Chapter XI: Mrs Summerhayes (3)

We preserve Mr Story’s orthography, which, although unusual, is
doubtless correct. “The name Colosseum, or Coliseum as it is
improperly called, seems to have been derived from its colossal
proportions, and not, as has been supposed by some writers, from a
colossal statue of one of the emperors placed within it” (‘Roba,’ i.
222). A correspondent of the ‘Athenæum’ (7th February 1863) says that,
“in volume II. of the ‘Lives of the Roman Empresses,’ p. 50 (Edit.
Naples, 1768), there is a note which gives the reason why the correct
orthography is Colosseum. Referring to the completion of the great
amphitheatre by Titus, the note has the following: ‘Nel mezzo del
Anfiteatro si sorgeva una grande statua rappresentante Nerone,
chiamata il Colosso di Nerone, da cui quel luogo prese il nome di
Colosseo.’” Mr Story remarks that the present name is comparatively
modern, and first occurs in the writings of the venerable Bede. To the
ancient Romans the Colosseum was known as the Amphiteatrum Flavium.

How profound a calm has now replaced the rush and roar of conflict! You walk down to the Colosseum on one of those soft sunny mornings common in Rome in the early months of the year, and you find it kept by two or three French sentries, and untenanted save by as many dilapidated _ciceroni_, who crawl out of their secret recesses as you enter the arena, and vie with each other for the honour of conducting you over the mighty remains, in which, as Mr Story happily expresses it, “Nature has healed over the wounds of time with delicate grasses and weeds.” The last time we visited the Colosseum, the drummers of a French regiment were out for practice in its immediate vicinity, startling the echoes of the wondrous old edifice with a diabolical clatter of stick against sheepskin. Saw-sharpening, or the simultaneous tuning of one hundred and fifty fiddles, is hardly more vexatious to the nerves than the discordant rub-a-dub of a dozen squads of apprentice drummers, pounding their instruments with a deafening disregard to harmony. Persons are differently affected by the Colosseum, Mr Story assures us—some with horror, some with sentiment, some with statistics. Persons who go there on drum-practice days are doubtless affected with a vehement desire to get out of earshot. Apart from the unpleasant nature of the noise, it, and the sight of its originators, are destructive of the day-dreams to which solitude and quiet in that great dilapidated structure are so eminently favourable. Most persons will admit that nothing in Rome has impressed them so strongly as the Colosseum. A German writer has said that the Americans are particularly affected by it, more so than most Europeans; and if this be the case, it is doubtless attributable to the striking contrast the tourist from beyond the Atlantic finds between those ruins of a mighty past and the upstart edifices of his own bran-new country. The Americans, it is said, were the first to light up the Colosseum with Bengal fires. A number of Germans, artists and others, attempted it with torches on a dark winter night, but the means were insufficient: the torches, although numerous, struggled in vain to dispel the deep nocturnal gloom which seemed condensed in the giant ruin. The attempt, however, gave the idea to the Americans, who quickly found the money for something on a grander scale; and the Roman pyrotechnists, who are first-rate in skill and experience, produced an illumination with coloured fires which drew out to the Colosseum not only the _forestieri_ but the Romans themselves, usually very careless of the sights the foreigners most run after. Since then such illuminations have become comparatively common, and have been witnessed by most persons who have remained any time in Rome. The effect is very striking, and should be seen once, just as one goes to see the statuary at the Vatican by torchlight; but, for both, the preference will generally be given to daylight, and also, as regards the Colosseum, to moonlight. For the best description of its appearance when lighted in this last-named manner, Mr Story refers us to a book entitled, ‘Rome and its Rulers,’ by that impartial Irish M.P., Mr John Francis Maguire, who, when in the Pope’s dominions, was so peculiarly fortunate as to find there nothing which was not in the highest degree admirable and praiseworthy. Truly a book “in which many things are scented with rose-water,” as Mr Story remarks, and which may also justly be said to abound in moonshine. Of this latter commodity, as collected in the Colosseum, the eloquent Maguire thus discourses:—

“The moon was slowly pursuing her way up the blue sky, and gradually
rising, _foot by foot_, to the height of the unbroken wall of the
building, _now and then_ peeping in through arch or window....
Patiently we awaited the higher elevation and full splendour of the
chaste Dian, enjoying each new effect as she sported with the
venerable ruin, and imparted to its grim antiquity a youthful
flush—mocking but delightful illusion.”

