Chapter 69

A LETTER BY DICK, AND CRITICISMS OF HIS FRIENDS.

They took lodgings near the Piazza di Spagna. This is the best part of Rome to live in, which every traveller will acknowledge. Among other advantages, it is perhaps the only clean spot in the Capital of Christendom.

Their lodgings were peculiar. Description is quite unnecessary. They were not discovered without toil, and not secured without warfare. Once in possession they had no reason to complain. True, the conveniences of civilized life do not exist there--but who dreams of convenience in Rome?

On the evening of their arrival they were sitting in the Senator's room, which was used as the general rendezvous. Dick was diligently writing.

"Dick," said the Senator, "what are you about?"

"Well," said Dick, "the fact is, I just happened to remember that when I left home the editor of the village paper wished me to write occasionally. I promised, and he at once published the fact in enormous capitals. I never thought of it till this evening, when I happened to find a scrap of the last issue of his paper in my valise. I recollected my promise, and I thought I might as well drop a line."

"Read what you have written."

Dick blushed and hesitated.

"Nonsense! Go ahead, my boy!" said Buttons.

Whereupon Dick cleared his throat and began:

"ROME, May 30, 1859.

MR. EDITOR,--Rome is a subject which is neither uninteresting nor alien to the present age."

"That's a fact, or you wouldn't be here writing it," remarked Buttons.

"In looking over the past, our view is too often hounded by the Middle Ages. We consider that period as the chaos of the modern world, when it lay covered with darkness, until the Reform came and said. 'Let there be light!"

"Hang it, Dick! be original or be nothing."

"Yet, if the life of the world began anywhere, it was in Rome. Assyria is nothing to me. Egypt is but a spectacle!"

"If you only had enough funds to carry you there you'd change your tune. But go on."

"But Rome arises before me as the parent of the latter time. By her the old battles between Freedom and Despotism were fought long ago, and the forms and principles of Liberty came forth, to pass, amid many vicissitudes, down to a new-born day."

"There! I'm coming to the point now!"

"About time, I imagine. The editor will get into despair."

"There is but one fitting approach to Rome. By any other road the majesty of the Old Capital is lost in the lesser grandeur of the Medieval City. Whoever goes there let him come up from Naples and enter by the Jerusalem Gate."

"Jerusalem fiddlesticks! Why, there's no such gate!"

"There the very spirit of Antiquity sits enthroned to welcome the traveller, and all the solemn Past sheds her influences over his soul--"

"Excuse me; there is a Jerusalem Gate."

"Perhaps so--in Joppa."

"There the Imperial City lies in the sublimity of ruin. It is the Rome of our dreams--the ghost of a dead and buried Empire hovering over its own neglected grave!"

"Dick, it's not fair to work off an old college essay as European correspondence."

"Nothing may be seen but desolation. The waste Campagna stretches its arid surface away to the Alban mountains, uninhabited, and forsaken of man and beast. For the dust and the works and the monuments of millions lie here, mingled in the common corruption of the tomb, and the life of the present age shrinks away in terror. Long lines of lofty aqueducts come slowly down from the Alban hills, but these crumbled stones and broken arches tell a story more eloquent than human voice.

"The walls arise before us, but there is no city beyond. The desolation that reigns in the Campagna has entered here. The palace of the noble, the haunts of pleasure, the resorts of the multitude, the garrison of the soldier, have crumbled to dust, and mingled together in one common ruin. The soil on which we tread, which gives birth to trees, shrubs, and wild flowers without number, is but an assemblage of the disintegrated atoms of stones and mortar that once arose on high in the form of palace, pyramid, or temple."

"Dick, I advise you to write all your letters before you see the places you speak of. You've no idea how eloquent you can be!"

"Now if we pass on in this direction, we soon come to a spot which is the centre of the world--the place where most of all we must look when we search for the source of much that is valuable in our age.

