beyond all question. Standing where Charles the Great wascrowned eleven hundred years ago, he stands not a hundred yards from thegrave where the Chief Apostle was first buried. There he has lain nowfor fifteen hundred years, since the 'religion of the fathers' was'disestablished, ' as we should say, by Honorius, and since the Popesbecame Pontifices Maximi of the new faith. This was the place of Nero'scircus long before the Colosseum was dreamed of, and the foundations ofChristendom's cathedral are laid in earth wet with blood of manythousand martyrs. During two hundred and fifty years every bishop ofRome died a martyr, to the number of thirty consecutive Popes. It isreally and truly holy ground, and it is meet that the air, once rent bythe death cries of Christ's innocent folk, should be enclosed in theworld's most sacred place, and be ever musical with holy song, andsweet with incense. It needs fifty thousand persons to fill the naveand transepts in Saint Peter's. It is known that at least that numberhave been present in the church several times within modern memory; butit is thought that the building would hold eighty thousand--as many ascould be seated on the tiers in the Colosseum. Such a concourse wasthere at the opening of the Oecumenical Council in December, 1869, andat the jubilees celebrated by Leo the Thirteenth; and on all thoseoccasions there was plenty of room in the aisles, besides the broadspaces which were required for the functions themselves. 

To feel one's smallness and realize it, one need only go and standbeside the marble cherubs that support the holy-water basins against thefirst pillar. They look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroicsize, and the bowls are as big as baths. Everything in the place isvast; all the statues are colossal, all the pictures enormous; thesmallest detail of the ornamentation would dwarf any other building inthe world, and anywhere else even the chapels would be churches. The eyestrains at everything, and at first the mind is shocked out of its powerof comparison. 

But the strangest, most extravagant, most incomprehensible, mostdisturbing sight of all is to be seen from the upper gallery in thecupola looking down to the church below. Hanging in mid-air, withnothing under one's feet, one sees the church projected in perspectivewithin a huge circle. It is as though one saw it upside down and insideout. Few men could bear to stand there without that bit of iron railingbetween them and the hideous fall; and the inevitable slight dizzinesswhich the strongest head feels may make one doubt for a moment whetherwhat is really the floor below may not be in reality a ceiling above, and whether one's sense of gravitation be not inverted in anextraordinary dream. At that distance human beings look no bigger thanflies, and the canopy of the high altar might be an ordinary table. 

And thence, climbing up between the double domes, one may emerge fromthe almost terrible perspective to the open air, and suddenly see allRome at one's feet, and all the Roman mountains stretched out to southand east, in perfect grace of restful outline, shoulder to shoulder, like shadowy women lying side by side and holding hands. 

And the broken symmetry of the streets and squares ranges below, cut bythe winding ribbon of the yellow Tiber; to the right the low Aventine, with the dark cypresses of the Protestant cemetery beyond, and thePalatine, crested with trees and ruins; the Pincian on the left, withits high gardens, and the mass of foliage of the Villa Medici behind it;the lofty tower of the Capitol in the midst of the city; and the sunclasping all to its heart of gold, the new and the old alike, past andpresent, youth, age and decay, --generous as only the sun can be in thissordid and miserly world, where bread is but another name for blood, anda rood of growing corn means a pound of human flesh. The sun is the onlygood thing in nature that always gives itself to man for nothing but themere trouble of sitting in the sunshine; and Rome without sunshine is avery grim and gloomy town today. 

It is worth the effort of climbing so high. Four hundred feet in theair, you look down on what ruled half the world by force for ages, andon what rules the other half today by faith--the greatest centre ofconquest and of discord and of religion which the world has ever seen. Athousand volumes have been written about it by a thousand wise men. Aword will tell what it has been--the heart of the world. Hither wasdrawn the world's blood by all the roads that lead to Rome, and hence itwas forced out again along the mighty arteries of the Cæsars'marches--to redden the world with the Roman name. Blood, blood and moreblood, --that was the history of old Rome, --the blood of brothers, theblood of foes, the blood of martyrs without end. It flowed and ebbed invarying tide at the will of the just and the unjust, but there wasalways more to shed, and there were always more hands to shed it. And soit may be again hereafter; for the name of Rome has a heart-stirringring, and there has always been as much blood spilled for the names ofthings as for the things themselves. 

It is wonderful to stand there and realize what every foot means, beneath that narrow standing room on the gallery outside the lantern, counting from the top downward as one counts the years of certain treesby the branches. For every division there is a pope and an architect:Sixtus the Fifth and Giacomo della Porta, Paul the Third andMichelangelo, Baldassare Peruzzi and Leo the Tenth, Julius the Secondand Bramante, Nicholas the Fifth and Alberti. Then the old church ofConstantine, and then the little oratory built over Saint Peter's graveby Saint Anacletus, the third or, according to some, the fourth bishopof Rome; then, even before that, Nero's circus, which was eitheraltogether destroyed or had gone to ruins before Anacletus built hischapel. 

And far below all are buried the great of the earth, deep down in thecrypt. There lies the chief Apostle, and there lie many martyred bishopsside by side; men who came from far lands to die the holy death inRome, --from Athens, from Bethlehem, from Syria, from Africa. There liethe last of the Stuarts, with their pitiful kingly names, James theThird, Charles the Third, and Henry the Ninth; the Emperor Otho theSecond has lain there a thousand years; Pope Boniface the Eighth of theCaetani, whom Sciarra Colonna took prisoner at Anagni, is there, andRodrigo Borgia, Alexander the Sixth, lay there awhile, and AgnesColonna, and Queen Christina of Sweden, and the Great Countess, andmany more besides, both good and bad--even to Catharine Cornaro, Queenof Cyprus, of romantic memory. In the high clear air above, it chillsone to think of the death silence down there in the crypt; but when youenter the church again after the long descent, and feel once more thequick change of atmosphere by which a blind man could tell that he wasin Saint Peter's, you feel also the spell of the place and its ancientenchantment; you do not regret the high view you left above, and thedead under your feet seem all at once near and friendly. 

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SAINT PETER'S]

It is not an exaggeration or the misuse of a word to call it magic. Magic is supposed to be a means of communication with beings of anotherworld. It is scarcely a metaphor to say that Saint Peter's is that. Itis the mere truth and no more, and you can feel that it is if you willstand, with half-closed eyes, against one of the great pillars, justwithin hearing of the voices that sing solemn music in the chapel of thechoir, and make yourself a day-dream of the people that go up the naveby seeing them a little indistinctly. If you will but remember how muchhumanity is like humanity in all ages, you can see the old life again asit was a hundred years--two, three, five, ten hundred years before that. If you are fortunate, just then, a score of German seminary students maypass you, in their scarlet cloth gowns, marching two and two in order, till they wheel by the right and go down upon their knees with militaryprecision before the gate of the Chapel of the Sacrament. Or if it bethe day and hour, a procession crosses the church, with lights and songand rich vestments, and a canopy over the Sacred Host, which theCardinal Archpriest himself is carrying reverently before him withupraised hands hidden under the cope, while the censers swing high toright and left. Or the singers from the choir go by, in violet silk andlace, hurrying along the inner south aisle to the door of the sacristy, where heavy yellow cherubs support marble draperies under the monumentof Pius the Eighth. If you stand by your pillar a little while, something will surely happen to help your dream, and sweep you back acentury or two. 

And if not, and if you have a little imagination of your own which canstir itself without help from outside, you can call up the figures ofthose that lie dead below, and of those who in ages gone have walked thedim aisles of the ancient church. Up the long nave comes Pelagius, Justinian's pope, with Narses by his side, to swear by holy cross andsacred gospel that he has not slain Vigilius, Pope before him: and thisNarses, smooth-faced, passionless, thoughtful, is the conqueror of theGoths, and having conquered them, he would not suffer that a hair of theremnant of them should be hurt, because he had given his word. High-handed Henry the Fifth, claiming power over the Church, beingrefused full coronation by Pope Paschal till he yields, seizes Pope andCollege of Cardinals then and there, and imprisons them till he hasstarved them to submission, and half requites the Church for Gregory'shumiliation of the father whom he himself thrust from the throne--ofthat Henry whom the strong Hildebrand made to do penance barefoot on thesnow in the courtyard of Matilda's Castle at Canossa. And Matildaherself, the Great Countess, the once all beautiful, betrayed in love, the half sainted, the all romantic, rises before you from her tombbelow, in straight, rich robes and flowing golden hair, and once moremakes gift of all her vast possessions to the Church of Rome. NicholasRienzi strides by, strange compound of heroism, vanity and high poetry, calling himself in one breath the people's tribune, and Augustus, and anemperor's son. There is a rush of armed men shouting furiously inSpanish, 'Carne! Sangre! Bourbon!' There is a clanging of steel, abreaking down of gates, and the Constable of Bourbon's horde pours in, irresistible, ravaging all, while he himself lies stark and stiffoutside, pierced by Bernardino Passeri's short bolt, and Clementtrembles in Sant' Angelo. Christina of Sweden, Monaldeschi's murder redupon her soul, comes next, fawning for forgiveness, to die in due timeover there in the Corsini palace by the Tiber. 

A man may call up half the world's history in half an hour in such aplace, toward evening, when the golden light streams through the HolyDove in the apse. And, in imagination, to those who have seen the greatpageants within our memory, the individual figures grow smaller as themagnificence of the display increases out of all proportion, until thechurch fills again with the vast throngs that witnessed the jubilees ofLeo the Thirteenth in recent years, and fifty thousand voices send up arending cheer while the most splendid procession of these late days goesby. 

It was in the Chapel of the Sacrament that the body of the good PopePius the Ninth was laid in state for several days. That was a strangeand solemn sight, too. The gates of the church were all shut but one, and that was only a little opened, so that the people passed in one byone from the great wedge-shaped crowd outside--a crowd that began at thefoot of the broad steps in the Piazza, and struggled upward all theafternoon, closer and closer toward the single entrance. For in themorning only the Roman nobles and the prelates and high ecclesiasticswere admitted, by another way. Within the church the thin stream of menand women passed quickly between a double file of Italian soldiers. Thatwas the first and last time since 1870 that Italian troops were underarms within the consecrated precincts. It was still winter, and theafternoon light was dim, and it seemed a long way to the chapel. Thegood man lay low, with his slippered feet between the bars of the closedgate. The people paused as they passed, and most of them kissed theembroidered cross, and looked at the still features, before they wenton. It was dim, but the six tall waxen torches threw a warm light on thequiet face, and the white robes reflected it around. There were threetorches on each side, too, and there were three Noble Guards in fulldress, motionless, with drawn swords, as though on parade. But no onelooked at them. Only the marble face, with its kind, far-away smile, fixed itself in each man's eyes, and its memory remained with each whenhe had gone away. It was very solemn and simple, and there were no otherlights in the church save the little lamps about the Confession andbefore the altars. The long, thin stream of people went on swiftly andout by the sacristy all the short afternoon till it was night, and therest of the unsatisfied crowd was left outside as the single gate wasclosed. 

