Part 6

But how, said Cyrus, shall I make men think me more excellent than themselves? _By being really so_, replies Xenophon, putting his words into the mouth of Cambyses. Pius Sextus takes no deeper method I believe, yet all acknowledge his superiour merit: No prince can less affect state, nor no clergyman can less adopt hypocritical behaviour. The Pope powders his hair like any other of the Cardinals, and is, it seems, the first who has ever done so. When he takes the air it is in a fashionable carriage, with a few, a very few guards on horseback, and is by no means desirous of making himself a shew. Now and then an old woman begs his blessing as he passes; but I almost remember the time when our bishops of Bangor and St. Asaph were followed by the country people in North Wales full as much or more, and with just the same feelings. One man in particular we used to talk of, who came from a distant part of our mountainous province, with much expence in proportion to his abilities, poor fellow, and terrible fatigue; he was a tenant of my father’s, who asked him how he ventured to undertake so troublesome a journey? It was to get my good Lord’s blessing, replied the farmer, _I hope it will cure my rheumatism_. Kissing the slipper at Rome will probably, in a hundred years more, be a thing to be thus faintly recollected by a few very old people; and it is strange to me it should have lasted so long. No man better knows than the present learned and pious successor of St. Peter, that St. Peter himself would permit no act of adoration to his own person; and that he severely reproved Cornelius for kneeling to him, charging him to rise and stand upon his feet, adding these remarkable words, _seeing I also am a man_[13]. Surely it will at last be found out among them that such a ceremony is inconsistent with the Pope’s character as a Christian priest, however it may suit state matters to continue it in the character of a sovereign. The road he is now making on every side his capital to facilitate foreigners approach, the money he has laid out on the conveniencies of the Vatican, the desire he feels of reforming a police much in want of reformation, joined to an immaculate character for private virtue and an elegant taste for the fine arts, must make every one wish for a long continuance of his health and dignity; though the wits and jokers, when they see his arms up, as they are often placed in galleries, &c. about the palace, and consist of a zephyr blowing on a flower, a pair of eagle’s wings, and a few stars, have invented this Epigram, to say that when the Emperor has got his eagle back, the King of France his fleurs de lys, and the stars are gone to heaven, Braschi will have nothing left him but the _wind_:

Redde aquilam Cæsari, Francorum lilia regi, Sydera redde polo, cætera Brasche tibi.

These verses were given me by an agreeable Benedictine Friar, member of a convent belonging to St. Paul’s _fuor delle mura_; he was a learned man, a native of Ragusa, had been particularly intimate with Wortley Montague, whose variety of acquirements had impressed him exceedingly.

He shewed us the curiosities of his church, the finest in Rome next to St. Peter’s, and had silver gates; but the plating is worn off and only the brass remains. There is an old Egyptian candlestick above five feet high preserved here, and many other singularities adorn the church. The Pillars are 136 in number, all marble, and each consisting of one unjoined and undivided piece; 40 of these are fluted, and two which did belong to a temple of Mars are seven feet and a half each in diameter. Here is likewise the place where Nero ran for refuge to the house of his freed-man, and in the cloister a stone, with this inscription on it,

_Hoc specus accepit post aurea tecta Neronem_[14].

Here is an altar supported by four pillars of red porphyry, and here are the pictures of all the popes; St. Peter first, and our present Braschi last. It has given much occasion for chat that there should now be no room left to hang a successor’s portrait, and that he who now occupies the chair is painted in powdered hair and a white head-dress, such as he wears every day, to the great affliction of his courtiers, who recommended the usual state diadem; but “No, no,” said he, “there have been _red cap Popes_ enough, mine shall be only white,” and _white it is_.

