Part 18

There are some old words that one likes better than the new ones: the name of the gate, now _del Popolo_, does not, to me, sound so æsthetically as _Flaminia_, its ancient name! Yet it took centuries to turn the one into the other for the worst, with the patriotic intention of being for the best! The popes do not pretend to be Cæsars, like the latter-day Napoleon, with his Dutch physiognomy; but they have now and then done their best to rebuild. Pius VII., so heavily handicapped by the Corsican _parvenu_, did much to lay the saddened ghost of Cæsarean times, by beautifying the Piazza del Popolo. Through him, Augustus might have looked on it again with composure. Its semicircular form, its fountains, its statues, would pacify the imperial rebuilder.

From the Porta del Popolo to the Capitol is a line ending in a steep ascent, one of the seven hills, the Capitoline: this long street is the backbone of Rome, from which its ribs more or less radiate. It is not gigantic with a broad stride, like the Via Larga (now Cavoura) at Florence; it is not beautiful, like the Genoese Via Nuova; it is more of a Bond Street, but a long one, with some fine buildings, and, as all long streets should be, it is cut in half by a good big square, the Piazza Colonna. Here we stumble against a column, look up, and for a minute or two we are in ancient Rome. It was set up by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, a man of fight, in order that his victories might not be forgotten. Its inside is hollow, except that it has steps up it, nearly two hundred—for we always count. We go up these steps, full of the Roman sensation, when, lo, and behold! (En et ecce! as Marcus Aurelius would now say with a stare), St. Paul has got up before us; has been turned into bronze, and gilded! Still there is something in it; he has made conquests over the Germans better than those of Marcus, so we may let him stay at the top, and be thankful; odd as it seems.

The obelisk which we come upon in the square of Monte Clitorio, was brought to Rome by Augustus, as Cleopatra’s Needle was brought to London by Sir Erasmus Wilson, Kt., F.R.C.S.; the one set up in the Campus Martius, the other on the Thames Embankment. That of Augustus got buried, and by a sort of lucky miracle was raised again by the sixth of the Pius popes.

But now stop a little longer than usual: this is the Palazzo Doria Pamfili.

One wants all the time to get up to the top of the Capitoline Hill; so, seeing a tremendous flight of steps, one goes upstairs. The things stuck in one’s way to arrest one’s progress towards the square at the top are first of all two lions. These, notwithstanding they are created out of black granite, and are therefore really dumb animals, unlike live lions, spout water at you, by way of making themselves heard: and this Keats should have done into the public ear, instead of letting his name be writ in the water itself.

But even now we cannot leave the last step to the Campidoglio; we are arrested by Castor and Pollux, two giants. We then look with much interest to see what sort of horses theirs were, and they rise in our estimation, tall as they are already, when we find that their nags are of the true Arab breed, thick-necked and straight-backed, not a bit like the flesh and blood abnormals of Newmarket Heath.

The Campidoglio is a fine square, and one has at least the satisfaction of feeling that the hill it surmounts is a part of ancient Rome. But where is the old Temple of Jupiter? we ask.

No answer.

However, here is something Roman: it is the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius—a survival.

There are other things up here of the Antonine brand, to show that Rome was once Rome; but there is such a variety of job lots here, all curiosities, swept by time into heaps, that the best course is not to puzzle one’s brains about them.

I, for one, wanted to see three things in this Capitol, still so called, but not recalling anything that existed under that name before Boniface IX. took to rebuilding. It is a museum containing a good deal of the private property of the old Roman lords, which belongs now to their natural heirs, and farthest off of kin, the people.

These people had ancestors who were the hereditary property of some seventy or eighty emperors. They are now owners of all these emperors’ heads, and of the heads of all these emperors’ families, which they keep on shelves in their Capitol museum, in a room that makes a sort of Golgotha.

At last we come upon the Dying Gladiator, one of the three figures I was in search of. We have all seen its shadow in casts and engravings; this is the unique original.