Few saw the scene which followed, when the good Pope's body had lainfour days in state, and was then placed in its coffin at night, to behoisted high and swung noiselessly into the temporary tomb above thesmall door on the east side--that is, to the left--of the Chapel of theChoir. It was for a long time the custom that each pope should lie thereuntil his successor died, when his body was removed to the monumentprepared for it in the mean time, and the Pope just dead was laid in thesame place. 

The church was almost dark, and only in the Chapel of the Choir and inthat of the Holy Sacrament, which are opposite each other, a number ofbig wax candles shed a yellow light. In the niche over the door a masonwas still at work, with a tallow dip, clearly visible below. The triplecoffin stood before the altar in the Chapel of the Choir. Opposite, where the body still lay, the Noble Guards and the Swiss Guards, intheir breastplates, kept watch with drawn swords and halberds. 

The Noble Guards carried the bier on their shoulders in solemnprocession, with chanting choir, robed bishop, and tramping soldiers, round by the Confession and across the church, and lifted the body intothe coffin. The Pope had been very much beloved by all who were nearhim, and more than one grey-haired prelate shed tears of genuine griefthat night. 

In the coffin, in accordance with an ancient custom, a bag was placedcontaining ninety-three medals, one of gold, one of silver and one ofbronze, for each of the thirty-one years which Pope Pius had reigned;and a history of the pontificate, written on parchment, was alsodeposited at the feet of the body. 

When the leaden coffin was soldered, six seals were placed upon it, fiveby cardinals, and one by the archivist. During the ceremony theProtonotary Apostolic, the Chancellor of the Apostolic Chamber and theNotary of the Chapter of Saint Peter's were busy, pen in hand, writingdown the detailed protocol of the proceedings. 

The last absolution was pronounced, and the coffin in its outer case ofelm was slowly moved out and raised in slings, and gently swung into theniche. The masons bricked up the opening in the presence of cardinalsand guards, and long before midnight the marble slab, carved torepresent the side of a sarcophagus, was in its place, with its simpleinscription, 'Pius IX, P. M. '

From time immemorial the well containing the marble staircase whichleads down to the tomb of Saint Peter has been called the 'Confession. 'The word, I believe, is properly applied to the altar-rail, from theancient practice of repeating there the general confession immediatelybefore receiving the Communion, a custom now slightly modified. But Imay be wrong in giving this derivation. At all events, a marblebalustrade follows the horseshoe shape of the well, and upon it areplaced ninety-five gilded lamps, which burn perpetually. There is saidto be no special significance in the number, and they produce verylittle effect by daylight. 

But on the eve of Saint Peter's Day, and perhaps at some other seasons, the Pope has been known to come down to the church by the secretstaircase leading into the Chapel of the Sacrament, to pray at theApostle's tomb. On such occasions a few great candlesticks with waxtorches were placed on the floor of the church, two and two, between theChapel and the Confession. The Pope, attended only by a few chamberlainsand Noble Guards, and dressed in his customary white cassock, passedswiftly along in the dim light, and descended the steps to the gildedgate beneath the high altar. A marble pope kneels there too, Pius theSixth, of the Braschi family, his stone draperies less white than PopeLeo's cassock, his marble face scarcely whiter than the living Pontiff'salabaster features. 

Those are sights which few have been privileged to see. There is a sortof centralization of mystery, if one may couple such words, in theprivate pilgrimage of the head of the Church to the tomb of the chiefApostle by night, on the eve of the day which tradition has kept fromthe earliest times as the anniversary of Saint Peter's martyrdom. Thewhole Catholic world, if it might, would follow Leo the Thirteenth downthose marble steps, and two hundred million voices would repeat theprayer he says alone. 

Many and solemn scenes have been acted out by night in the vast gloom ofthe enormous church, and if events do not actually leave an essence ofthemselves in places, as some have believed, yet the knowledge that theyhave happened where we stand and recall them has a mysterious power tothrill the heart. 

Opposite the Chapel of the Sacrament is the Chapel of the Choir. SaintPeter's is a cathedral, and is managed by a chapter of Canons, each ofwhom has his seat in the choir, and his vote in the disposal of thecathedral's income, which is considerable. The chapter maintains theChoir of Saint Peter's, a body of musicians quite independent of theso-called 'Pope's Choir, ' which is properly termed the 'Choir of theSixtine Chapel, ' and which is paid by the Pope. There are some radicaldifferences between the two. By a very ancient and inviolableregulation, the so-called 'musico, ' or artificial soprano, is neverallowed to sing in the Chapel of the Choir, where the soprano singersare without exception men who sing in falsetto, though they speak in adeep voice. On great occasions the Choir of the Sixtine joins in themusic in the body of the church, but never in the Chapel, and alwaysbehind a lattice. 

Secondly, no musical instruments are ever used in the Sixtine. In theChapel of the Choir, on the contrary, there are two large organs. Theone on the west side is employed on all ordinary occasions; it is overtwo hundred years old, and is tuned about two tones below the modernpitch. It is so worn out that an organ-builder is in attendance duringevery service, to make repairs at a moment's notice. The bellows leak, the stops stick, some notes have a chronic tendency to cipher, and thepedal trackers unhook themselves unexpectedly. But the Canons wouldcertainly not think of building a new organ. 

Should they ever do so, and tune the instrument to the modern pitch, theconsternation of the singers would be great; for the music is allwritten for the existing organ, and could not be performed two noteshigher, not to mention the confusion that would arise where all themusic is sung at sight by singers accustomed to an unusual pitch. Thisis a fact not generally known, but worthy of notice. The music sung inSaint Peter's, and, indeed, in most Roman churches, is never rehearsednor practised. The music itself is entirely in manuscript, and is theproperty of the choir master, or, as is the case in Saint Peter's, ofthe Chapter, and there is no copyright in it beyond this fact of actualpossession, protected by the simple plan of never allowing any musicianto have his part in his hands except while he is actually performing it. In the course of a year the same piece may be sung several times, andthe old choristers may become acquainted with a good deal of music inthis way, but never otherwise. Mozart is reported to have learnedAllegri's Miserere by ear, and to have written it down from memory. Theother famous Misereres, which are now published, were pirated in asimilar way. The choir master of that day was very unpopular. Some ofthe leading singers who had sung the Misereres during many years insuccession, and had thus learned their several parts, met and puttogether what they knew into a whole, which was at once published, tothe no small annoyance and discomfiture of their enemy. But much goodmusic is quite beyond the reach of the public--Palestrina's bestmotetts, airs by Alessandro Stradella, the famous hymn of Raimondi, inshort a great musical library, an 'archivio' as the Romans call such acollection, all of which is practically lost to the world. 

It is wonderful that under such circumstances the choir of Saint Peter'sshould obtain even such creditable results. At a moment's notice anorganist and about a hundred singers are called upon to execute a floridpiece of music which many have never seen nor heard; the accompanimentis played at sight from a mere figured bass, on a tumble-down instrumenttwo hundred years old, and the singers, both the soloists and thechorus, sing from thumbed bits of manuscript parts written inold-fashioned characters on paper often green with age. No one has everdenied the extraordinary musical facility of Italians, but if theoutside world knew how Italian church music is performed it would bevery much astonished. 

It is no wonder that such music is sometimes bad. But sometimes it isvery good; for there are splendid voices among the singers, and theMaestro Renzi, the chief organist, is a man of real talent as well as ofamazing facility. His modernizing influence is counter-balanced by thatof the old choir master, Maestro Meluzzi, a first-rate musician, whowould not for his life change a hair of the old-fashioned traditions. Yet there are moments, on certain days, when the effect of the great oldorgan, with the rich voices blending in some good harmony, is verysolemn and stirring. The outward persuasive force of religion lieslargely in its music, and the religions that have no songs make fewproselytes. 

Nothing, perhaps, is more striking, as one becomes better acquaintedwith Saint Peter's, than the constant variety of detail. The vastbuilding produces at first sight an impression of harmony, and thereappears to be a remarkable uniformity of style in all the objects onesees. There are no oil-paintings to speak of in the church, and but fewfrescoes. The great altar-pieces are almost exclusively fine mosaiccopies of famous pictures which are preserved elsewhere. Of thesereproductions the best is generally considered to be that of Guercino's'Saint Petronilla, ' at the end of the right aisle of the tribune. 

Debrosses praises these mosaic altar-pieces extravagantly, and evenexpresses the opinion that they are probably superior in point of colourto the originals from which they are copied. In execution they arecertainly wonderful, and many a stranger looks at them and passes on, believing them to be oil-paintings. They possess the quality of beingimperishable and beyond all influence of climate or dampness, and theyare masterpieces of mechanical workmanship. But many will think themhard and unsympathetic in outline, and decidedly crude in colour. Muchwit has been manufactured by the critics at the expense of Guido Reni's'Michael, ' for instance, and as many sharp things could be said about agood many other works of the same kind in the church. Yet, on the whole, they do not destroy the general harmony. Big as they are, when they areseen from a little distance they sink into mere insignificant patches ofcolour, all but lost in the deep richness of the whole. 

As for the statues and monuments, between the 'Pietà' of Michelangeloand Bracci's horrible tomb of Benedict the Fourteenth, there is the stepwhich, according to Tom Paine, separates the sublime from theridiculous. That very witty saying has in it only just the smallingredient of truth without which wit remains mere humour. Between theridiculous and the sublime there may sometimes be, indeed, but one stepin the execution; but there is always the enormous moral distance whichseparates real feeling from affectation--the gulf which divides, forinstance, Bracci's group from Michelangelo's. 