Nothing can be more striking than this picture of the moon going up-stairs at a steady, composed pace, fearful, probably, of losing breath by speed, and occasionally pausing at a hole in the wall to squint through it at her Hibernian admirer. But your thoroughpaced Irish or British Ultramontane is very liable to lunar influences when he gets to Rome; and if he chance to be in Parliament, or in a position to make his voice heard in his own country, he is apt to have his head completely turned by the interested attentions shown to him in the highest quarters. We have happened more than once to see gentlemen of that class, devoted supporters of the Pope, by the influence of whose Irish adherents they had been carried into Parliament, arrive in Rome during the recess to seek materials for their speeches in the approaching session. They stay but a short time, and generally know no Italian and little French, but that is a very trifling drawback. They find countrymen amongst the immediate friends and daily visitors of his Holiness, are made much of at the Vatican, are crammed to their hearts’ content with carefully-prepared statistics and fabulous facts, and depart convinced, or seeming to be so, that they have a thorough knowledge of the state of the country, and that all that has been said about Papal misrule is sheer malignant invention. They are taken to see the prisons, and find them far better and more humane in their arrangements than those they looked into as they passed through Piedmont. Of course they do. In Piedmont there is little attempt at concealment. Whatever its faults, the Government there does not take much pains to appear better than it is. In Rome the confiding M.P. sees the model prisons—those kept for inspection. Does he imagine he has seen those where political prisoners are confined? Surely Messrs Maguire, Hennessey, Bowyer, and Co., are not so credulous as that. The Vatican is far too knowing not to ease the consciences of its advocates. Why should they be reduced to the cruel alternative of silence or of speaking in opposition to what they know to be fact? In the Roman prisons there are rooms set apart for favoured prisoners, who there enjoy light and air, and are well fed and treated. Mr Maguire was delighted with the Prison of San Michele, where, “instead of gloom, horror, and noisome dungeons, I beheld a large, well-lighted, well-ventilated, and (could such a term be properly applied to any place of confinement) cheerful-looking hall.” He goes on to talk of “the bright sun streaming in; the superior size and arrangement of the cells,” &c. &c. Mr Story, who dwells a good deal on the subject of Roman and Neapolitan prisons (as the latter were under the Bourbons), and supplies various documents justificatory of the view which he and every unbiassed and rightly-informed person cannot do otherwise than take of them, refers to the well-known Casanova case—that of an unfortunate young Italian who, on his return from a residence in America, was arrested at Viterbo on the sole ground that he had no passport, and subjected to the most barbarous treatment in the Carcere Nuovo at Rome. Thence he was transferred to Naples, and, after a captivity of five or six years, was released by the arrival of Garibaldi. “Oh, Mr Maguire,” exclaims the author of the ‘Roba,’ “did you never suspect that if you had the mischance to be a poor Italian without parents or passport, instead of a member of Parliament, you might have been shown into other rooms than the _‘Salone dei Preti?’ Via!_” Why should Mr Maguire trouble himself with such inconvenient suspicions? He and those who resemble him seek their information in the highest quarter—namely, from the Government; and having, beforehand, an excellent opinion of that Government, they cannot think of suspecting it of fraud or misstatement. Moreover he might find in Rome countrymen of his own, and possibly even some Englishmen, ready to support him in the belief that everything is for the best under the pious and enlightened rule of Antonelli. There are always a few bitter Irish bigots and zealous British perverts to be met with in the Papal capital, prompt to deny the existence of abuses, and to extol the excellent working of the priest-government under which the unfortunate Romans groan. They are made much of by the Monsignori, and graciously received by the Pope; and occasionally they find means of making some sort of demonstration which may be magnified in partisan journals into that of an important section of the British residents in Rome. It was an insignificant clique of this kind which, about two years ago, scandalised their countrymen in that capital by waiting upon Francis II. of Naples with expressions of sympathy and good wishes.