Another figure that I had occasion to see was La Bacchante, a marble figure, which is locked up and only shown on the payment of a fee; it is a most expressive statue.

These two figures I have delineated in my “sculptured poem” of Michael Angelo.

A third figure, the Faun, I readily found. It is a celebrated statue, and I desired to ascertain whether the ears were formed correctly; but they were not. In accordance with anatomical structure they should have pointed backwards, but they are erect. Some would say, “Yes; for the ears of lower animals at times are pricked.” But I say (it is in “Valdarno”), the end of all art is repose.

In the human ear may be seen a small rudiment of the elongated ear; it is so placed that, if redeveloped, it would point posteriorly, after the fashion of the lower animals, to the cervix, beneath the occipital bone.

Was it prophetic that, in digging the foundations of the Capitol, when it was first designed, a skull was turned out (caput), whence the name.

Nevertheless, the Capitol was founded upon a rock, though it was the Tarpeian.

LXV.

“What come ye for to see?” It is a wider question than was intended on its first ironical utterance, and many answers are always ready. A medical ignoramus of ability was asked if there was any danger. His answer was, “That depends on the event.” So it is in museum life; the majority know nothing of what they go to see, and what they do see depends on the event. But the specialists know exactly what go they for to see; and I am one of these. Relying on presumptive evidence, if a “Sir Leighton,” as the French would say, goes to Rome, it may be for to make a study of painted eyes, in some ten or a dozen galleries, to determine whether black, brown, or blue predominates. If a “Sir Boehm” goes to Rome, it may be for to inspect the lost head and legs of a Farnesian Hercules. If a “Sir Barry” goes to Rome, it is for to examine which of the stones in the Palazzo di Venezia were stolen by a pope from the Coliseum, and which were honestly got. However, we have no “Sir Barry” nowadays; premiers do not build houses, so that they do not baronetize architecture in lieu of fees. They take physic; they stand in need of bulletins when, on the eve of an unpleasant debate, a strong voice is weak. Being ourselves of physic and a little deaf, a clergyman once bawled into our best ear, in a voice so thunderous yet so piercing that had it been a prayer it might almost have been heard in heaven, “Doctor! can you give me something to strengthen my voice?”

Premiers are perfect artists in the baronetizing line; nay, they can even chisel a peer in invisible gold. A president of a royal academy, of a royal society, of a royal college of surgeons or physicians, fills a genteel trade; rank fits him well.

An oculist, if a premier has bad eyes and is going blind, may, like other professionals, be ennobled; but an aurist and a dentist, there is something in these—it is hard to say what—that does not ennoble well, which shows how greater are eyes than ears or teeth.

If a premier is not a teetotaler, he makes lords out of brewers, and yet not out of distillers, whose images are quite as golden. He does not mind it being thought that he takes a glass of pale ale, but whisky—that would not do.

All these industries, like myself, go to Rome chiefly on their own business. But what a wonderful crowd there is flocking there to see all that is left—the fragments of Cæsar’s lost compositions.

We business men, when we have found all we want, go the round; it is like walking through the street, looking at everybody, sometimes stopping to speak.

We meet a picture, a statue, a vase, an arch, a column, a palace, as we might do a friend; but those who undertake to see all might as well undertake to read the two or three billion letters that pass through the post-office in a year.

I set myself to visit the grave of poor Keats. He was sick of many griefs, but the greatest of these was that he could not make the vulgar howl their applause. He had all the enjoyment of a Divine gift; it could only be the bodily sickness affecting the mind when his heart was bitter, and he exclaimed his name was writ in water. Yet they have graved those feeble words on his tombstone!

Were I dying for praise, I should show my insight into man, and say, “My name is writ in brandy and water.” How that would be swallowed down!

I visited Keats’s grave from very mixed motives; life is sad enough without being sentimental. To stand before the grave is a little dangerous; if one walked backwards for a short distance in an absent fit, he would precipitate himself over a sunk wall into the adjoining cemetery, and lie there for good, like Shelley.