"It in a rude and a neglected spot. At one end rises a rock crowned with houses; on one side are a few mean edifices, mingled with masses of tottering ruins; on the other a hill formed altogether of crumbled atoms of bricks, mortar, and precious marbles. In the midst are a few rough columns blackened by time and exposure. The soil is deep, and in places there are pits where excavations have been made. Rubbish lies around; bits of straw, and grass, and hay, and decayed leather, and broken bottles, and old bones. A few dirty shepherds pass along, driving lean and miserable sheep. Further up is a cluster of wine-carts, with still more curious horses and drivers.

"What is this place?--what those ruins, these fallen monuments, these hoary arches, these ivy-covered walls? What? This is--

"'The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood; Here a proud people's passions were exhaled, From the first hour of Empire in the bud To that when further worlds to conquer failed; The Forum where the immortal accents glow, And still the eloquent air breathes, burns with Cicero!'

"Yet if you go up to one of those people and ask this Question, he will answer you and tell you the only name, he knows--The Cow Market!'"

"Is that all?" inquired Buttons, as Dick laid down his paper.

"That's all I've written as yet."

Whereupon Buttons clapped his bands to express applause, and all the others laughingly followed his example.

"Dick," said the Senator, after a pause, "what you have written sounds pretty. But look at the facts. Here you are writing a description of Rome before you've seen any thing of the place at all. All that you have put in that letter is what you have read in books of travel. I mention this not from blame, but merely to show what a wrong principle travellers go on. They don't notice real live facts. Now I've promised the editor of our paper a letter. As soon as I write it I'll read it for you. The style won't be equal to yours. But, if I write, I'll be bound to tell something new. Sentiment," pursued the Senator, thoughtfully, "is playing the dickens with the present age. What we ought to look at is not old ruins or pictures, but men--men--live men. I'd rather visit the cottage of an Italian peasant than any church in the country. I'd rather see the working of the political constitution of this 'ere benighted land than any painting you can show. Horse-shoes before ancient stones, and macaroni before statues, say I! For these little things show me all the life of the people. If I only understood their cursed lingo," said the Senator, with a tinge of regret, "I'd rather stand and hear them talk by the hour, particularly the women, than listen to the pootiest music they can scare up!"

"I tried that game," said Mr. Figgs, ruefully, "in Naples. I went into a broker's shop to change a Napoleon. I thought I'd like to see their financial system. I saw enough of it; for the scoundrel gave me a lot of little bits of coin that only passed for a few cents apiece in Naples, with difficulty at that, and won't pass here at all!"

The Senator laughed. "Well, you shouldn't complain. You lost your Napoleon, but gained experience. You have a new wrinkle. I gained a new wrinkle too when I gave a half-Napoleon, by mistake, to a wretched looking beggar, blind of one eye. I intended to give him a centime."

"Your principle," said Buttons, "does well enough for you as a traveller. But you don't look at all the points of the subject. The point is to write a letter for a newspaper. Now what is the most successful kind of letter? The readers of a family paper are notoriously women and young men, or lads. Older men only look at the advertisements or the news. What do women and lads care for horse-shoes and macaroni? Of course, if one were to write about these things in a humorous style they would take; but, as a general thing, they prefer to read about old ruins, and statues, and cities, and processions. But the best kind of a correspondence is that which deals altogether in adventures. That's what takes the mind! Incidents of travel, fights with ruffians, quarrels with landlords, shipwrecks, robbery, odd scrapes, laughable scenes; and Dick, my boy! when you write again be sure to fill your letter with events of this sort."

"But suppose," suggested Dick, meekly, "that we meet with no ruffians, and there are no adventures to relate?"

"Then use a traveller's privilege and invent them. What was imagination given for if not to use?"

"It will not do--it will not do," said the Senator, decidedly. "You must hold on to facts. Information, not amusement, should be your aim."

"But information is dull by itself. Amusement perhaps is useless. Now how much better to combine the utility of solid information with the lighter graces of amusement, fun, and fancy. Your pill, Doctor, is hard to take, though its effects are good. Coat it with sugar and it's easy."

"What!" exclaimed the Doctor, suddenly starting up. "I'm not asleep! Did you speak to me?"

The Doctor blinked and rubbed his eyes, and wondered what the company were laughing at. In a few minutes, however, he concluded to resume his broken slumber in his bed. He accordingly retired; and the company followed his example.