The author of the ‘Roba,’ who does not dislike a good-natured hit at his own countrymen’s peculiarities, is amusing with respect to their criticisms of the Colosseum, the Campagna, and other principal features of Rome and its environs. One young lady told him she thought the Colosseum “pretty, but not so pretty as Naples;” and a gentleman was of opinion that it was less well built than the custom-house in his native city, of which the correct lines, sharp angles, and whitewashed superficies were doubtless more grateful to his view than the ruins whose abundance constitutes one of Rome’s chief charms. There are people who would be more struck with the excellent workmanship and first-rate bricks of the tall modern scarp which supports a part of the Colosseum that threatened to crumble away, than they would be with its ruined arches, its broken travertine blocks, its time-worn cornices and flower-draped benches, or than with the lovely ruins of Caracalla’s baths, concerning which Mr Story quotes Shelley, whilst himself describing them with much poetry of expression, and a warm perception of the beautiful. “Come with me,” he says, “to the massive ruins of Caracalla’s baths—climb its lofty arches and creep along the broken roofs of its perilous terraces. Golden gorses and wallflowers blaze there in the sun, out of reach; fig-trees, whose fruit no hand can pluck, root themselves in its clefts; pink sweetpeas and every variety of creeping vetch here bloom in perfection; tall grasses wave their feathery plumes out on dizzy and impracticable ledges; and nature seems to have delighted to twine this majestic ruin with its loveliest flowers. Sit here, where Shelley wrote the ‘Prometheus Unbound,’ and look out over the wide-stretching Campagna.” And if you have with you, as you ought to have, when wandering over those giddy arches and broken platforms, the second volume of ‘Roba di Roma,’ turn to page 97, and read its accomplished author’s graphic and glowing description of the view thence obtained. Unfortunately not all his countrymen possess the same feeling for the beautiful in nature—not all can find a charm in a time-stained marble block, moss-mantled and weed-entwined. To one of Mr Story’s countrymen the Colosseum was simply “an ugly, pokerish place,” whilst another was chiefly struck by its circular form, and a third by the advantages it offered for love-making—this last being a recommendation, doubtless, but one that can hardly have been reckoned upon by the original designers of the edifice. One gentleman (we need not ask from which side of the Atlantic) was liberal enough to say, “I do not _object_, sir, to the carnival at Rome;” and Mr Story assures us that he knows several who are equally indulgent to the Colosseum and to St Peter’s. He grieves to admit that English and Americans too often speak ill of the Campagna, which seems to him, he declares, the most beautiful and touching in its interest of all places he has ever seen; but he pillories a Frenchman who ventures to despise it. The confident Gaul had just come up from Naples, and was asked if he had seen the grand old temples at Pæstum. “_Oui, monsieur_,” was his answer, “_j’ai vu le Peste. C’est un pays détestable; c’est comme la Campagne de Rome_.” Detestable enough, no doubt, says Story, after the fine military landscape that surrounds Paris; “where low bounding hills are flattened like earthworks and bastions, and stiff formal poplars are drawn up in squares and columns on the wide parade of its level and monotonous plains. It is also a peculiarity of the Frenchman that he underrates everybody and everything except himself and his country.” Mr Story is too much in love with the Campagna not to be jealous of its fame. It is quite certain that, with many, this is not so good as it deserves. People who have not explored it are apt to picture it to themselves as a desolate tract, affording pasturage but little wood, and exhaling fever from every cleft in its soil. When once they have driven and ridden or walked (for much cannot be done on wheels) over its varied and picturesque surface, and seen it in the fresh springtime, when its green copses and hedges scent the air, and its sward is diapered with wild-flowers innumerable, many of which are amongst the choice ones of our English gardens, they are lost in astonishment at the beauty of the tract that surrounds Rome. Our own original notion of the Campagna was based on a picture of a dreary expanse, over which the first shades of night were spreading, chasing thence the last deep red glow of sunset; whilst in the centre of the melancholy, treeless plain, a peasant lad, in goat-skin breeks and elf-locks, and suffering, apparently, under a severe attack of jaundice, tended a herd of pallid cattle, which gave one the idea of having just risen from the straw of sickness in some bovine fever hospital. How different this unprepossessing picture was from the reality need not be told to any who have taken the trouble to visit the vicinity of Rome, instead of limiting their daily exercise (as some of the visitors to that city most unwisely, both as regards health and enjoyment, are prone to do) to the small but agreeable garden on the Pincian Hill, and to the more extensive and certainly most delightful grounds of the Villas Borghese, Doria Pamphili, Albani, and other residences of the Roman princes. It would be tedious to enumerate even the half of the charming rides which are to be had within twenty miles of Rome, and which, it must be owned, the younger portion of the floating British population, both male and female, generally make the most of during the early spring months, much more to their own pleasure and benefit than to those of the unfortunate hacks the Roman livery-stable keepers annually provide for the use of the _forestieri_. A regard for truth compels us also to declare that it is not the male portion of the English at Rome that those Campagna Rosinantes would, could they speak their minds, most object to carry. Rome—whose climate, by the by, has been thought by some to be generally more favourable to women than to men—seems to give our fair countrywomen strength and endurance for an amount of horse exercise they would seldom take in England. Acting upon the principle put into their mouths by ‘Punch,’ “He’s a hoss, and he must go,” they may be seen daily urging their hired chargers across the plain, and performing their twenty-five or thirty miles, chiefly at a canter, to and from the various points of attraction, noted sites, favourite picnic spots, and the like, in the neighbourhood of Rome, and coming in, glowing with health, to dance half the night or more at the numerous pleasant parties given there during the first three or four months of every year. There used to be a subscription pack of hounds in Rome, but the sport was put a stop to, a few seasons ago, in consequence of a young member of the Roman aristocracy having broken his neck over a small ditch. Thereupon Pio Nono forbade the sport, which was considered rather hard upon the English, who, as heretics, might surely have been allowed to fracture themselves to any extent without causing much pain to his Holiness; and, indeed, this feeling was so general, that some were rather inclined to attribute the interdiction to Cardinal Antonelli’s sympathy with the foxes. However that may have been, there was no obtaining a revocation of the edict, and the hounds were sold—to be re-purchased, perhaps, at a future day, when the White Cross of Savoy shall have replaced the Cross Keys on the pinnacles of a liberated Rome. The loss was a great one, however, to the English; and even many of the Italians deplored the stoppage of the _mita_, as they called “the meet,” which, however, with most of the foreigners (that is to say, of the non-English), was little more than a pretext for picnics and flirtations. Mr Story, with a few humorous touches, gives us an excellent idea of the _modus operandi_:—