[Illustration: PIETÀ OF MICHELANGELO]

The 'Pietà' is one of the great sculptor's early works. It is badlyplaced. It is dwarfed by the heavy architecture above and around it. Itis insulted by a pair of hideous bronze cherubs. There is a manifestimprobability in the relative size of the figure of Christ and that ofthe Blessed Virgin. Yet in spite of all, it is one of the most beautifuland touching groups in the whole world, and by many degrees the bestwork of art in the great church. Michelangelo was a man of the strongestdramatic instinct even in early youth, and when he laid his hand to themarble and cut his 'Pietà' he was in deep sympathy with the supremedrama of man's history. He found in the stone, once and for all time, the grief of the human mother for her son, not comforted byforeknowledge of resurrection, nor lightened by prescience of nearglory. He discovered in the marble, by one effort, the divinity ofdeath's rest after torture, and taught the eye to see that thedissolution of this dying body is the birth of the soul that cannot die. In the dead Christ there are two men manifest to sight. 'The first manis of earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. '

In the small chapel stands a strangely wrought column, enclosed in aniron cage. The Romans now call it the Colonna Santa, the holy pillar, and it is said to be the one against which Christ leaned when teachingin the temple at Jerusalem. A great modern authority believes it to beof Roman workmanship, and of the third century; but those who have livedin the East will see much that is oriental in the fantastic ornamentedcarving. It matters little. In actual fact, whatever be its origin, thisis the column known in the Middle Age as the 'Colonna degli Spiritati, 'or column of those possessed by evil spirits, and it was customary tobind to it such unlucky individuals as fell under the suspicion of'possession' in order to exorcise the spirit with prayers and holywater. Aretino has made a witty scene about this in the 'Cortegiana, 'where one of the Vatican servants cheats a poor fisherman, and thenhands him over to the sacristan of Saint Peter's to be cured of animaginary possession by a ceremonious exorcism. Such proceedings musthave been common enough in those days when witchcraft and demonologywere elements with which rulers and lawgivers had to count at everyturn. 

Leave the column and its legend in the lonely chapel, with the exquisite'Pietà'; wander hither and thither, and note the enormous contrastsbetween good and bad work which meet you at every turn. Up in the rightaisle of the tribune you will come upon what is known as Canova'smasterpiece, the tomb of Clement the Thirteenth, the Rezzonico pope, asstrange a mixture of styles and ideas as any in the world, and yet agenuine expression of the artistic feeling of that day. The grave Popeprays solemnly above; on the right a lovely heathen genius of Deathleans on a torch; on the left rises a female figure of Religion, one ofthe most abominably bad statues in the world; below, a brace ofimprobable lions, extravagantly praised by people who do not understandleonine anatomy, recall Canova's humble origin and his first attempt atmodelling. For the sculptor began life as a waiter in a 'canova divino, ' or wine shop, whence his name; and it was when a high dignitarystopped to breakfast at the little wayside inn that the lad modelled alion in butter to grace the primitive table. The thing attracted therich traveller's attention, and the boy's fortune was made. The Pope isimpressive, the Death is gentle and tender, the Religion, with her crownof gilded spikes for rays, and her clumsy cross, is a vision of badtaste, and the sleepy lions, when separated from what has been writtenabout them, excite no interest. Yet somehow, from a distance, themonument gets harmony out of its surroundings. 

[Illustration: TOMB OF CLEMENT THE THIRTEENTH]

One of the best tombs in the basilica is that of Sixtus the Fourth, thefirst pope of the Rovere family, in the Chapel of the Sacrament. Thebronze figure, lying low on a sarcophagus placed out on upon the floor, has a quiet manly dignity about it which one cannot forget. But in thesame tomb lies a greater man of the same name, Julius the Second, forwhom Michelangelo made his 'Moses' in the Church of San Pietro inVincoli--a man who did more than any other, perhaps, to make the greatbasilica what it is, and who, by a chain of mistakes, got no tomb of hisown. He who solemnly laid the foundations of the present church, andlived to see the four main piers completed, with their arches, has onlya little slab in the pavement to recall his memory. The protector andfriend of Bramante, of Michelangelo and of Raphael, --of the greatarchitect, the great sculptor and the great painter, --has not so much asthe least work of any of the three to mark his place of rest. Perhaps heneeded nothing but his name. 

After all, his bones have been allowed to rest in peace, which is morethan can be said of all that have been buried within the area of thechurch. Urban the Sixth had no such good fortune. He so much surprisedthe cardinals, as soon as they had elected him, by his vigorous moralreforms that they hastily retired to Anagni and elected an antipope ofmilder manners and less sensitive conscience. He lived to triumph overhis enemies. In Piacenza he was besieged by King Charles of Naples. Heexcommunicated him, tortured seven cardinals whom he caught in theconspiracy and put five of them to death; overcame and slew Charles, refused him burial and had his body exposed to the derision of thecrowd. The chronicler says that 'Italy, Germany, England, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Sicily and Portugal were obedient to the Lord PopeUrban the Sixth. ' He died peacefully, and was buried in Saint Peter's ina marble sarcophagus. 

But when Sixtus the Fifth, who also surprised the cardinals greatly, wasin a fit of haste to finish the dome, the masons, wanting a receptaclefor water, laid hands on Urban's stone coffin, pitched his bones into acorner, and used the sarcophagus as they pleased, leaving it to serve asa water-tank for many years afterwards. 

In extending the foundations of the church, Paul the Third came upon thebodies of Maria and Hermania, the two wives of Honorius, the Emperor who'disestablished' paganism in favour of Christianity. They were sisters, daughters of Stilicho, and had been buried in their imperial robes, withmany rich objects and feminine trinkets; and they were found intact, asthey had been buried, in the month of February, 1543. Forty pounds offine gold were taken from their robes alone, says Baracconi, withoutcounting all the jewels and trinkets, among which was a very beautifullamp, besides a great number of precious stones. The Pope melted downthe gold for the expenses of the building, and set the gems in a tiara, where, if they could be identified, they certainly exist today--the verystones worn by empresses of ancient Rome. 

Then, as if in retribution, the Pope's own tomb was moved from itsplace. Despoiled of two of the four statues which adorned it, themonument is now in the tribune, and is still one of the best in thechurch. A strange and tragic tale is told of it. A Spanish student, itis said, fell madly in love with the splendid statue of Paul'ssister-in-law, Julia Farnese. He succeeded in hiding himself in thebasilica when it was closed at night, threw himself in a frenzy upon themarble and was found stone dead beside it in the morning. The uglydraperies of painted metal which now hide much of the statue owe theirorigin to this circumstance. Classical scholars will remember that asomewhat similar tale is told by Pliny of the Venus of Praxiteles inCnidus. 

In spite of many assertions to the effect that the bronze statue ofSaint Peter which is venerated in the church was originally an image ofJupiter Capitolinus, the weight of modern authority and artisticjudgment is to the contrary. The work cannot really be earlier than thefifth century, and is therefore of a time after Honorius and thedisestablishment. Anyone who will take the trouble to examine the livesof the early popes in Muratori may read the detailed accounts of whateach one did for the churches. It is not by any means impossible thatthis may be one of the statues made under Saint Innocent the First, acontemporary of Honorius, in whose time a Roman lady called Vestinamade gift to the church of vast possessions, the proceeds of which wereused in building and richly adorning numerous places of worship. In anycase, since it is practically certain that the statue was originallyintended for a portrait of Saint Peter, and has been regarded as suchfor nearly fifteen hundred years, it commands our respect, if not ourveneration. 

The Roman custom of kissing the foot, then bending and placing one'shead under it, signifies submission to the commands of the Church, andis not, as many suppose, an act of devotion to the statue. 

The practice of dressing it in magnificent robes on the feast of SaintPeter is connected with the ancient Roman custom, which requiredcensors, when entering upon office, to paint the earthen statue ofJupiter Capitolinus a bright red. But the connection lies in the Italianmind and character, which cling desperately to external practices fortheir hold upon inward principles. It is certainly not an inheritance ofuninterrupted tradition, as Roman church music, on the contrary, mostcertainly is; for there is every reason to believe that the recitationsnow noted in the Roman missal were very like those used by the ancientRomans on solemn occasions. 

The church is not only a real landmark. Astronomers say that if therewere a building of the same dimensions on the moon we could easily seeit with our modern telescopes. It is also, in a manner, one of Time'sgreat mile-stones, of which some trace will probably remain till thevery end of the world's life. Its mere mass will insure to it thepermanence of the great pyramid of Cheops. Its mere name associates itfor ever with the existence of Christianity from the earliest time. Ithas stamped itself upon the minds of millions of men as the most vastmonument of the ages. Its very defects are destined to be as lasting asits beauties, and its mighty faults are more imposing than the smallperfections of the Greeks. Between it and the Parthenon, as between theRoman empire and the Athenian commonwealth, one may choose, but onedares not make comparison. The genius of the Greeks absorbed the world'sbeauty into itself, distilled its perfection, and gave humanity its mostsubtle quintessence; but the Latin arm ruled the world itself, and theimperial Latin intelligence could never find any expression fitted toits enormous measure. That is the secret of the monstrous element in allthe Romans built. And that supernormal giantism showed itself almost forthe last time in the building of Saint Peter's, when the Latin race hadreached its last great development, and the power of the Latin popesovershadowed the whole world, and was itself about to be humbled. BeforeMichelangelo was dead Charles the Fifth had been Emperor forty years, Doctor Martin Luther had denied the doctrine of salvation by works, thenations had broken loose from the Popes, and the world was at war. 

[Illustration]

Let us part here, at the threshold of Saint Peter's, not saying farewellto Rome, nor taking leave without hope of meeting on this consecratedground again; but since the city lies behind us, region beyond region, memory over memory, legend within legend, and because we have passedthrough it by steps and by stations, very quickly, yet not thoughtlesslynor irreverently, let us now go each our way for a time, rememberingsome of those things which we have seen and of which we have talked, that we may know them better if we see them again. 

For a man can no more say a last farewell to Rome than he can take leaveof eternity. The years move on, but she waits; the cities fall, but shestands; the old races of men lie dead in the track wherein mankindwanders always between two darknesses; yet Rome lives, and her changesare not from life to death, as ours are, but from one life to another. A man may live with Rome, laugh with her, dream with her, weep with her, die at her feet; but for him who knows her there is no good-bye, for shehas taken the high seat of his heart, and whither he goes, she is withhim, in joy or sorrow, with wonder, longing or regret, as the chords ofhis heart were tuned by his angel in heaven. 

But she is as a well-loved woman, whose dear face is drawn upon a man'sheart by the sharp memory of a cruel parting, line for line, shadow forshadow, look for look, as she was when he saw her last; and line forline he remembers her and longs for her smile and her tender word. Yetbe the lines ever so deep-graven, and the image ever so sweet and true, when the time of parting is over, when he comes back and she standswhere she stood, with eyes that lighten to his eyes, then she is betterloved than he knew and dearer than he had guessed. Then the heart thathas steadily beaten time to months of parting, leaps like a child at theinstant of meeting again; then eyes that have so long fed on memory'svision widen and deepen with joy of the living truth; then the soul thathas hungered and starved through an endless waiting, is suddenly filledwith life and satisfied of its faith. 