This beautiful edifice was built by the Emperor Theodosius, and there is an old picture at the top, of our Saviour giving the benediction in the form that all the Greek priests give it now. Apropos, there have been many sects of Oriental Christians dropt into the Church of Rome within these late years; a very venerable old Armenian says Greek mass regularly in St. Peter’s church every day before one particular altar; his long black dress and white beard attracted much of my notice; he saw it did, and now whenever we meet in the street by chance he kindly stands still to bless me. But the Syriac or Maronites have a church to themselves just by the _Bocca della Verita_; and extremely curious we thought it to see their ceremonies upon Palm Sunday, when their aged patriarch, not less than ninety-three years old, and richly attired with an inconvenient weight of drapery, and a mitre shaped like that of Aaron in our Bibles exactly, was supported by two olive coloured orientals, while he pronounced a benediction on the tree that stood near the altar, and was at least ten feet high. The attendant clergy, habited after their own eastern taste, and very superbly, had broad phylacteries bound on their foreheads after the fashion of the Jews, and carried long strips of parchment up and down the church, with the law written on them in Syriac characters, while they formed themselves into a procession and led their truly reverend principal back to his place. An exhibition so striking, with the view of many monuments round the walls, sacred to the memory of such, and such a bishop of Damascus, gave so strong an impression of Asiatic manners to the mind, that one felt glad to find Europe round one at going out again. One of the treasures much renowned in it we have seen to-day, the transfiguration painted by Rafaelle; it was the _first_ thing the Emperor _did_ visit when he came to Rome, and so a Franciscan Friar who shews it, told us. He saw a gentleman walk into church it seems, and leaving his friends at dinner, went out to converse with him. “_Pull aside the curtain, Sir_,” said the stranger, “_for I am in haste to see this master-piece of your immortal Raphael_.” I was as willing to be in a hurry as he, says the Friar, and observed how fortunate it was for us that it could not be moved, otherwise we had lost it long ago; for, Sir, said I, they would have carried it away from poor _Monte Citoria_ to some finer temple long ago; though, let me tell you, this is an elegant Doric building too, and one of Bramante’s best works, much admired by the English in particular. I hope, if it please God now that I should live but a very little longer, I may have the honour of shewing it _the Emperor_. “Is he expected?” enquired the gentleman. “Every day, Sir,” replies the Friar. “And _well now_,” cries the foreigner, “what sort of a man do you expect to see?” “Why, Sir, you seem a traveller, did _you_ ever see him?” quoth the Franciscan. “Yes, sure, my good friend, very often indeed, he is as plain a man as myself, has good intentions, and an honest heart; and I think you would like him if you knew him, because he puts nobody out of their way.”

This dialogue, natural and simple, had taken such hold of our good _religieux_’s fancy, that not a word would he say about the picture, while his imagination was so full of the prince, and of his own amazement at the salutation of his companions, when returning to the refectory;--“Why, Gaetano,” cried they, “thou hast been conversing with _Cæsar_:”--I too liked the tale, because it was artless, and because it was true. But the picture surpasses all praise; the woman kneeling on the fore-ground, her back to the spectators, seems a repetition of the figure in Raphael’s famous picture of the Vatican on fire, that is shewn in the chambers called particularly by his name; where the personifications of Justice and Meekness, engraved by Strange, seize one’s attention very forcibly; it is observable, that the first is every body’s favourite in the painting, the last in the engraving.

Raphael’s Bible, as one of the long galleries is comically called by the connoisseurs, breaks one’s neck to look at it. The stories, beginning with Adam and Eve, are painted in small compartments; the colouring as vivid now as if it were done last week; and the _arabesques_ so gay and pretty, they are very often represented on fans; and we have fine engravings in England of all, yet, though exquisitely done, they give one somehow a false notion of the whole: so did Piranesi’s prints too, though invaluable, when considered by themselves as proofs of the artist’s merit. His judicious manner, however, of keeping all coarse objects from interfering with the grand ones, though it mightily increases the dignity, and adds to the spirit of his performance, is apt to lead him who wishes for information, into a style of thinking that will at last produce disappointment as to general appearances, which here at Rome is really disproportionate to the astonishing productions of art contained within its walls.