“The hounds bay and the hunt sweeps off in the distance—now lost to
sight, and now emerging from the hollows. The volunteers soon begin to
return, and are seen everywhere straggling about over the slopes. The
carriages move on, accompanying, as they can, the hunt by the road,
till it strikes across the country and is lost. The sunshine beats on
the mountains that quiver in soft purple; larks sing in the air;
Brown, Jones, and Robinson ride by the side of the carriages as they
return, and Count Silinini smiles, talks beautiful Italian, and says,
‘Yas.’ He is a _guardia nobile_, and comes to the house twice a week
if there are no balls, and dances with Marianne at all the little
hops. Signor Somarino pays his court meanwhile to Maria, who calls him
Prince, emphasising the title when she meets her friends the Goony
Browns. And so the hunting picnic comes back to Rome.”

As a writer, Mr Story’s strong point is description of scenery, both rural and urban. He is excellent at a landscape; and, in the graphic views he presents to us of Rome’s streets and squares and fountains and markets, beggars and models, washerwomen and _pifferari_, he is a compound of Prout and Pinelli. From the very first page of the book, one is attracted by the freshness of his vocabulary and the vividness of his style. With his Cleopatra and Sybil bright in our memory, we cannot think he mistook his vocation when devoting himself to sculpture; but certainly the glow and choice of his literary tints incline us to the belief that, as a painter, he might have been even more successful. We are unwilling to quote extensively from a book that will doubtless have been read by many of our readers ere this notice of it gets into their hands, but there are fifty passages that we are tempted to extract instead of merely referring to them. The first short chapter, “Entrance,” contains more than one of these. At page 11 we have a sketch of a couple of the Abruzzi _pifferari_, piping and blowing on their primitive instruments before one of the fifteen hundred Madonna shrines of Rome—images of the Virgin, with burning lamps, found in all manner of places, at street corners, down little lanes, in the heart of the Corso, in the interior courts of palaces, or on the staircases of private houses—which places the itinerants before us, in flesh and blood, in their conical hats with frayed feathers, red waistcoats and skin sandals, _wie sie leibten und lebten_, as the Germans say, the old man with a sad amiable face, droning out bass and treble in an earnest and deprecatory manner, and the younger vigorous player on the _piffero_, “with a forest of tangled black hair, and dark quick eyes that were fixed steadily on the Virgin, while he blew and vexed the little brown pipe with rapid runs and nervous _fioriture_, until great drops of sweat dripped from its round open mouth. Sometimes, when he could not play fast enough to satisfy his eagerness, he ran his finger up and down the vents; then, suddenly lowering his instrument, he would scream, in a strong peasant voice, verse after verse of the _novena_, to the accompaniment of the _zampogna_ (bagpipe). One was like a slow old Italian _vettura_, all lumbered with luggage and held back by its drag; the other panting and nervous at his work as an American locomotive, and as constantly running off the rails. As they stood there playing, a little group gathered round. A scamp of a boy left his sport to come and beat time with a stick on the stone step before them; several children clustered near; and one or two women, with black-eyed infants in their arms, also paused to listen and sympathise.”