So he who loves Rome, and leaves her, remembers her long and well, telling himself that he knows how every stone of her walls and herstreets would look again; but he comes back at last, and sees her asshe is, and he stands amazed at the grandeur of all that has been, andis touched to the heart by the sad loveliness of much that is. Together, the thoughts of love and reverence rise in words, and with them comesthe deep wonder at something very great and high. For he himself isgrown grey and war-worn in the strife of a few poor years, while throughfive and twenty centuries Rome has faced war and the world; and he, agladiator of life, bows his head before her, wondering how his own fightshall end at last, while his lips pronounce the submission of his ownmortality to her abiding endurance--

 AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS, MORITURUS TE SALUTAT

Index

A

Abruzzi, i. 159; ii. 230

Accoramboni, Flaminio, i. 296 Vittoria, i. 135, 148, 289-296, 297

Agrarian Law, i. 23

Agrippa, i. 90, 271; ii. 102 the Younger, ii. 103

Alaric, i. 252; ii. 297

Alba Longa, i. 3, 78, 130

Albergo dell' Orso, i. 288

Alberic, ii. 29

Albornoz, ii. 19, 20, 74

Aldobrandini, i. 209; ii. 149 Olimpia, i. 209

Alfonso, i. 185

Aliturius, ii. 103

Altieri, i. 226; ii. 45

Ammianus Marcellinus, i. 132, 133, 138

Amphitheatre, Flavian, i. 91, 179

Amulius, i. 3

Anacletus, ii. 295, 296, 304

Anagni, i. 161, 165, 307; ii. 4, 5

Ancus Martius, i. 4

Angelico, Beato, ii. 158, 169, 190-192, 195, 285

Anguillara, i. 278; ii. 138 Titta della, ii. 138, 139

Anio, the, i. 93 Novus, i. 144 Vetus, i. 144

Annibaleschi, Riccardo degli, i. 278

Antiochus, ii. 120

Antipope-- Anacletus, ii. 84 Boniface, ii. 28 Clement, i. 126 Gilbert, i. 127 John of Calabria, ii. 33-37

Antonelli, Cardinal, ii. 217, 223, 224

Antonina, i. 266

Antonines, the, i. 113, 191, 271

Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, i. 46, 96, 113, 114, 190, 191

Appian Way, i. 22, 94

Appius Claudius, i. 14, 29

Apulia, Duke of, i. 126, 127; ii. 77

Aqua Virgo, i. 155

Aqueduct of Claudius, i. 144

Arbiter, Petronius, i. 85

Arch of-- Arcadius, i. 192 Claudius, i. 155 Domitian, i. 191, 205 Gratian, i. 191 Marcus Aurelius, i. 96, 191, 205 Portugal, i. 205 Septimius Severus, ii. 93 Valens, i. 191

Archive House, ii. 75

Argiletum, the, i. 72

Ariosto, ii. 149, 174

Aristius, i. 70, 71

Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73, 76-89

Arnulf, ii. 41

Art, i. 87; ii. 152 and morality, i. 260, 261; ii. 178, 179 religion, i. 260, 261 Barocco, i. 303, 316 Byzantine in Italy, ii. 155, 184, 185 development of taste in, ii. 198 factors in the progress of art, ii. 181 engraving, ii. 186 improved tools, ii. 181 individuality, i. 262; ii. 175-177 Greek influence on, i. 57-63 modes of expression of, ii. 181 fresco, ii. 181-183 oil painting, ii. 184-186 of the Renascence, i. 231, 262; ii. 154 phases of, in Italy, ii. 188 progress of, during the Middle Age, ii. 166, 180 transition from handicraft to, ii. 153

Artois, Count of, i. 161

Augustan Age, i. 57-77

Augustulus, i. 30, 47, 53; ii. 64

Augustus, i. 30, 43-48, 69, 82, 89, 90, 184, 219, 251, 252, 254, 270; ii. 64, 75, 95, 102, 291

Aurelian, i. 177, 179, 180; ii. 150

Avalos, Francesco, d', i. 174, 175

Aventine, the, i. 23, 76; ii. 10, 40, 85, 119-121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 132, 302

Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 6, 9

B

Bacchanalia, ii. 122

Bacchic worship, i. 76; ii. 120

Bajazet the Second, Sultan, i. 276

Baracconi, i. 104, 141, 178, 188, 252, 264, 274, 304; ii. 41, 45, 128, 130, 138, 323

Barberi, i. 202

Barberini, the, i. 157, 187, 226, 268, 301; ii. 7

Barbo, i. 202; ii. 45

Barcelona, i. 308

Bargello, the, i. 129, 293, 296; ii. 42

Basil and Constantine, ii. 33

Basilica (Pagan)-- Julia, i. 66, 71, 106; ii. 92

Basilicas (Christian) of-- Constantine, i. 90; ii. 292, 297 Liberius, i. 138 Philip and Saint James, i. 170 Saint John Lateran, i. 107, 112, 117, 278, 281 Santa Maria Maggiore, i. 107, 135, 139, 147, 148, 166, 208, 278; ii. 118 Santi Apostoli, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Sicininus, i. 134, 138

Baths, i. 91 of Agrippa, i. 271 of Caracalla, ii. 119 of Constantine, i. 144, 188 of Diocletian, i. 107, 129, 145-147, 149, 289, 292 of Novatus, i. 145 of Philippus, i. 145 of public, i. 144 of Severus Alexander, ii. 28 of Titus, i. 55, 107, 152

Befana, the, i. 298, 299, 300; ii. 25

Belisarius, i. 266, 267, 269

Benediction of 1846, the, i. 183

Benevento, Cola da, i. 219, 220

Bernard, ii. 77-80

Bernardi, Gianbattista, ii. 54

Bernini, i. 147, 301, 302, 303; ii. 24

Bibbiena, Cardinal, ii. 146, 285 Maria, ii. 146

Bismarck, ii. 224, 232, 236, 237

Boccaccio, i. 211, 213 Vineyard, the, i. 189

Bologna, i. 259; ii. 58

Borghese, the, i. 206, 226 Scipio, i. 187

Borgia, the, i. 209 Cæsar, i. 149, 151, 169, 213, 287; ii. 150, 171, 282, 283 Gandia, i. 149, 150, 151, 287 Lucrezia, i. 149, 177, 185, 287; ii. 129, 151, 174 Rodrigo, i. 287; ii. 242, 265, 282 Vanozza, i. 149, 151, 287

Borgo, the Region, i. 101, 127; ii. 132, 147, 202-214, 269

Borromini, i. 301, 302; ii. 24

Botticelli, ii. 188, 190, 195, 200, 276

Bracci, ii. 318

Bracciano, i. 282, 291, 292, 294 Duke of, i. 289

Bramante, i. 305; ii. 144, 145, 274, 298, 322

Brescia, i. 286

Bridge. See _Ponte_ Ælian, the, i. 274 Cestian, ii. 105 Fabrician, ii. 105 Sublician, i. 6, 23, 67; ii. 127, 294

Brotherhood of Saint John Beheaded, ii. 129, 131

Brothers of Prayer and Death, i. 123, 204, 242

Brunelli, ii. 244

Brutus, i. 6, 12, 18, 41, 58, 80; ii. 96

Buffalmacco, ii. 196

Bull-fights, i. 252

Burgundians, i. 251

C

Cæsar, Julius, i. 29-33, 35-41, 250; ii. 102, 224, 297

Cæsars, the, i. 44-46, 125, 249, 252, 253; ii. 224 Julian, i. 252 Palaces of, i. 4, 191; ii. 95

Caetani, i. 51, 115, 159, 161, 163, 206, 277 Benedict, i. 160

Caligula, i. 46, 252; ii. 96

Campagna, the, i. 92, 94, 158, 237, 243, 253, 282, 312; ii. 88, 107, 120

Campitelli, the Region, i. 101; ii. 64

Campo-- dei Fiori, i. 297 Marzo (Campus Martius), i. 65, 112, 271 the Region, i. 101, 248, 250, 275; ii. 6, 44 Vaccino, i. 128-131, 173

Canale, Carle, i. 287

Cancelleria, i, 102, 305, 312, 315, 316; ii. 223

Canidia, i. 64; ii. 293

Canossa, i. 126; ii. 307

Canova, ii. 320

Capet, Hugh, ii. 29

Capitol, the, i. 8, 14, 24, 29, 72, 107, 112, 167, 190, 204, 278, 282;ii. 12, 13, 21, 22, 52, 64, 65, 67-75, 84, 121, 148, 302

Capitoline hill, i. 106, 194

Captains of the Regions, i. 110, 112, 114 Election of, i. 112

Caracci, the, i. 264

Carafa, the, ii. 46, 49, 50, 56, 111

Cardinal, i. 186, 188; ii. 56, 204

Carnival, i. 107, 193-203, 241, 298; ii. 113 of Saturn, i. 194

Carpineto, ii. 229, 230, 232, 239, 287

Carthage, i. 20, 26, 88

Castagno, Andrea, ii. 89, 185

Castle of-- Grottaferrata, i. 314 Petrella, i. 286 the Piccolomini, i. 268 Sant' Angelo, i. 114, 116, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 259, 278, 284, 308, 314; ii. 17, 28, 37, 40, 56, 59, 60, 109, 152, 202-214, 216, 269

Castracane, Castruccio, i. 165, 166, 170

Catacombs, the, i. 139 of Saint Petronilla, ii. 125 Sebastian, ii. 296

Catanei, Vanossa de, i. 287

Catharine, Queen of Cyprus, ii. 305

Cathedral of Siena, i. 232

Catiline, i. 27; ii. 96, 294

Cato, ii. 121

Catullus, i. 86

Cavour, Count, ii. 90, 224, 228, 237

Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 311, 315; ii. 157, 195

Cenci, the, ii. 1 Beatrice, i. 147, 285-287; ii. 2, 129, 151 Francesco, i. 285; ii. 2

Centra Pio, ii. 238, 239

Ceri, Renzo da, i. 310

Cesarini, Giuliano, i. 174; ii. 54, 89

Chapel, Sixtine. See under _Vatican_

Charlemagne, i. 32, 49, 51, 53, 76, 109; ii. 297

Charles of Anjou, i. Ii. 160 Albert of Sardinia, ii. 221 the Fifth, i. 131, 174, 206, 220, 305, 306; ii. 138