But I must leave this glorious Vatican, with the perpetual regret of having seen scarcely any thing of its invaluable library, except the prodigious size and judicious ornaments of it: neither book nor MS. could I prevail on the librarian to shew me, except some love-letters from Henry the Eighth of England to Anne Boleyn, which he said were most likely to interest _me_: they were very gross and indecent ones to be sure; so I felt offended, and went away, in a very ill humour, to see Castle St. Angelo; where the emperor Adrian intended perpetually to repose; but the urn containing his ashes is now kept in a garden belonging to one of the courts in the palace, near the Apollo and other Greek statues of peculiar excellence. From his tomb too, some of the pillars of St. Paul’s were taken, and this splendid mausolæum converted into a sort of citadel, where Sixtus Quintus deposited three millions of gold, it is said; and Alexander the Sixth retired to shield himself from Charles the Eighth of France, who entered Rome by torch-light in 1494, and forced the Pope to give him what the French historians call _l’investiture du royaume de Naples_; after which he took Capua, and made his conquering entry into Naples the February following, 1495; Ferdinand, son of Alphonso, flying before him. This Pope was the father of the famous Cæsar Borgia; and it was on this occasion, I believe, that the French wits made the well-known distich on his notorious avarice and rapacity:

Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum, Vendere jure potest, emerat ille prius[15].

This Castle St. Angelo went once, I believe, under the name of the Ælian Bridge, when the emperor Adrian first fixed his mind on making a monument for himself there. The soldiers of Belisarius are said to have destroyed numberless statues which then adorned it, by their odd manner of defending the place from the Gothic assaulters. It is now a sort of tower for the confinement of state prisoners; and decorated with many well-painted, but ill-kept pictures of Polydore and Julio Romano.

The fireworks exhibited here on Easter-day are the completest things of their kind in the world; three thousand rockets, all sent up into the air at once, make a wonderful burst indeed, and serve as a pretty imitation of Vesuvius: the lighting up of the building too on a sudden with fire-pots, had a new and beautiful effect; we all liked the entertainment vastly.

I looked here for what some French _recueil_, _Menagiana_ if I remember rightly, had taught me to expect; this was some brass cannon belonging to Christina queen of Sweden, who had caused them to be cast, and added an engraving on them with these remarkable words;

Habet sua fulmina Juno[16].

No such thing, however, could be found or heard of. Indeed a search after truth requires such patience, such penetration, and such learning, that it is no wonder she is so seldom got a glimpse of; whoever is diligently desirous to find her, is so perplexed by ignorance, so retarded by caution, so confounded by different explications of the same thing recurring at every turn, so sickened with silly credulity on the one hand, and so offended with pertness and pyrrhonism on the other, that it is fairly rendered impossible for one to keep clear of prejudices, while the steady resolution to do so becomes itself a prejudice.--But with regard to little follies, it is better to laugh at than lament them.

We were shewn one morning lately the spot where it is supposed St. Paul suffered decapitation; and our _Cicerone_ pointed out to us three fountains, about the warmth of Buxton, Matlock, or Bristol water, which were said to have burst from the ground at the moment of his martyrization. A Dutch gentleman in company, and a steady Calvinist, loudly ridiculed the tradition, called it an idle tale, and triumphantly expressed his _certain conviction_, that such an event _could not possibly_ have ever taken place. To this assertion no reply was made; and as we drove home all together, the conversation having taken a wide range and a different turn, he related in the course of it a long Rousseau-like tale of a lady he once knew, who having the strongest possible attachment to one lover, married another upon principles of filial obedience, still retaining inviolate her passion for the object of her choice, who, adorned with every excellence and every grace, continued a correspondence with her across the Atlantic ocean; having instantly changed his hemisphere, not to give the husband disturbance; who on his part admired their letters, many of which were written in _his_ praise, who had so cruelly interrupted their felicity. Seeing some marks of disbelief in my countenance, he begun observing, in an altered tone of voice, that _common_ and _vulgar_ minds might hold such events to be out of possibility, and such sentiments to be out of nature, but it was only because they were _above_ the _comprehension_ and beyond the reach of people educated in large and corrupt capitals, Paris, Rome, or London, to think true. Now was not some share of good breeding (best learned in great capitals perhaps) necessary to prevent one from retorting upon such an orator--that it was more likely nature should have been permitted to deviate in favour of Paul the apostle of Jesus Christ, than of a fat inhabitant of North Zealand, no way distinguished from the mass of mankind?

