Chapter 79

WHAT KIND OF A LETTER THE SENATOR WROTE FOR THE "NEW ENGLAND PATRIOT," WHICH SHOWS A TRITE, LIBERAL, UNBIASED, PLAIN, UNVARNISHED VIEW OF ROME.

"Dick," said the Senator, as he sat with him in his room, "I've been thinking over your tone of mind, more particularly as it appears in those letters which you write home, such as you read the other day. It is a surprising thing to me how a young man with your usual good sense, keenness of perception, and fine education, can allow yourself to be so completely carried away by a mawkish sentiment. What is the use of all these memories and fancies and hysterical emotions that you talk about? In one place you call yourself by the absurd name of 'A Pensive Traveller.' Why not be honest? Be a sensible American, exhibiting in your thoughts and in all your actions the effect of democratic principles and stiff republican institutions. Now I'll read you what I have written. I think the matter is a little nearer the mark than your flights of fancy. But perhaps you don't care just now about hearing it?"

"Indeed I do; so read on," said Dick.

"As I have travelled considerable in Italy," said the Senator, reading from a paper which he drew from his pocket, "with my eyes wide open, I have some idea of the country and of the general condition of the farming class."

The Senator stopped. "I forgot to say that this is for the _New England Patriot_, published in our village, you know."

Dick nodded. The Senator resumed:

"The soil is remarkably rich. Even where there are mountains they are well wooded. So if the fields look well it is not surprising. What is surprising is the cultivation. I saw ploughs such as Adam might have used when forced for the first time to turn up the ground outside the locality of Eden; harrows which were probably invented by Numa Pompey, an old Roman that people talk about.

"They haven't any idea of draining clear. For here is a place called the Pontine Marsh, beautiful soil, surrounded by a settled country, and yet they let it go to waste almost entirely.

"The Italians are lazy. The secret of their bad farming lies in this. For the men loll and smoke on the fences, leaving the poor women to toil in the fields. A woman ploughing! And yet these people want to be free.

"They wear leather leggins, short breeches, and jackets. Many of them wear wooden shifts. The women of the south use a queer kind of outlandish head-dress, which if they spent less time in fixing it would be better for their own worldly prosperity.

"The cattle are fine: very broad in the chest, with splendid action. I don't believe any other country can show such cattle. The pigs are certainly the best I ever saw by a long chalk. Their chops beat all creation. A friend of mine has made some sketches, which I will give to the Lyceum on my return. They exhibit the Sorrento pig in various attitudes.

"The horses, on the contrary, are poor affairs. I have yet to see the first decent horse. The animals employed by travellers generally are the lowest of their species. The shoes which the horses wear are of a singular shape. I can't describe them in writing, but they look more like a flat-iron than any thing else.

"I paid a visit to Pompeii, and on coming back I saw some of the carts of the country. They gave one a deplorable idea of the state of the useful arts in this place. Scientific farming is out of the question. If fine plantations are seen it's Nature does it.

"Vineyards abound everywhere. Wine is a great staple of the country. Yet they don't export much after all. In fact the foreign commerce is comparatively trifling. Chestnuts and olives are raised in immense quantities. The chestnut is as essential to the Italian as the potato is to the Irishman. A failure in the crop is attended with the same disastrous consequences. They dry the nuts, grind them into a kind of flour, and make them into cakes. I tasted one and found it abominable. Yet these people eat it with garlic, and grow fat on it. Chestnut bread, oil instead of butter, wine instead of tea, and you have an Italian meal.

"It's a fine country for fruit. I found Gaeta surrounded by orange groves. The fig is an important article in the economy of an Italian household.

"I have been in Rome three weeks. Many people take much interest in this place, though quite unnecessarily. I do not think it is at all equal to Boston. Yet I have taken great pains to examine the place. The streets are narrow and crooked, like those of Boston. They are extremely dirty. There are no sidewalks. The gutter is in the middle of the street. The people empty their slops from their windows. The pavements are bad and very slippery. The accumulation of filth about the streets is immense. The drainage is not good. They actually use one old drain which, they tell me, was made three thousand years ago.

"Gas has only been recently introduced. I understand that a year or two ago the streets were lighted by miserable contrivances, consisting of a mean oil lamp swung from the middle of a rope stretched across the street.

"The shops are not worth mentioning. There are no magnificent _Dry-goods Stores_, such as I have seen by the hundred in Boston; no _Hardware Stores_; no palatial _Patent Medicine Edifices_; no signs of enterprise, in fact, at all.

"The houses are very uncomfortable. They are large, and built in the form of a square. People live on separate flats. If it is cold they have to grin and bear it. There are no stoves. I have suffered more from the cold on some evenings since I have been here than ever I did in-doors at home. I have asked for a fire, but all they could give me was a poisonous fire of charcoal in an earthen thing like a basket.

"Some of their public buildings are good, but that can't make the population comfortable. In fact, the people generally are ill-cared for. Here are the wretched Jews, who live in a filthy quarter of the city crowded together like pigs.

