nine-days wonder; and those who try to make it such
lose the ideal Rome (if they ever had it), without gaining any notion
of the real. To those who travel, as they do everything else, only
because others do, I do not speak; they are nothing. Nobody counts in
the estimate of the human race who has not a character.

For one, I now really live in Rome, and I begin to see and feel the
real Rome. She reveals herself day by day; she tells me some of her
life. Now I never go out to see a sight, but I walk every day; and
here I cannot miss of some object of consummate interest to end a
walk. In the evenings, which are long now, I am at leisure to follow
up the inquiries suggested by the day.

As one becomes familiar, Ancient and Modern Rome, at first so
painfully and discordantly jumbled together, are drawn apart to the
mental vision. One sees where objects and limits anciently wore; the
superstructures vanish, and you recognize the local habitation of so
many thoughts. When this begins to happen, one feels first truly
at ease in Rome. Then the old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the
emperors, drunk with blood and gold, the warriors of eagle sight and
remorseless beak, return for us, and the togated procession finds
room to sweep across the scene; the seven hills tower, the innumerable
temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once
more.

Ah! how joyful to see once more _this_ Rome, instead of the pitiful,
peddling, Anglicized Rome, first viewed in unutterable dismay from the
_coupe_ of the vettura,--a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses,
cheating chambermaids, vilest _valets de place_, and fleas! A Niobe
of nations indeed! Ah! why, secretly the heart blasphemed, did the sun
omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown
fell beneath his ray? Thank Heaven, it is possible to wash away all
this dirt, and come at the marble yet.

Their the later Papal Rome: it requires much acquaintance, much
thought, much reference to books, for the child of Protestant
Republican America to see where belong the legends illustrated by rite
and picture, the sense of all the rich tapestry, where it has a united
and poetic meaning, where it is broken by some accident of history.
For all these things--a senseless mass of juggleries to the uninformed
eye--are really growths of the human spirit struggling to develop its
life, and full of instruction for those who learn to understand them.

Then Mod