Chiesa. See _Church_ Nuova, i. 275

Chigi, the, i. 258 Agostino, ii. 144, 146 Fabio, ii. 146

Christianity in Rome, i. 176

Christina, Queen of Sweden, ii. 150, 151, 304, 308

Chrysostom, ii. 104, 105

Churches of, -- the Apostles, i. 157, 170-172, 205, 241, 242; ii. 213 Aracoeli, i. 52, 112, 167; ii. 57, 70, 75 Cardinal Mazarin, i. 186 the Gallows, i. 284 Holy Guardian Angel, i. 122 the Minerva, ii. 55 the Penitentiaries, ii. 216 the Portuguese, i. 250 Saint Adrian, i. 71 Agnes, i. 301, 304 Augustine, ii. 207 Bernard, i. 291 Callixtus, ii. 125 Charles, i. 251 Eustace, ii. 23, 24, 26, 39 George in Velabro, i. 195; ii. 10 Gregory on the Aventine, ii. 129 Ives, i. 251; ii. 23, 24 John of the Florentines, i. 273 Pine Cone, ii. 56 Peter's on the Janiculum, ii. 129 Sylvester, i. 176 Saints Nereus and Achillæus, ii. 125 Vincent and Anastasius, i. 186 San Clemente, i. 143 Giovanni in Laterano, i. 113 Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192 Miranda, i. 71 Marcello, i. 165, 192 Pietro in Montorio, ii. 151 Vincoli, i. 118, 283; ii. 322 Salvatore in Cacaberis, i. 112 Stefano Rotondo, i. 106 Sant' Angelo in Pescheria, i. 102; ii. 3, 10, 110 Santa Francesca Romana, i. 111 Maria de Crociferi, i. 267 degli Angeli, i. 146, 258, 259 dei Monti, i. 118 del Pianto, i. 113 di Grotto Pinta, i. 294 in Campo Marzo, ii. 23 in Via Lata, i. 142 Nuova, i. 111, 273 Transpontina, ii. 212 della Vittoria, i. 302 Prisca, ii. 124 Sabina, i. 278; ii. 40 Trinità dei Pellegrini, ii. 110

Cicero, i. 45, 73; ii. 96, 294

Cimabue, ii. 156, 157, 162, 163, 169, 188, 189

Cinna, i. 25, 27

Circolo, ii. 245

Circus, the, i. 64, 253 Maximus, i. 64, 66; ii. 84, 119

City of Augustus, i. 57-77 Making of the, i. 1-21 of Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 of the Empire, i. 22-56 of the Middle Age, i. 47, 78-99, 92 of the Republic, i. 47 today, i. 55, 92

Civilization, ii. 177 and bloodshed, ii. 218 morality, ii. 178 progress, ii. 177-180

Claudius, i. 46, 255, 256; ii. 102

Cloelia, i. 13

Coelian hill, i. 106

Collegio Romano, i. 102; ii. 45, 61

Colonna, the, i. 51, 94, 104, 135, 153, 157-170, 172, 176, 187, 206, 217, 251, 252, 271, 272, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 2, 6, 8, 10, 16, 20, 37, 51, 54, 60, 106, 107, 126, 204 Giovanni, i. 104 Jacopo, i. 159, 165, 192 Lorenzo, ii. 126, 204-213 Marcantonio, i. 182; ii. 54 Pietro, i. 159 Pompeo, i. 305, 310-317; ii. 205 Prospero, ii. 205 Sciarra, i. 162-166, 192, 206, 213, 229, 275, 279, 281, 307 Stephen, i. 161, 165; ii. 13, 16 the Younger, i. 168 Vittoria, i. 157, 173-177; ii. 174 the Region, i. 101, 190-192; ii. 209 War between Orsini and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 12, 18, 126, 204-211

Colosseum, i. 56, 86, 90, 96, 106, 107, 111, 125, 152, 153, 187, 191, 209, 278; ii. 25, 64, 66, 84, 97, 202, 203, 301

Column of Piazza Colonna, i. 190, 192

Comitium, i. 112, 257, 268

Commodus, i. 46, 55; ii. 97, 285

Confraternities, i. 108, 204

Conscript Fathers, i. 78, 112

Constable of Bourbon, i. 52, 259, 273, 304, 309-311; ii. 308

Constans, i, 135, 136

Constantine, i. 90, 113, 163

Constantinople, i. 95, 119

Contests in the Forum, i. 27, 130

Convent of Saint Catharine, i. 176

Convent of Saint Sylvester, i. 176

Corneto, Cardinal of, ii. 282, 283

Cornomania, i. 141

Cornutis, i. 87

Coromania, i. 141, 144

Corsini, the, ii. 150

Corso, i. 96, 106, 108, 192, 196, 205, 206, 229, 251 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275

Corte Savella, i. 284; ii. 52

Cosmas, the, ii. 156, 157

Costa, Giovanni da, i. 205

Court House, i. 71

Crassus, i. 27, 31; ii. 128

Crawford, Thomas, i. 147

Crescentius, ii. 40, 41

Crescenzi, i. 114; ii. 27, 40, 209

Crescenzio, ii. 28-40 Stefana, ii. 39

Crispi, i. 116, 187

Crusade, the Second, ii. 86, 105

Crusades, the, i. 76

Curatii, i. 3, 131

Customs of early Rome, i. 9, 48 in dress, i. 48 religion, i. 48

D

Dante, i. 110; ii. 164, 175, 244

Decameron, i. 239

Decemvirs, i. 14; ii. 120

Decrees, Semiamiran, i. 178

Democracy, i. 108

Development of Rome, i. 7, 18 some results of, i. 154 under Barons, i. 51 Decemvirs, i. 14 the Empire, i. 29, 30 Gallic invasion, i. 15-18 Kings, i. 2-7, 14-45 Middle Age, i. 47, 92, 210-247 Papal rule, i. 46-50 Republic, i. 7-14 Tribunes, i. 14

Dictator of Rome, i. 29, 79

Dietrich of Bern, ii. 297

Dionysus, ii. 121

Dolabella, i. 34

Domenichino, ii. 147

Domestic life in Rome, i. 9

Dominicans, i. 158; ii. 45, 46, 49, 50, 60, 61

Domitian, i. 45, 152, 205; ii. 104, 114, 124, 295

Doria, the, i. 206; ii. 45 Albert, i. 207 Andrea, i. 207 Conrad, i. 207 Gian Andrea, i. 207 Lamba, i. 207 Paganino, i. 207

Doria-Pamfili, i. 206-209

Dress in early Rome, i. 48

Drusus, ii. 102

Duca, Antonio del, i. 146, 147 Giacomo del, i. 146

Dürer, Albert, ii. 198

E

Education, ii. 179

Egnatia, i. 75

Elagabalus, i. 77, 177, 179; ii. 296, 297

Election of the Pope, ii. 41, 42, 277

Electoral Wards, i. 107

Elizabeth, Queen of England, ii. 47

Emperors, Roman, i. 46 of the East, i. 95, 126

Empire of Constantinople, i. 46 of Rome, i. 15, 17, 22-28, 31, 45, 47, 53, 60, 72, 99

Encyclicals, ii. 244

Erasmus, ii. 151

Esquiline, the, i. 26, 106, 139, 186; ii. 95, 131, 193

Este, Ippolito d', i. 185

Etruria, i. 12, 15

Euodus, i. 255, 256

Eustace, Saint, ii. 24, 25 square of, ii. 25, 42

Eustachio. See _Sant' Eustachio_

Eutichianus, ii. 296

Eve of Saint John, i. 140 the Epiphany, 299

F

Fabius, i. 20

Fabatosta, ii. 64, 84

Farnese, the, ii. 151 Julia, ii. 324

Farnesina, the, ii. 144, 149, 151

Fathers, Roman, i. 13, 78, 79-84

Ferdinand, ii. 205

Ferrara, Duke of, i. 185

Festivals, i. 193, 298 Aryan in origin, i. 173 Befana, i. 299-301 Carnival, i. 193-203 Church of the Apostle, i. 172, 173 Coromania, i. 141 Epifania, i. 298-301 Floralia, i. 141 Lupercalia, i. 194 May-day in the Campo Vaccino, i. 173 Saturnalia, i. 194 Saint John's Eve, i. 140

Festus, ii. 128

Feuds, family, i. 168

Field of Mars. See _Campo Marzo_

Finiguerra, Maso, ii. 186-188

Flamen Dialis, i. 34

Floralia. See _Festivals_

Florence, i. 160

Forli, Melozzo da, i. 171

Fornarina, the, ii. 144, 146

Forum, i, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 26, 27, 64, 72, 111, 126, 129, 194;ii. 64, 92-94, 97, 102, 294, 295 of Augustus, i. 119 Trajan, i. 155, 171, 172, 191

Fountains (Fontane) of-- Egeria, ii. 124 Trevi, i. 155, 156, 186, 267 Tullianum, i. 8

Franconia, Duke of, ii. 36, 53

Francis the First, i. 131, 174, 206, 219, 304

Frangipani, i. 50, 94, 153; ii. 77, 79, 84, 85

Frederick, Barbarossa, ii. 34, 85, 87 of Naples, i. 151 the Second, ii. 34

Fulvius, ii. 121

G

Gabrini, Lawrence, ii. 4 Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308

Gaeta, ii. 36

Galba, ii. 295

Galen, i. 55

Galera, i. 282, 291

Galileo, i. 268

Gardens, i. 93 Cæsar's, i. 66, 68 of Lucullus, i. 254, 270 of the Pigna, ii. 273 Pincian, i. 255 the Vatican, ii. 243, 271, 287

Gargonius, i. 65

Garibaldi, ii. 90, 219, 220, 228, 237

Gastaldi, Cardinal, i. 259

Gate. See _Porta_ the Colline, i. 250 Lateran, i. 126, 154 Septimian, ii. 144, 147

Gebhardt, Émile, i. 213

Gemonian Steps, ii. 67, 294

Genseric, i. 96; ii. 70

George of Franzburg, i. 310

Gherardesca, Ugolino della, ii. 160

Ghetto, i. 102; ii. 2, 101, 110-118

Ghibellines, the, i. 129, 153, 158; ii. 6

Ghiberti, ii. 157. 

Ghirlandajo, ii. 157, 172, 276

Giantism, i. 90-92, 210, 302

Gibbon, i. 160

Giotto, ii. 157, 160-165, 169, 188, 189, 200

Gladstone, ii. 231, 232

Golden Milestone, i. 72, 92, 194

Goldoni, i. 265

Goldsmithing, ii. 156, 157, 186, 187

"Good Estate" of Rienzi, ii. 10-12

Gordian, i. 91

Goths, ii. 297, 307. 