Every one who has been in Rome during Advent has seen this group, or one mighty like it and equally characteristic. Turn to the book (chapter on “Street Music in Rome”) for the little scene that follows, for the music of the _pifferari_ song, and for Mr Story’s conversation with the enthusiastic piper, whom, with his companions, he invited up into his house, where they agreeably stunned him with their noisy music, to the delight of his children and the astonishment of his servants, for whom _piffero_ and _zampogna_ had long since lost all charm, and who doubtless looked upon their introduction with somewhat of the same feeling of disgust with which London flunkies would behold that of a couple of organ-grinders and a cage of white mice into a Grosvenor Square drawing-room. However, Mr Story took down the words of their quaint song, which we find printed, probably for the first time, in his book, and he also got from them some curious particulars of their wanderings. The man who blew the little brown pipe was quite a character. He and his companion had played together for three-and-thirty years, and their sons, who presently came up, were to play together with them. “For thirty-three years more, let us hope,” said Mr Story.

“‘_Eh! Speriamo_’ (let us hope so), was the answer of the _pifferaro_,
as he showed all his teeth in the broadest of smiles. Then, with a
motion of his hand, he set both the young men going, he himself
joining in, straining out his cheeks, blowing all the breath of his
body into the little pipe, and running up and down the vents with a
sliding finger, until finally he brought up against a high, shrill
note, to which he gave the full force of his lungs, and after holding
it in loud blast for a moment, startled us by breaking off, without
gradation, into a silence as sudden as if the music had snapped short
off like a pipe-stem.”

There are a great many stories and incidents of and relating to Rome and its inhabitants scattered through the ‘Roba;’ and although to us “old Romans,” not all of these may be new, the majority of them will be so to most readers, and they are generally well told and _ben trovate_. Amongst them we prefer those little anecdotes and traits of character which are evidently derived from the writer’s personal observation, and which, therefore, as might be expected, are amongst the most racy morsels in the book. Take the following as an excellent specimen of quiet humour—a strain in which we like Mr Story better than in his more buoyant mood:—

“My friend Count Cignale is a painter—he has a wonderful eye for
colour and an exquisite taste. He was making me a visit the other day,
and in strolling about the neighbourhood we were charmed with an old
stone wall of as many colours as Joseph’s coat: tender greys, dashed
with creamy yellows and golden greens and rich subdued reds, were
mingled together in its plastered stonework; above towered a row of
glowing oleanders covered with clusters of roseate blossoms. Nothing
would do but that he must paint it, and so secure it at once for his
portfolio; for who knows, said he, that the owner will not take it
into his head to whitewash it next week, and ruin it? So he painted
it, and a beautiful picture it made. Within a week the owner made a
call on us. He had seen Cignale painting his wall with surprise, and
deemed an apology necessary. ‘I am truly sorry,’ he said, ‘that the
wall is left in such a condition. It ought to be painted all over with
a uniform tint, and I will do it at once. I have long had this
intention, and I will no longer omit to carry it into effect.’

“‘Let us beseech you,’ we both cried at once, ‘_caro conte mio_, to do
no such thing, for you will ruin your wall. What! whitewash it
over!—it is profanation, sacrilege, murder, and arson.’

“He opened his eyes. ‘Ah! I did not mean to whitewash it, but to wash
it over with a pearl colour,’ he answered.

“‘Whatever you do to it you will spoil it. Pray let it alone. It is
beautiful now.’

“‘Is it, indeed?’ he cried. ‘Well, I hadn’t the least idea of that.
But if you say so, I will let it alone.’

“And thus we saved a wall.”