But we have been called to pass some moments on the Cælian hill; and see the _Chiesa di San Gregorio_, interesting above all others to travellers who delight in the vestiges of Pagan Rome: as, having been built upon a Patrician’s house, it still to a great degree retains the form of one; while to the scholar who is pleased with anecdotes of ecclesiastical history, the days recur when the stone chair they shew us, contented the meek and venerable bishop of Rome who sate in it, while his gentle spirit sought the welfare of every Christian, and refused to persecute even the benighted and unbelieving Jews; opposing only the arms of piety and prayer, to the few enemies his transcendent excellence had raised him. His picture here is considered as a master-piece of Annibale Caracci; and it is strange to think that the trial-pieces, as they are called, should be erroneously treated of in the Carpenteriana: when speaking of the contention between the two scholars, to decide which the master sent for an old woman, Monsieur de Carpentier tells us the dispute lay between Domenichino and Albano--a gross mistake; as it was Guido, not Albano, who ventured to paint something in rivalry with Domenichino, relative to St. Andrew and his martyrdom; and these trial-pieces produced from her the same preference given by every spectator who has seen them since; for when Caracci (unwilling to offend either of his scholars, as both were men of the highest rank and talents) enquired of _her_ what _she_ thought of Guido’s performance?--“Indeed,” replied the old woman, “I have never yet looked at it, so fully has my mind been occupied by the powers shewn in that of Domenichino.”

The _vecchia_ is here at Rome the common phrase when speaking of your only female servant, a person not unlike an Oxford or Cambridge bed-maker in appearance; and much amazed was I two days ago at the answer of _our_ _vecchia_, when curiosity prompted me to ask her age:--“_O, Madam, I am a very aged woman_,” was the reply, “_and have two grandchildren married; I am forty-two years old_, poveretta me!” I told an Italian gentleman who dined with us what Caterina had said, and begged him to ask the _laquais de place_, who waited on us at table, a similar question. He appeared a large, well-looking, sturdy fellow, about thirty-eight years old; but said he was scarce twenty-two; that he had been married six years, and had five children. How old was your wife when you met?--“Thirteen, Sir,” answered Carlo: so all is kept even at least; for if they end life sooner than in colder climates, they begin it earlier it is plain.

Yet such things seem strange to _us_; so do a thousand which occur in these warm countries in the commonest life. Brick floors, for example, with hangings of a dirty printed cotton, affording no bad shelter for spiders, bugs, &c.; a table in the same room, encrusted with _verd antique_, very fine and worthy of Wilton house; with some exceeding good copies of the finest pictures here at Rome; form the furniture of our present lodging: and now we have got the little casement windows clean to look at it, I pass whole hours admiring, even in the copy, our glorious descent from the cross, by Daniel de Volterra; which to say truth loses less than many a great performance of the same kind, because its merits consist in composition and design; and as sentiment, not style, is translatable, so grouping and putting figures finely together can be easier transmitted by a copy, than the meaner excellencies of colouring and finishing. Homer and Cervantes may be enjoyed by those who never learned their language, at least to a great degree; while a true taste of Gray’s Odes or Martial’s Epigrams has been hitherto found exceedingly difficult to communicate. It would, however, be cruel to deny the merit of colouring to Daniel de Volterra’s descent from the cross, only because being painted in fresco it has suffered so terribly by time and want of care, but it is now kept covered, and they remove the curtain when any body desires to contemplate its various beauties.