Gozzoli, Benozzo, ii. 190, 195

Gracchi, the, i. 22, 28 Caius, i. 23; ii. 84 Cornelia, i. 22, 24 Tiberius, i. 23; ii. 102

Gratidianus, i. 27

Guards, Noble, ii. 241, 243, 247, 248, 309, 310, 312 Palatine, ii. 247, 248 Swiss, ii. 246, 247, 310

Guelphs, i. 159; ii. 42, 126, 138 and Ghibellines, i. 129, 153, 275; ii. 160, 162, 173

Guiscard, Robert, i. 95, 126, 127, 129, 144, 252; ii. 70

H

Hadrian, i. 90, 180; ii. 25, 202, 203

Hannibal, i. 20

Hasdrubal, i. 21

Henry the Second, ii. 47 Fourth, i. 126, 127; ii. 307 Fifth, ii. 307 Seventh of Luxemburg, i. 273, 276-279; ii. 5 Eighth, i. 219; ii. 47, 274

Hermann, i. 46

Hermes of Olympia, i. 86

Hermogenes, i. 67

Hilda's Tower, i. 250

Hildebrand, i. 52, 126-129; ii. 

Honorius, ii. 323, 324

Horace, i. 44, 57-75, 85, 87; ii. 293 and the Bore, i. 65-71 Camen Seculare of, i. 75 the Satires of, i. 73, 74

Horatii, i. 3, 131

Horatius, i. 5, 6, 13, 23; ii. 127

Horses of Monte Cavallo, i. 181

Hospice of San Claudio, i. 251

Hospital of-- Santo Spirito, i. 274; ii. 214, 215

House of Parliament, i. 271

Hugh of Burgundy, ii. 30 of Tuscany, ii. 30

Huns' invasion, i. 15, 49, 132

Huxley, ii. 225, 226

I

Imperia, ii. 144

Infessura, Stephen, ii. 59, 60, 204-213

Inn of-- The Bear, i. 288 Falcone, ii. 26 Lion, i. 287 Vanossa, i. 288

Inquisition, i. 286; ii. 46, 49, 52, 53, 54

Interminelli, Castruccio degli, i. 165. 

Irene, Empress, i. 109

Ischia, i. 175

Island of Saint Bartholomew, i. 272; ii. 1

Isola Sacra, i. 93

Italian life during the Middle Age, i. 210, 247 from 17th to 18th centuries, i. 260, 263, 264

J

Janiculum, the, i. 15, 253, 270; ii. 268, 293, 294, 295

Jesuit College, ii. 61

Jesuits, ii. 45, 46, 61-63

Jews, i. 96; ii. 101-119

John of Cappadocia, i. 267, 268

Josephus, ii. 103

Juba, i. 40

Jugurtha, i. 25

Jupiter Capitolinus, ii. 324, 325 priest of, i. 80, 133

Justinian, i. 267

Juvenal, i. 112; ii. 105, 107, 124

K

Kings of Rome, i. 2-7

L

Lampridius, Ælius, i. 178

Lanciani, i. 79, 177

Lateran, the, i. 106, 112-114, 129, 140-142 Count of, i. 166

Latin language, i. 47

Latini Brunetto, ii. 163

Laurentum, i. 55, 93

Lazaret of Saint Martha, ii. 245

League, Holy, i. 305, 306, 313, 314

Lentulus, ii. 128

Lepida, Domitia, i. 255, 256

Letus, Pomponius, i. 139; ii. 210

Lewis of Bavaria, i. 165, 167, 192, 275 the Seventh, ii. 86, 105 Eleventh, i. 104, 151 Fourteenth, i. 253

Library of-- Collegio Romano, ii. 45 Vatican, ii. 275, 276, 282 Victor Emmanuel, ii. 45, 61

Lieges, Bishop of, i. 280

Lincoln, Abraham, ii. 231, 236

Lippi, Filippo, ii. 190, 191, 192-195, 200

Liszt, i. 185, 203; ii. 176

Livia, i. 220, 252

Livy, i. 44, 47

Lombards, the, i. 251

Lombardy, i. 309

Lorrain, i. 264

Loyola, Ignatius, ii. 46, 62

Lucilius, i. 74

Lucretia, i. 5, 12, 13

Lucullus, i. 257, 270

Lupercalia, i. 194

Lupercus, i. 194

M

Macchiavelli, ii. 174

Mæcenas, i. 62, 69, 74, 140; ii. 293

Mænads, ii. 122

Maldachini, Olimpia, i. 304, 305

Mamertine Prison, i. 25, ii. 72, 293

Mancini, Maria, i. 170, 187

Mancino, Paul, ii. 210

Manlius, Cnæus, ii. 121 Marcus, i. 29; ii. 71, 84 Titus, i. 80

Mantegna, Andrea, ii. 157, 169, 188, 196-198

Marcomanni, i. 190

Marforio, i. 305

Marino, i. 174

Marius, Caius, i. 25, 29

Marius and Sylla, i. 25, 29, 36, 45, 53; ii. 69

Mark Antony, i. 30, 93, 195, 254

Marozia, ii. 27, 28

Marriage Laws, i. 79, 80

Mary, Queen of Scots, ii. 47

Masaccio, ii. 190

Massimi, Pietro de', i. 317

Massimo, i. 102, 317

Mattei, the, ii. 137, 139, 140, 143 Alessandro, ii. 140-143 Curzio, ii. 140-143 Girolamo, ii. 141-143 Marcantonio, ii. 140, 141 Olimpia, ii. 141, 142 Piero, ii. 140, 141

Matilda, Countess, ii. 307

Mausoleum of-- Augustus, i. 158, 169, 205, 251, 252, 270, 271 Hadrian, i. 102, 252; ii. 28, 202, 270. See _Castle of Sant' Angelo_

Maximilian, i. 151

Mazarin, i. 170, 187

Mazzini, ii. 219, 220

Mediævalism, death of, ii. 225

Medici, the, i. 110; ii. 276 Cosimo de', i. 289; ii. 194 Isabella de', i. 290, 291 John de', i. 313

Messalina, i. 254, 272; ii. 255, 256, 257

Michelangelo, i. 90, 146, 147, 173, 175, 177, 302, 303, 315;ii. 129, 130, 157, 159, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 188, 200, 276-281, 284, 317-319, 322 "Last Judgment" by, i. 173; ii. 171, 276, 280, 315 "Moses" by, ii. 278, 286 "Pietà" by, ii. 286

Middle Age, the, i. 47, 92, 210-247, 274; ii. 163, 166, 172-175, 180, 196

Migliorati, Ludovico, i. 103

Milan, i. 175 Duke of, i. 306

Milestone, golden, i. 72

Mithræum, i. 271

Mithras, i. 76

Mithridates, i. 26, 30, 37, 358

Mocenni, Mario, ii. 249

Monaldeschi, ii. 308

Monastery of-- the Apostles, i. 182 Dominicans, ii. 45, 61 Grottaferrata, ii. 37 Saint Anastasia, ii. 38 Gregory, ii. 85 Sant' Onofrio, ii. 147

Moncada, Ugo de, i. 307, 308

Mons Vaticanus, ii. 268

Montaigne, i. 288

Montalto. See _Felice Peretti_

Monte Briano, i. 274 Cavallo, i. 181, 188, 292, 293; ii. 205, 209 Citorio, i. 193, 252, 271 Giordano, i. 274, 281, 282, 288; ii. 206 Mario, i. 313; ii. 268

Montefeltro, Guido da, ii. 160

Monti-- the Region, i. 101, 106, 107, 111, 112, 125, 133, 134, 144, 150, 185, 305; ii. 133, 209 and Trastevere, i. 129, 145, 153; ii. 133, 209 by moonlight, i. 117

Morrone, Pietro da, i. 159

Muratori, i. 85, 132, 159, 277; ii. 40, 48, 76, 126, 324

Museums of Rome, i. 66 Vatican, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 Villa Borghese, i. 301

Mustafa, ii. 247

N

Naples, i. 175, 182, 307, 308

Napoleon, i. 32, 34, 53, 88, 109, 258; ii. 218, 221, 298 Louis, ii. 221, 223, 237

Narcissus, i. 255

Navicella, i. 106

Nelson, i. 253

Neri, Saint Philip, i. 318

Nero, i. 46, 56, 188, 254, 257, 285; ii. 163, 211, 291

Nilus, Saint, ii. 36, 37, 40

Nogaret, i. 162, 164

Northmen, i. 46, 49

Numa, i. 3; ii. 268

Nunnery of the Sacred Heart, i. 256

O

Octavius, i. 27, 30, 43, 89; ii. 291

Odoacer, i. 47; ii. 297

Olanda, Francesco d', i. 176

Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, i. 186, 188

Olympius, i. 136, 137, 138

Opimius, i. 24

Orgies of Bacchus, i. 76; ii. 120

Orgies of the Mænads, ii. 121 on the Aventine, i. 76; ii. 121

Orsini, the, i. 94, 149, 153, 159, 167-169, 183, 216, 217, 271, 274, 306-314; ii. 16, 126, 138, 204 Bertoldo, i. 168 Camillo, i. 311 Isabella, i. 291 Ludovico, i. 295 Matteo, i. 281 Napoleon, i. 161 Orsino, i. 166 Paolo Giordano, i. 283, 290-295 Porzia, i. 187 Troilo, i. 290, 291 Virginio, i. 295 war between Colonna and, i. 51, 104, 159, 168, 182, 275-283, 306-315; ii. 18, 126, 204

Orsino, Deacon, i. 134, 135

Orvieto, i. 314

Otho, ii. 295 the Second, ii. 304

Otto, the Great, i. 114; ii. 28, 30 Second, ii. 28 Third, ii. 29-37

Ovid, i. 44, 63

P

Painting, ii. 181 in fresco, ii. 181-183 oil, ii. 184-186

Palace (Palazzo)-- Annii, i. 113 Barberini, i. 106, 187 Borromeo, ii. 61 Braschi, i. 305 Cæsars, i. 4, 191; ii. 64 Colonna, i. 169, 189; ii. 205 Consulta, i. 181 Corsini, ii. 149, 308 Doria, i. 207, 226 Pamfili, i. 206, 208 Farnese, i. 102 Fiano, i. 205 della Finanze, i. 91 Gabrielli, i. 216 the Lateran, i. 127; ii. 30 Massimo alle Colonna, i. 316, 317 Mattei, ii. 140 Mazarini, i. 187 of Nero, i. 152 della Pilotta, i. 158 Priori, i. 160 Quirinale, i. 139, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 304 of the Renascence, i. 205 Rospigliosi, i. 181, 187, 188, 189 Ruspoli, i. 206 Santacroce, i. 237; ii. 23 of the Senator, i. 114 Serristori, ii. 214, 216 Theodoli, i. 169 di Venezia, i. 102, 192, 202

Palatine, the, i. 2, 13, 67, 69, 194, 195; ii. 64, 119

Palermo, i. 146

Palestrina, i. 156, 157, 158, 161, 165, 166, 243, 282; ii. 13, 315

Paliano, i. 282 Duke of, i. 157, 189

Palladium, i. 77

Pallavicini, i. 206, 258

Palmaria, i. 267

Pamfili, the, i. 206

Pannartz, i. 317

Pantheon, i. 90, 102, 195, 271, 278; ii. 44, 45, 146

Parione, the Region, i. 101, 297, 312, 317; ii. 42 Square of, ii. 42

Pasquino, the, i. 186, 305, 317

Passavant, ii. 285

Passeri, Bernardino, i. 313; ii. 308

Patarina, i. 107, 202

Patriarchal System, i. 223-228

Pavia, i. 175

Pecci, the, ii. 229 Joachim Vincent, ii. 229, 230. 