As in duty bound, I visited the tomb of Shelley also.

I was on my way to the church of St. Paolo _fuori_, a sight not to be neglected by any species of pilgrim whatever.

On one’s way one can leave a card on the Scipios; their tomb is handy, but they are always out, those wonderful people called the “authorities” having removed the sarcophagi and busts. But you will be asked in; and you can go down the windings by torchlight, and say you did it. Then, _en route_, one can pay one’s respects to the early Christians who owned some uncomfortable catacombs hereabout, in which they resided.

For an account of these and of how they shelved their dead, _vide_ some more gushing writer.

St. Paolo is too magnificent for a church. It has a fine architectural pedigree up to Constantine, having endured all the horrors for generations of decay and fire, to be only rebuilt at greater cost than before.

I did not go on purpose to behold the church, but to almost adore the ancient cloisters at the back. The delicately twisted columns of the arches are so winning, they actually awake one’s affections; and if thinking of a thing ever after is love, they fill you with this fondest of recollections.

A good many of us rise in life. Wolsey, he rose; the Bonapartes rose; Coke rose (upon Littleton); the Gladstones rose; Lazarus rose; but no man, priest, soldier, lawyer, M.P., or resurrect, ever rose in death, as did St. Peter. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; writers as eminently inspired as Isaiah; Paul, the most gifted of apostles, whose ideas on charity lifted Christianity miles over the heads of all other religious or moral founders, had no such rise in death as Peter; but it was the keys that did it.

Peter has a palace, and a church, and a museum, such as monarchs envy in vain. Let us hope, pray, and entreat that it may never be demolished, like the palace of the Cæsars; that no republican Guiscard may arise; but that the President of the Future may take up his residence there, should the popes vacate it.

My friend, Theodore Watts, was at Rome with me a part of the time. I forget what he thought of it all; it is so long ago. I know we visited the poets’ tombs together, and St. Paolo _fuori_.

Pio Nino must have had a temper, because he studied the inconvenience of strangers by making them take tickets of admission in front of the Vatican, while he vaticinated that the back entrance not being handy, but involving a long walk, would excite irritation, so he admitted visitors only at his back door. The elliptical columns forming the portico in the Piazza S. Pietro, look like out-bent arms for receiving and hugging the flock.

I was with Watts, one day in December, on this little round. We stood with our backs against a wall, for shelter against a bitter wind, the sun shining through snow, and the warmth, so long as we remained there, delicious.

We went the usual round of the loggie, Raphaelizing, and of the indoor statuary squares and streets; and got into the Sixtine, on the roof of which Michael Angelo re-created the world.

LXVI.

I have left England twice since my visit to Rome: once in 1878, to stay at Ballenstedt, near the Harz, for a summer; once more to Stassfurt, for a prolonged sojourn. In my own country, Bath has been my favourite place, where I have been for several seasons. Brighton, too, I have often visited, having my brother there. Neither have I neglected the Isle of Wight, my favourite spot being on the unfashionable West, at Totland’s Bay.

There is, however, little left to say about England, by a native, therefore little to record; but I have found plenty to do at home.

Among other sights, while at Ballenstedt—it was in 1878—we went to the Duke of Brunswick’s castle of Blankenburg; not going over its four hundred chambers, but confining ourselves very much to the billiard-room and chapel. In that apartment the walls were decorated with engravings of race-horses, and of British sports of every kind—fox-hunting, cricket, and other games—all that are ever seen in shop-windows or elsewhere. A billiard-table occupied a corner of the room, with the rules of the game hung near it. The ducal family were Anglicized by the war, and the black dress of the troops is still worn. The chairs in the room were all backed by the arms of England and the Order of the Garter.

In the chapel there is an ivory crucifix attributed to Michael Angelo. The floor is, in one place, ostentatiously unboarded, to show the foundation to be rock.