The church of Santa Maria Maggiore has been too long unspoken of, rich as it is with the first gold torn from the unfortunate aborigines of America; a present from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to the Pope, in return for that permission he had given them to exert and establish their sanguinary sway over those luckless nations. One pillar from the temple of Peace is an ill-adapted ornament to this edifice, built nearly in the form of an ancient _basilica_; and with so expensive a quantity of gilding, that it is said two hundred and fifty thousand pounds were expended on one chapel only, which is at last inferior in fame and beauty to _cappella Corsini_; in riches and magnificence to _cappella Borghese_, where an amethyst frame of immense value surrounds the names, in gold cypher, of our blessed Saviour and his Mother, the ground of which is of transparent jasper, and cannot be matched for elegance or perfection, being at least four feet high (the tablets I mean), and three feet wide. But to this Borghese family, I am well persuaded, it would be a real fatigue to count the wealth which they enjoy.

Villa Pamphili is a lovely place, or might be made so; but laying out pleasure grounds is not the forte of Italian taste. I never saw one of them, except Lomellino of Genoa, who had higher notions of a garden than what an opera scene affords; and that is merely a range of trees in great pots with gilded handles, and rows of tall cypresses planted one between every two pots, all straight over against each other in long lines; with an octangular marble bason to hold water in the middle, covered for the most part with a thick green scum.

At Villa Pamphili is a picture of Sanctorius, who made the weighing balance spoken of by Addison in the Spectator; it was originally contrived for the Pamphili Pope. And here is an old statue of Clodius profaning the mysteries of the Bona Dea, as we read in the Roman history. And here are camels working in the park like horses: we found them playing about at their leisure when we were at Pisa, and at Milan they were shewed for a show; so little does one state of Italy connect with another. These three cities cannot possibly be much further from each other than London, York, and Exeter; yet the manners differ entirely, and what is done in one place is not known at all in the other. It must be remembered that they are all separate states.

At the Farnesini palace our amusements were of a nature very contrary to this; but every place produces amusement when one is willing to be pleased. After looking over the various and inestimable productions of art contained there, we came at last to the celebrated marriage of Alexander’s Roxana; where, say some of the books of description, the world’s greatest hero is represented by Europe’s greatest painter. Some French gentlemen were in our company, and looking steadily at the picture for a while, one of them exclaimed, “_A la fin voila ce qui est vrayment noble; cet Alexandre là; il paroit effectivement le roy de France même_[17].”

The Spada palace boasts Guercino’s Dido, so disliked by the critics, who say she looks spitted; but extremely esteemed by those that understand its merit in other respects. There is also the very statue kept at this palace, at the feet of which Cæsar fell when he was assassinated at the capitol: those who shew it never fail to relate his care to die gracefully; which was likewise the last desire that occupied Lucretia’s mind: Augustus too, justly considering his life as scenical, desired the _plaudits_ of his friends at its conclusion: and even Flavius Vespasian, a plain man as one should think during a pretty large portion of his existence, wished at last to _die like an emperor_. That this statue of Pompey should have been accidentally found with the head lying in one man’s ground and the body in another, is curious enough: a rage for appropriation gets the better of all the love of arts; so the contending parties (like the sisters in David Simple, with their fine-worked carpet) fairly severed the statue, and took home each his half; the proprietor of this palace meanwhile purchased the two pieces, stuck them once more together, and here they are.--Pity but the sovereign had carried both off for himself.--Pius Sextus however is not so disposed: he has had a legacy left him within these last years, to the prejudice of some nobleman’s heirs; who loudly lamented _their fate_, and _his tyranny_ who could take advantage, as they expressed it, of their relation’s caprice. The Pope did not give it them back, because they behaved so ill, he said; but neither did he seize what was left him, by dint of despotic authority; _he went to law_ with the family for it, which I thought a very strange thing; _and lost his cause_, which I thought a still stranger.