The preceding scrap reminds us of a passage from Alphonse Karr, one of the most quietly-humorous of living French writers, who relates, in one of his quaint, dreamy, desultory books, how a neighbour of his, who lived in a poor thatched cottage on the fringe of a wood, embowered in flowers, shaded by venerable trees, refreshed by the balmiest of breezes, and enlivened by the songs of countless birds, suddenly disappeared from the countryside. Karr, who had long admired the sylvan retreat, and almost envied its occupant, inquired his fate. He had become rich, he was told; a legacy had enabled him to go and live in the town. He could afford to rent two rooms with new furniture and a gaudy paper, and he looked out upon a dirty street, along which omnibuses continually rolled. “Poor rich man!” Karr pitying exclaims. He had whitewashed his wall.

The Roman Ghetto furnishes the theme of one of Mr Story’s longest and most lively chapters; Fountains and Aqueducts, Saints and Superstitions, the Evil Eye, are the titles of three others. He begins his second volume with a vivid and characteristic sketch of the Markets of Rome, which are well worth the attention of foreign visitors, especially of Englishmen, who will find their arrangements, and much of what is there sold, to contrast strikingly with what they are accustomed to in their own country. Carcasses of pigs and goats adorned with scraps of gold-leaf and tinsel, blood puddings of a brilliant crimson, poultry sold by retail—that is to say, piecemeal, so that you may buy a wing, a leg, or even the head or gizzard of a fowl, if so it please you. There is game of all sorts, and queer beasts and fowls of many kinds are also there; the wild boar rough and snarling—the slender tawny deer—porcupines (commonly eaten in Rome)—most of our English game-birds—ortolans, beccaficoes, and a great variety of singing-birds. Passing into the fruit and vegetable market, one comes upon mushrooms of many colours, and some of them of enormous size, most of which would in England be looked upon as sudden death to the consumer, although in Italy they are found both savoury and harmless. “Here are the grey _porcini_, the foliated _alberetti_, and the orange-hued _ovole_; some of the latter of enormous size, big enough to shelter a thousand fairies under their smooth and painted domes. In each of these is a cleft stick, bearing a card from the inspector of the market, granting permission to sell; for mushrooms have proved fatal to so many cardinals, to say nothing of popes and people, that they are naturally looked upon with suspicion, and must all be officially examined to prevent accidents.” Besides the fruits common in England, figs are very abundant, and of many kinds; and when the good ones come in, in September, the Romans of the lower classes assemble in the evenings, in the Piazza Navona, for great feeds upon them. Five or six persons surround a great basket and eat it empty, correcting possible evil results by a glass of strong waters or a flask of red wine. But figs are a wholesome fruit—much more so than one which at Rome, and in many parts of Southern Europe, is the most popular of all—namely, the water-melon. What millions of people, from the Danube’s banks to the Portuguese coast, are daily refreshed the summer through by those huge green gourds, hard and unpromising in outward aspect, but revealing, at stroke of knife, rich store of rosy pulp, dotted with sable seeds! Pesth is a great place for them; and daily, when morning breaks, so long as they are in season, they are to be seen piled, all along the river-side, in heaps like those of shot and shell in an arsenal, only much broader and higher. All through the hot months, in Hungary’s pleasant and interesting capital, few persons think of dining without associating with the more heating viands a moiety or enormous segment of one of those great cold fruits—a strange digestive, as we Northerners should consider it, but found to answer well in sultry climes. At Rome they are equally appreciated, and are set above the choicest grapes. People make parties to go out of the city and eat them; and this was especially the case some years ago, when the authorities forbade their entrance on account of the cholera, but were unable to prevent their extramural consumption. In ordinary times you find heaps of them in the streets, especially in the Piazza Navona, that great mart of fruit and frippery, vegetables, old books, brilliant handkerchiefs, and other finery for the market-women—old iron, old bottles, and rubbish of all kinds—amongst which miscellany the patient investigator may sometimes discover valuable copies of the classic authors and precious antique _intagli_, to be purchased for a mere song. Here, as the story goes, a poor priest once bought, for a few _baiocchi_, a large cut-glass bead which took his fancy, and which a friend, more knowing than himself, afterwards discovered to be a diamond of great value, now belonging, we are told, to the Emperor of Russia. The priest disappeared, which leaves any ingenious and inventive writer full liberty to build a romantic tale upon the incident. The natural finale of the affair, Mr Story opines, would have been for the priest to have married the Emperor’s daughter, but his being in orders was an impediment; and so we are justified in presuming