Ballenstedt is a pleasant summer town. There is a fine avenue leading to the castle, and to the public gardens; the forest is close at hand, and a chain of trout streams and lakes descends from the neighbouring hills.

The Affenthaler valley, too, abuts on the place, leading to Falconstein, in whose castle are some of the noblest stag-antlers ever seen.

All that is written, all that comes to pass, has its concluding chapter; I am fast approaching mine.

In writing these memoirs, a love of my fellows has dominated my pen, as it does, always, in what I compose, for serious perusal. I am sometimes surprised at finding how this feeling keeps the upper hand, as, in the ordinary sense, it is not always deserved, nor always quite felt at starting: but it warms. As I began by saying, so I repeat, that, in a certain way, I am my own posterity; and, perhaps, I revive in myself the better feelings that a dead man would assuredly experience if he came suddenly to life.

I may end by saying yet a few more words about myself in concluding. As a sort of posterity I may allude even to the circumstance that my memory serves me as well as ever, as this memoir shows, and that, but for my disaster, I could give myself a certificate of health that would satisfy the most prying of life insurance companies.

I have all the buoyancy of youth! As a sort of posterity I have almost a disposition, in some things, to appreciate myself; but at this point decency forbids. I have quite recently written, 1st, a volume of “Epigrams,” from an experience quite deserving the attention of every innocent novice who looks up to mankind; 2nd, a volume of “Sonnets”; 3rd, my “Memoirs”; 4th, “Miscellaneous Essays and Verse.”

My mind holds out; it has increased in accuracy up to the present time, now that my 84th year has set in with a rush. But I find that my eyesight deteriorates, though slowly, and that, like everything else that is inevitable, I can bear it, though I should like to have my observers back, so lovely is the clear light of day!

I would altogether cease from work, but that time would hang so heavily. I shall be as idle as I can, and so end mine as Byron began his “Hours.”

In writing my memoirs the years have shrunk into days, but they fairly depict my part of Nature’s message of which she made me a _commissionaire_. She has told through me, in the fragmentary form of opinion, what her purpose is after being filtered through my brain, not what it is prior to the process of filtration, which leaves behind the insoluble matters, which, try as one will, are not to be got at. All things are comical in the process of production—the furnaces, the looms, the raw material, now a fibre, now a thread dipped in dye, now in mad haste rolling into a texture, now snipped with scissors into a man’s or woman’s shape, now on their backs as they make each other a bow, or kiss hands across a street, the bricks of which a year before were in a clay field growing wheat.

The epigrams that I have ready for the press, whenever the public may be disposed for a fresh _jeu d’esprit_, are three hundred and sixty-six in number, to correspond with leap-year.

They more or less pourtray the laughing side of life, but are not without their earnest moments, and they have references of ludicrous applicability.

It may be remarked that while that species of humour is liked and largely pervades our best authors, epigram has never been made a specialty by any one of them. There exists, therefore, a blank under this heading; and my attempt is to fill this vacancy in our literature, strange as it is that such should still be left among its crowded pages.

A poem, of whatever length, should start vividly, so as to wind up the ear and set the mind ticking. I have known poems with much latent beauty in them, set aside as rubbish, from failing to wake up the thoughts at starting. I remember a sonnet which an admirer pronounced the finest in the language (with about as much sense as George No. IV. called himself the first gentleman in Europe), and which had a clear-cut symmetry and depth, being called trashy by one who had critical power, but who did not warm his wax before taking its impression. Short poems have value to the author of them as being written on passing occasions, and thus becoming biographic. I possess a volume of this sort, called “Many Moods,” some of which have had publication.

Life is a comedy during this filtration, by means of which it receives its mysterious consciousness through a vulgar brain; death would be a comedy but that the joke is stale.

Nature seems as opinionated as she is universal. She uses millions of millions of brain-filters, all different, and all at the same time, in her thought-factory; the results some of us refilter to render them purer! The proceeding is ludicrous in the extreme at first sight, but it is amusing; and, strange to say, like the uproar of a mob, or sounds from a thousand blacksmiths’ forges, they unite into final harmoniousness.