"The people pass the most of their time in coffee-houses. They are an idle set--have nothing in the world to do. It is still a mystery to me how they live.

"The fact is, there are too many soldiers and priests. Now it is evident that these gentry, being non-producers, must be supported directly or indirectly by the producers. This is the cause, I suppose, of the poverty of a great part of the population.

"Begging is reduced to a science. In this I confess the Italian beats the American all to pieces. The American eye has not seen, nor ear heard, the devices of an Italian beggar to get along.

"I have seen them in great crowds waiting outside of a monastery for their dinner, which consists of huge bowls of porridge given by the monks. Can any thing be more ruinous to a people?

"The only trade that I could discover after a long and patient search was the trade in brooches and toys which are bought as curiosities by travellers.

"There are nothing but churches and palaces wherever you go. Some of these palaces are queer-looking concerns. There isn't one in the whole lot equal to some of the Fifth Avenue houses in New York in point of real genuine style.

"There has been too much money spent in churches, and too little on houses. If it amounted to any thing it would not be so bad, but the only effect has been to promote an idle fondness for music and pictures and such like. If they tore down nine-tenths of their churches and turned them into school-houses on the New England system, it would not be bad for the rising generation.

"The newspapers which they have are miserable things-wretched little sheets, full of lies--no advertisements, no news, no nothing. I got a friend to translate what pretended to be the latest American news. It was a collection of murders, duels, railway accidents, and steamboat explosions.

"I don't see what hope there is for this unfortunate country; I don't really. The people have gone on so long in their present course that they are now about incorrigible. If the entire population were to emigrate to the Western States, and mix up with the people there, it might be possible for their descendants in the course of time to amount to something.

"I don't see any hope except perhaps in one plan, which would be no doubt impossible for these lazy and dreamy Italians to carry out. It is this: Let this poor, brokendown, bankrupt Government make an inventory of its whole stock of jewels, gold, gems, pictures, and statues. I understand that the nobility throughout Europe would be willing to pay immense sums of money for these ornaments. If they are fools enough to do so, then in Heaven's name let them have the chance. Clear out the whole stock of rubbish, and let the hard cash come in to replace it. That would be a good beginning, with something tangible to start from. I am told that the ornaments of St. Peter's Cathedral cost ever so many millions of dollars. In the name of goodness why not sell out the stock and realize instead of issuing those ragged notes for twenty-five cents, which circulate among the people here at a discount of about seventy-five per cent?

"Then let them run a railroad north to Florence and south to Naples. It would open up a fine tract of county which is capable of growing grain; it would tap the great olive-growing districts, and originate a vast trade of oil, wine, and dried fruits.

"The country around Rome is uninhabited, but not barren. It is sickly in summer-time, but if there was a population on it who would cultivate it property I calculate the malaria would vanish, just as the fever and ague do from many Western districts in our country by the same agencies. I calculate that region could be made one of the most fertile on this round earth if occupied by an industrious class of emigrants.

"But there is a large space inside the walls of the city which could be turned to the best of purposes.

"The place which used to be the Roman Forum is exactly calculated to be the terminus of the railroad which I have suggested. A commodious depot could be made, and the door-way might be worked up out of the arch of Titus, which now stands blocking up the way, and is of no earthly use.

"The amount of crumbling stones and old mined walls that they leave about this quarter of the city is astonishing. It ought not to be so.

"What the Government ought to do after being put in funds by the process mentioned above is this:

"The Government ought to tear down all those unsightly heaps of stone and erect factories and industrial schools. There is plenty of material to do it with. For instance, take the old ruin called the Coliseum. It is a fact, arrived at by elaborate calculation, that the entire contents of that concern are amply sufficient to construct no less than one hundred and fifty handsome factories, each two hundred feet by seventy-five.

"The factories being built, they could be devoted to the production of the finer tissues. Silks and velvets could be produced here. Glass-ware of all kinds could be made. There is a fine Italian clay that makes nice cups and crocks.

"I could also suggest the famous Roman cement as an additional article of export. The Catacombs under the city could be put to some direct practical use.

"I have hastily put out these few ideas to show what a liberal and enlightened policy might effect even in such an unpromising place as Rome. It is not probable, however, that my scheme would meet with favor here. The leading classes in this city are such an incurable get of old fogies that, I verily believe, rather than do what I have suggested, they would choose to have the earth open beneath them and swallow them up forever--city, churches, statues, pictures, museums, palaces, ruins and all.

"I've got a few other ideas, some of which will work some day. Suppose Russia should sell us her part of America. Spain sell us Cuba, Italy give us Rome, Turkey an island or two--then what? But I'll keep this for another letter."

"That's all," said the Senator.

Dick's face was drawn up into the strangest expression. He did not say any thing, however. The Senator calmly folded up his paper, and with a thoughtful air took up his hat.

"I'm going to that Coliseum again to measure a place I forgot," said he.

Upon which he retired, leaving Dick alone.