that some less agreeable means was found of easing him of his jewel, which, when he first possessed it, he took to be a drop from a chandelier, but to which he of course clung with desperate tenacity when enlightened as to the quality of the gem. Rome ought to be a good preserve for fiction-writers, there are so many family histories, traditions, and anecdotes current there, which would serve the novelist’s turn. Edmund About availed himself of one such in his tale of ‘Tolla;’ and another over-true tale was interwoven, not very long since, in a pleasant novelet of Roman life in the pages of this Magazine. Mr Story’s volumes abound in suggestive passages of the kind. If Rome be an admirable residence for an artist (and for some of the reasons why it is so, see the ‘Roba,’ i. p. 66, 67), it ought also to be an excellent one for a writer, were it not that it is found by many unfavourable to mental exertion. This is said to be particularly exemplified in the case of diplomatists, many of whom, after a certain time passed in the Papal capital, are apt to conceive an intense dislike to despatch-writing, and to keep their Governments extremely uninformed concerning the state of the Holy City and the prospects of Pontifical politics. We remember to have been told, when in Rome, the names of more than one foreign minister who had been recalled, it was asserted, for no other reason but that nothing could induce him to write despatches. Rome is certainly one of the places where there is most temptation, at least for one half of the year, to neglect business for pleasure; but there is possibly also something in the climate which disinclines many people to headwork. It is much the fashion to abuse the Roman climate; and this has been done, especially of late, by persons desirous to show that Rome is an undesirable, because a highly insalubrious, capital for united Italy. It is to be feared the grapes are sour, and that the yellow flag now hoisted would be struck at the same time with the French tricolour. Our own experience and observations induce us very much to concur with those passages of Mr Story’s book which relate to this question. “Rome has, with strangers, the reputation of being unhealthy; but this opinion I cannot think well founded—to the extent, at least, of the common belief.” Many maladies, virulent and dangerous elsewhere, are very light in Rome; and for lung complaints it is well known that people repair thither. The “Roman fever,” as it is commonly called (intermittent and _perniciosa_), is seldom suffered from by the better classes of Romans; and Mr Story (who speaks with authority after his many years’ residence in Rome) believes that, with a little prudence, it may easily be avoided. The peasants of the Campagna are, it is well known, those who chiefly suffer from it, and why? “Their food is poor, their habits careless, their labour exhausting and performed in the sun, and they sleep often on the bare ground or a little straw. And yet, despite the life they lead and their various exposures, they are, for the most part, a very strong and sturdy class.” Mr Story gives it as a fact that the French soldiers who besieged Rome in ‘48, during the summer months, suffered very little from fever, although sleeping out on the Campagna; but they were better clothed and fed, and altogether more careful of themselves, than the native peasants. Generally speaking, the foreigners who visit Rome are less attentive than the Romans to certain common rules for the preservation of health. They eat and drink too much, and of the wrong things. They get hot, and then plunge into cold churches or galleries; whereas an Italian flies from a chill or current of air as from infection. Mr Story gives a few simple rules, by following which he declares you may live twenty years in Rome without a fever. He cautions Englishmen against copious dinners, sherry and brandy, and his own countrymen against the morning-dinner which they call a breakfast; and supplies other useful hints and practical remarks. The subject is one which interests many, and such are referred to the ‘Roba,’ i. p. 156–161, and to the chapter on the Campagna, in which high authorities and ingenious arguments are brought to prove that in old times it was not insalubrious, and that in our own it need not be so. Population and cultivation are perhaps all that are needed to render tracts healthy that now are pestilential, but which assuredly were not so in the time of the ancient Romans, since many of them, we know, were their favourite sites for patrician villas. Much might be done by an intelligent and active government, and especially by a good sanitary commission. There was one clever gentleman who wrote that Rome was ill fitted to be the capital of Italy on account of its deficiency in buildings suitable for government offices! Where good reasons are not to be found silly ones may be resorted to, but they of course only weaken the cause they are intended to prop. And if it were to be urged that all the worst plagues flesh is heir to, combine to render Rome for the present impossible as capital of Italy, the most we could admit, by way of compromise, and borrowing a well-known answer, would be, “_non tutti, ma Buona parte_.”

CAXTONIANA:
A SERIES OF ESSAYS ON LIFE, LITERATURE, AND MANNERS.
By the Author of ‘The Caxton Family.’