Of my latter works above named, “The New Day” only has passed from darkness through man’s cerebral filter into the light. They have all been written during the mental cheerfulness of much bodily suffering, of which I have a pretty good twinge as I now scribble. A cracked hip never ceases to reproach me for having fallen on it, and cracked dreams pursue me through the night; but I can still smile, though I have no teeth to add grace to that labial twist which is so expressive of contentment.

All is for the best, devils on ticket-of-leave notwithstanding. Apparent evil generates and brings about good. Could we only obtain one glimpse of the invisible, which is so vast in comparison with all we dream of, how amazingly concurrent in this my view would men become. All would be judges; as on the delivery of a judgment from a full bench, all would say, “I concur.”

Evil has no place in the _ultimatum_, as will be found when that great diplomatic document is pronounced.

I reverence Nature, though she is wholly unaware of the homage I pay her. She is president of the abeternal, adeternal commonwealth, in which every atom exercises its vote, and yields her the beneficent despotism over all, that can be never shaken.

Those who can climb, in mental sight, their pleasant little knoll, and survey the surroundings, are burdened not with reverence for their fellow-men. They are conscious of no inferiority in the presence of their betters, so slight is the difference between the great and small; and they are conscious of no superiority in the presence of their inferiors.

All are so alike in actual importance among the so mighty things around, that were all who have lived, or are yet existing, to be arranged in a line, beginning with Shakespeare and Newton, Homer and Pythagoras, Phidias and Aristotle, Bacon, John Hunter and Goethe, followed by professors and students, labourers and mendicants, and ending with those who slobber while they talk,—and were the best made to stand forward in advance of the others in a degree proportioned to their excellence, the line of human beings, viewed at no great distance, would appear as straight as a ray of light.

LXVII.

Wisdom is an attribute of old age; not because the faculties grow keener, but rather because the feelings are less vivid, whence there is less bias. By this change the mind becomes more patient, more just, therefore, towards those of opposite opinions; and this should, above most other things, bring toleration to bear on religion.

Men like Disraeli, who are a creed unto themselves, are strongly impressed with the importance of religion to an ignorant country. They are aware that it is unlike what is discovered to us by Nature, that it is a sort of distinguished stranger in the great system of things, of so highly impressive a presence as to be a rival force.

In truth, religion is, in every respect, a power; and in relation to Nature it is _imperium in imperio_, and is even more strong than Nature in the minds of men.

It is more strong in its affinity to vast numbers, men and women, than the dictates of nature; so strong is its hold that it more frequently culminates in madness than does any other passion.

This should be a warning to the highly endowed intellectual and less emotional class, not to regard religious belief as a subject of too severe analysis and correction. Let them bear in mind that when it is of a kind to restrain evil, to paralyze with fear the murderer’s hand, to overawe the adulterer, to intimidate the unjust in their dealings, to make them do unto others as they would be done by themselves, it is not only a grand factor for good in human affairs, but that it is a better teacher than Nature herself, except in the most elevated minds.

Religion has its little hypocrites, so has irreligion: which of the two gives shelter to the largest number?

Whom do the benevolent intellects desire to teach? There are two classes for them to look down upon. The credulous are the happiest of the two and the best off; then why teach them to be incredulous, when there are millions for whom even their credulity is too good?

No one who has an acute mind should suppress his view of religious affairs, provided he is not offensive, because religion, though, like music, susceptible of variations, will survive all else, as it has ever done. Its durability belongs to the fact that it is emotional, and so is spontaneous, while intellectual development necessitates labour.

Its variations have always been adapted to the character and capacity of a people, and its trustees have always proved ready to effect this adaptation; not always because it pays better, for what pays best is that which is suitable.

In England there is a great variety of emotional character, and as great a variety of creeds—some say a hundred;—so religion among us is like a centipede, so many legs has it to go on.