ere repetition of a stroll in
Baden-Baden, or a revival of ideas common to the Prado or Prater. No
longer the little prettinesses of the Medicean Venus flirt by you in the
nervous silks that flutter along these walks, but something nobly
womanly, of a solid past, slow and stately, moves solemnly, by. We know
the lives of these copies of the Venus of Milos, we know its most
commonplace and vulgar attributes, but we know, too, its strength! The
city of Rome holds in its women the mothers of heroes, when Providence
shall withdraw the black veil now hung over their rude minds, and let in
the light of knowledge. We who laugh at their sad ignorance, think what
we would be without liberty--our minds enslaved, geography tabooed!
Egypt is a paradise compared to Rome.

The advantages of foreign travel to an intelligent American are to teach
him ... the disadvantages of living any where save in America. And
though the artistic eye dwells with such loving repose on the soothing
colors of Italy, and particularly on the subdued white and gray tones of
Roman ruins and palaces, walls and houses, yet the owner of that
artistic eye should restrain his wrath at the fiery red bricks of our
own cities, for let him reflect that this color goads him on, as it doth
a bull, to make valorous efforts--to do something!

Looking down from the stone balustrade of the Pincio on the piazza
Popolo, we note two churches, one on either side of the Corso; their
architecture is neither more nor less hideous than nine tenths of the
other three hundred and odd churches of Rome; the same heavy,
half-cooked look about doors and windows, suggesting cocked-hats of the
largest size on the heads of dwarfs of no size at all; the same heavy
scroll-work, reminding one of the work of a playful giant of a
green-grocer who has made a bouquet of sausages and cabbages, egg-plants
and legs of mutton, and exhibits it to a thick-headed public as a--work
of art. O Roman _Plebs!_ lay this nattering unction to your soul--we did
not do that!

The history of all nations seem to indicate successive ages of grub and
butterfly-life; certainly Rome has been a grub long enough. Let us hope
the sun of Victor Emmanuel, the King of Gallant Men, will hasten the
time when the Romans shall wing their way to the light of Liberty. These
mockeries of architecture shall then stand as warning fingers to the
Romans of the sad days that were; the days when mind and body were
enslaved, and the g