Peretti, the, i. 205 Felice, i. 149, 289-295 Francesco, i. 149, 289, 292 Vittoria. See _Accoramboni_

Perugia, i. 159, 276, 277

Perugino, ii. 157, 260, 276

Pescara, i. 174

Peter the Prefect, i. 114; ii. 230. 

Petrarch, i. 161

Petrella, i. 286

Philip the Fair, i. 160, 276, 278 Second of Spain, ii. 47

Phocas, column of, ii. 93

Piazza-- Barberini, i. 155 della Berlina Vecchia, i. 283 Chiesa Nuova, i. 155 del Colonna, i. 119, 190 Gesù, ii. 45 della Minerva, ii. 45 Moroni, i. 250 Navona, i. 102, 297, 298, 302, 303, 305; ii. 25, 46, 57 Pigna, ii. 55 of the Pantheon, i. 193; ii. 26 Pilotta, i. 158 del Popolo, i. 144, 206, 259, 273 Quirinale, i. 181 Romana, ii. 136 Sant' Eustachio, ii. 25 San Lorenzo in Lucina, i. 192, 205, 250 Saint Peter's, ii. 251, 309 di Sciarra, i. 192 Spagna, i. 251; ii. 42 delle Terme, i. 144 di Termini, i. 144 Venezia, i. 206

Pierleoni, the, ii. 77, 79, 82, 101, 105, 106, 109, 114

Pigna, ii. 45 the Region, i. 101, 102; ii. 44

Pilgrimages, ii. 245

Pincian (hill), i. 119, 270, 272

Pincio, the, i. 121, 189, 223, 253, 255, 256, 259, 264, 272

Pintelli, Baccio, ii. 278, 279

Pinturicchio, ii. 147

Pliny, the Younger, i. 85, 87

Pompey, i. 30

Pons Æmilius, i. 67 Cestius, ii. 102, 105 Fabricius, ii. 105 Triumphalis, i. 102, 274

Ponte. See also _Bridge_ Garibaldi, ii. 138 Rotto, i. 67 Sant' Angelo, i. 274, 283, 284, 287; ii. 42, 55, 270 Sisto, i. 307, 311; ii. 136 the Region, i. 274, 275

Pontifex Maximus, i. 39, 48

Pontiff, origin of title, ii. 127

Pope-- Adrian the Fourth, ii. 87 Alexander the Sixth, i. 258; ii. 269, 282 Seventh, i. 259 Anastasius, ii. 88 Benedict the Sixth, ii. 28-30 Fourteenth, i. 186 Boniface the Eighth, i. 159, 160, 167, 213, 280, 306; ii. 304 Celestin the First, i. 164 Second, ii. 83 Clement the Fifth, i. 275, 276 Sixth, ii. 9, 17-19 Seventh, i. 306, 307, 310, 313, 314; ii. 308 Eighth, i. 286 Ninth, i. 187; ii. 110 Eleventh, i. 171 Thirteenth, ii. 320 Damascus, i. 133, 135, 136 Eugenius the Third, ii. 85 Fourth, ii. 7, 56 Ghisleri, ii. 52, 53 Gregory the Fifth, ii. 32-37 Seventh, i. 52, 126; ii. 307 Thirteenth, i. 183, 293 Sixteenth, i. 305; ii. 221, 223 Honorius the Third, ii. 126 Fourth, ii. 126 Innocent the Second, ii. 77, 79, 82, 105 Third, i. 153; ii. 6 Sixth, ii. 19 Eighth, i. 275 Tenth, i. 206, 209, 302, 303 Joan, i. 143 John the Twelfth, ii. 282 Thirteenth, i. 113 Fifteenth, ii. 29 Twenty-third, ii. 269 Julius the Second, i. 208, 258; ii. 276, 298, 304 Leo the Third, i. 109; ii. 146, 297 Fourth, ii. 242 Tenth, i. 304; ii. 276, 304 Twelfth, i. 202; ii. 111 Thirteenth, i. 77; ii. 218-267, 282, 287, 308, 312, 313 Liberius, i. 138 Lucius the Second, ii. 84, 85 Martin the First, i. 136 Nicholas the Fourth, i. 159, 274 Fifth, i. 52; ii. 58, 268, 269, 298, 304 Paschal the Second, i. 258; ii. 307 Paul the Second, i. 202, 205 Third, i. 219; ii. 41, 130, 304, 323, 324 Fourth, ii. 46, 47, 48-51, 111, 112 Fifth, ii. 289 Pelagius the First, i. 170, 171; ii. 307 Pius the Fourth, i. 147, 305 Sixth, i. 181, 182 Seventh, i. 53; ii. 221 Ninth, i. 76, 183, 315; ii. 66, 110, 111, 216, 221-225, 252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 265, 298, 308, 311 Silverius, i. 266 Sixtus the Fourth, i. 258, 275; ii. 127, 204-213, 274, 278, 321 Fifth, i. 52, 139, 149, 181, 184, 186, 205, 283; ii. 43, 157, 241, 304, 323 Sylvester, i. 113; ii. 297, 298 Symmachus, ii. 44 Urban the Second, i. 52 Sixth, ii. 322, 323 Eighth, i. 181, 187, 268, 301; ii. 132, 203, 298 Vigilius, ii. 307

Popes, the, i. 125, 142, 273 at Avignon, i. 167, 273, 277; ii. 9 among sovereigns, ii. 228 election of, ii. 41, 42 hatred for, ii. 262-264 temporal power of, i. 168; ii. 255-259

Poppæa, i. 103

Porcari, the, ii. 56 Stephen, ii. 56-60, 204

Porsena of Clusium, i. 5, 6, 12

Porta. See also _Gate_-- Angelica, i. 120 Maggiore, i. 107 Metronia, i. 106 Mugonia, i. 10 Pia, i. 107, 147, 152; ii. 224 Pinciana, i. 193, 250, 264, 266, 269 del Popolo, i. 272, 299 Portese, ii. 132 Salaria, i, 106, 107, 193 San Giovanni, i. 107, 120 Lorenzo, i. 107 Sebastiano, ii. 119, 125 Spirito, i. 311; ii. 132, 152 Tiburtina, i. 107

Portico of Neptune, i. 271 Octavia, ii. 3, 105

Poussin, Nicholas, i. 264

Præneste, i. 156

Prætextatus, i. 134

Prefect of Rome, i. 103, 114, 134

Presepi, ii. 139

Prince of Wales, i. 203

Prior of the Regions, i. 112, 114

Processions of-- the Brotherhood of Saint John, ii. 130 Captains of Regions, i. 112 Coromania, i. 141 Coronation of Lewis of Bavaria, i. 166, 167 Ides of May, ii. 127-129 the Triumph of Aurelian, i. 179

Progress and civilization, i. 262; ii. 177-180 romance, i. 154

Prosper of Cicigliano, ii. 213

Q

Quæstor, i. 58

Quirinal, the (hill), i. 106, 119, 158, 182, 184, 186, 187; ii. 205

R

Rabble, Roman, i. 115, 128, 132, 153, 281; ii. 131

Race course of Domitian, i. 270, 297

Races, Carnival, i. 108, 202, 203

Raimondi, ii. 315

Rampolla, ii. 239, 249, 250

Raphael, i. 260, 315; ii. 159, 169, 175, 188, 200, 281, 285, 322 in Trastevere, ii. 144-147 the "Transfiguration" by, ii. 146, 281

Ravenna, i. 175

Regions (Rioni), i. 100-105, 110-114, 166 Captains of, i. 110 devices of, i. 100 fighting ground of, i. 129 Prior, i. 112, 114 rivalry of, i. 108, 110, 125

Regola, the Region, i. 101, 168; ii. 1-3

Regulus, i. 20

Religion, i. 48, 50, 75

Religious epochs in Roman history, i. 76

Renascence in Italy, i. 52, 77, 84, 98, 99, 188, 237, 240, 250, 258, 261, 262, 303; ii. 152-201, 280 art of, i. 231 frescoes of, i. 232 highest development of, i. 303, 315 leaders of, ii. 152, 157-159 manifestation of, ii. 197 palaces of, i. 205, 216 represented in "The Last Judgment, " ii. 280 results of development of, ii. 199

Reni, Guido, i. 264; ii. 317

Republic, the, i. 6, 12, 15, 53, 110; ii. 291 and Arnold of Brescia, ii. 86 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 modern ideas of, ii. 219

Revolts in Rome-- against the nobles, ii. 73 of the army, i. 25 of Arnold of Brescia, ii. 73-89 Marius and Sylla, i. 25 Porcari, ii. 56-60 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8, 73 slaves, i. 24 Stefaneschi, i. 281-283; ii. 219-222

Revolutionary idea, the, ii. 219-222

Riario, the, ii. 149, 150, 151 Jerome, ii. 205

Rienzi, Nicholas, i. 23, 93, 103, 168, 211, 281; ii. 3-23, 308

Rioni. See _Regions_

Ripa, the Region, i. 101; ii. 118

Ripa Grande, ii. 127

Ripetta, ii. 52

Ristori, Mme. , i. 169

Robert of Naples, i. 278

Rotfredo, Count, i. 114, 115

Rome-- a day in mediæval, i. 241-247 Bishop of, i. 133 charm of, i. 54, 98, 318 ecclesiastic, i. 124 lay, i. 124 a modern Capital, i. 123, 124 foundation of, i. 2 of the Augustan Age, i. 60-62 Barons, i. 50, 84, 104, 229-247; ii. 75 Cæsars, i. 84 Empire, i. 15, 17, 28, 31, 45, 47, 53. 60, 99 Kings, i. 2-7, 10, 11 Middle Age, i. 110, 210-247, 274; ii. 172-175 Napoleonic era, i. 229 Popes, i. 50, 77, 84, 104 Republic, i. 6, 12, 16, 53, 110 Rienzi, i. 93; ii. 6-8 today, i. 55 sack of, by Constable of Bourbon, i. 259, 273, 309-315 sack of, by Gauls, i. 15, 49, 252 Guiscard, i. 95, 126-129, 252 seen from dome of Saint Peter's, ii. 302 under Tribunes, i. 14 Decemvirs, i. 14 Dictator, i. 28

Romulus, i. 2, 5, 30, 78, 228

Rospigliosi, i. 206

Rossi, Pellegrino, i. 316 Count, ii. 223

Rostra, i. 27; ii. 93 Julia, i. 68; ii. 93

Rota, ii. 215

Rovere, the, i. 258; ii. 276, 279, 321

Rudini, i. 187

Rudolph of Hapsburg, i. 161

Rufillus, i. 65

S

Sacchi, Bartolommeo, i. 139, 147

Saint Peter's Church, i. 166, 278; ii. 202, 212, 243, 246, 268, 289, 294, 295, 326 altar of, i. 96 architects of, ii. 304 bronze doors of, ii. 299, 300 builders of, ii. 304 Chapel of the Choir, ii. 310, 313, 314 Chapel of the Sacrament, ii. 274, 306, 308, 310, 312, 313 Choir of, ii. 313-316 Colonna Santa, ii. 319 dome of, i. 96; ii. 302 Piazza of, ii. 251 Sacristy of, i. 171

Salvini, i. 169, 252 Giorgio, i. 313

Santacroce Paolo, i. 286

Sant' Angelo the Region, i. 101; ii. 101

Santorio, Cardinal, i. 208

San Vito, i. 282

Saracens, i. 128, 144

Sarto, Andrea del, ii. 157, 169

Saturnalia, i. 125, 194, 195

Saturninus, i. 25

Satyricon, the, i. 85

Savelli, the, i. 284; ii. 1, 16, 126, 206 John Philip, ii. 207-210

Savonarola, i. 110

Savoy, house of, i. 110; ii. 219, 220, 224

Scævola, i. 13

Schweinheim, i. 317

Scipio, Cornelius, i. 20 of Africa, i. 20, 22, 29, 59, 76; ii. 121 Asia, i. 21; ii. 120

Scotus, i. 182

See, Holy, i. 159, 168; ii. 264-267, 277, 294

Segni, Monseignor, i. 304

Sejanuo, ii. 294

Semiamira, i. 178

Senate, Roman, i. 167, 168, 257 the Little, i. 177, 180

Senators, i. 78, 112, 167

Servius, i. 5, 15

Severus-- Arch of, ii. 92 Septizonium of, i. 96, 127

Sforza, i. 13; ii. 89 Catharine, i. 177; ii. 150 Francesco, i. 306

Siena, i. 232, 268; ii. 229

Signorelli, ii. 277

Slaves, i. 81, 24

Sosii Brothers, i. 72, 73

Spencer, Herbert, ii. 225, 226

Stefaneschi, Giovanni degli, i. 103, 282

Stilicho, ii. 323

Stradella, Alessandro, ii. 315

Streets. See _Via_

Subiaco, i. 282

Suburra, i. 39; ii. 95

Suetonius, i. 43

Sylla, ii. 25-29, 36-42

T

Tacitus, i. 46, 254; ii. 103

Tarentum, i. 18, 19

Tarpeia, i. 29; ii. 68, 69

Tarpeian Rock, ii. 67

Tarquins, the, i. 6, 11, 12, 80, 248, 249, 269; ii. 69 Sextus, i. 5, 11

Tasso, i. 188, 189; ii. 147-149 Bernardo, i. 188

Tatius, i. 68, 69

Tempietto, the, i. 264

Temple of-- Castor, i. 27 Castor and Pollux, i. 68; ii. 92, 94 Ceres, ii. 119 Concord, i. 24; ii. 92 Flora, i. 155 Hercules, ii. 40 Isis and Serapis, i. 271 Julius Cæsar, i. 72 Minerva, i. 96 Saturn, i. 194, 201; ii. 94 the Sun, i. 177, 179, 180, 271 Venus and Rome, i. 110 Venus Victorius, i. 270 Vesta, i. 68

Tenebræ, i. 117

Tetricius, i. 179

Theatre of-- Apollo, i. 286 Balbus, ii. 1 Marcellus, ii. 1, 101, 105, 106, 119 Pompey, i. 103, 153

Thedoric of Verona, ii. 297

Theodoli, the, i. 258

Theodora Senatrix, i. 158, 266, 267; ii. 27-29, 203, 282

Tiber, i. 23, 27, 66, 93, 94, 151, 158, 168, 189, 237, 248, 249, 254, 269, 272, 288

Tiberius, i. 254, 287; ii. 102

Titian, i. 315; ii. 165, 166, 175, 188, 278

Titus, i. 56, 86; ii. 102, 295

Tivoli, i. 180, 185; ii. 76, 85

Torre (Tower)-- Anguillara, ii. 138, 139, 140 Borgia, ii. 269, 285 dei Conti, i. 118, 153 Milizie, i. 277 Millina, i. 274 di Nona, i. 274, 284, 287; ii. 52, 54, 72 Sanguigna, i. 274

Torrione, ii. 241, 242

Trajan, i. 85, 192; ii. 206

Trastevere, the Region, i. 101, 127, 129, 278, 307, 311;ii. 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 151

Trevi, the Fountain, i. 155, 186 the Region, i. 155, 187; ii. 209

Tribunes, i. 14

Trinità de' Monti, i. 256, 264 dei Pellegrini, ii. 110

Triumph, the, of Aurelian, i. 179

Triumphal Road, i. 66, 69, 70, 71

Tullianum, i. 8

Tullus, i. 3 Domitius, i. 90

Tuscany, Duke of, ii. 30

Tusculum, i. 158

U

Unity, of Italy, i. 53, 77, 123, 184; ii. 224 under Augustus, i. 184 Victor Emmanuel, i. 184

University, Gregorian, the, ii. 61 of the Sapienza, i. 251; ii. 24, 25

Urbino, Duke of, i. 208, 217

V

Valens, i. 133

Valentinian, i. 133

Varus, i. 46

Vatican, the, i. 127, 128, 147, 165, 189, 278, 281, 307;ii. 44, 202, 207, 228, 243, 245, 249, 250, 252, 253, 269, 271 barracks of Swiss Guard, ii. 275 chapels in, Pauline, ii. Nicholas, ii. 285 Sixtine, ii. 246, 274, 275, 276, 278-281, 285 fields, i. 274 Court of the Belvedere, ii. 269 Saint Damasus, ii. 273 finances of, ii. 253 gardens of, ii. 243, 271, 287 of the Pigna, ii. 273 library, ii. 275, 276, 282 Borgia apartments of, ii. 282 Loggia of the Beatification, ii. 245 Raphael, ii. 273, 274, 276, 285 Maestro di Camera, ii. 239, 248, 250 museums of, ii. 272, 273, 283, 286, 287 picture galleries, ii. 273-284 Pontifical residence, ii. 249 private apartments, ii. 249 Sala Clementina, ii. 248 del Concistoro, ii. 246 Ducale, ii. 245, 247 Regia, ii. 246 throne room, ii. 247 Torre Borgia, ii. 269, 285

Veii, i. 16, 17

Velabrum, i. 67

Veneziano, Domenico, ii. 185

Venice, i. 193, 296, 306; ii. 35, 205

Vercingetorix, ii. 294

Vespasian, i. 46, 56; ii. 295

Vespignani, ii. 241, 242

Vesta, i. 57 temple of, i. 71, 77

Vestals, i. 77, 80, 133, 152; ii. 99 house of, i. 69

Via-- della Angelo Custode, i. 122 Appia, i. 22, 94 Arenula, ii. 45 Borgognona, i. 251 Campo Marzo, i. 150 di Caravita, ii. 45 del Corso, i. 155, 158, 192, 193, 251; ii. 45 della Dateria, i. 183 Dogana Vecchia, ii. 26 Flaminia, i. 193 Florida, ii. 45 Frattina, i. 250 de' Greci, i. 251 Lata, i. 193 Lungara, i. 274; ii. 144, 145, 147 Lungaretta, ii. 140 della Maestro, i. 283 Marforio, i. 106 di Monserrato, i. 283 Montebello, i. 107 Nazionale, i. 277 Nova, i. 69 di Parione, i. 297 de' Poli, i. 267 de Pontefici, i. 158 de Prefetti, ii. 6 Quattro Fontane, i. 155, 187 Sacra, i. 65, 71, 180 San Gregorio, i. 71 San Teodoro, i. 195 de' Schiavoni, i. 158 Sistina, i. 260 della Stelleta, i. 250 della Tritone, i. 106, 119-122, 155 Triumphalis, i. 66, 70, 71 Venti Settembre, i. 186 Vittorio Emanuele, i. 275

Viale Castro Pretorio, i. 107

Vicolo della Corda, i. 283

Victor Emmanuel, i. 53, 166, 184; ii. 90, 221, 224, 225, 238 monument to, ii. 90

Victoria, Queen of England, ii. 263

Vigiles, cohort of the, i. 158, 170

Villa Borghese, i. 223 Colonna, i. 181, 189 d'Este, i. 185 of Hadrian, i. 180 Ludovisi, i. 106, 193 Medici, i. 259, 262, 264, 265, 269, 313 Negroni, i. 148, 149, 289, 292 Publica, i. 250

Villani, i. 160, 277; ii. 164

Villas, in the Region of Monti, i. 149, 150

Vinci, Lionardo da, i. 260, 315; ii. 147, 159, 169, 171, 175, 184, 188, 195, 200 "The Last Supper, " by, ii. 171, 184

Virgil, i. 44, 56, 63

Virginia, i. 14

Virginius, i. 15

Volscians, ii. 230

W

Walls-- Aurelian, i. 93, 106, 110, 193, 271; ii. 119, 144 Servian, i. 5, 7, 15, 250, 270 of Urban the Eighth, ii. 132

Water supply, i. 145

William the Silent, ii. 263

Witches on the Æsquiline, i. 140

Women's life in Rome, i. 9

Z

Zama, i. 21, 59

Zenobia of Palmyra, i. 179; ii. 150. 

Zouaves, the, ii. 216