reorganization of the Board, and not a continuance of the present dual system, still less a plan which directly or indirectly would devolve educational legislation in detail upon an already overburdened Legislature. The Board of Regents should

be made the educational legislative body; the Superintendent of Public Instruction should be appointed by the Board and be amenable to the Board. The whole educational system of the State should be unified under the one control.

I

May 5.

'N Rome at last-the city of contrasts: of Nero and of Marcus Aurelius, of Cicero and of Seneca, of Gregory VII. and of Alexander VI., of the Coliseum and of St. Peter's, of palaces and of poverty, of piety and of superstition, of self-sacrifice and of self-indulgence, where Bruno was burnt and where Luther was reborn, theater of the most beastly orgies and of the most splendid religious pageants, the Babylon and the Jerusalem of European history. I believe in air castles: if I had not dreamed for years of visiting Rome, I never should have reached it. We were welcomed at the station by our old friends Signor and Madame To be in their house is like being at homea luxury after two months of steamer and hotel life. Our supper we found laid in our room, and a little fire burning in the open stove-for it is strangely cold for April. The day has been full of excite

We

When you get to Rome, said a friend in America, take a carriage and spend a day in driving about the city. Then take the evening train for Florence; or-unpack your trunks and stay a year. We have followed the first part of the advice, and driven this afternoon about the city. cannot unpack our trunks and stay a year, but I have already in my own mind resolved to prolong our stay from two weeks to three, even if we have to sacrifice something of Florence and Venice to do so. We had a driver so intelligent that we dubbed him Cicero, and Madame

went with us and was our guide and our interpreter.

We drove first through the heart of the city, across the Tiber and up the slope of the Janiculum Hill, which is laid out as a drive and parkway. From one of its eminences we could see the city of Rome beneath us, the Tiber dividing it into two unequal sections; the Seven Hills of Rome discernible even without our glasses, and so far distinguishable that our driver could point them out to us, although in one case the valley between the neighboring hills has been filled up, either by the process of time, the destructions of war, or the art of man, so that the two hills are no longer separable to the eye, at least at a distance. Upon those hills were clearly discernible, on the Quirinal, the palace of the King; on the Capitoline, the Museum; on the Palatine, the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars; on the Aventine, the Dominican Monastery; on the distant Viminal, the residences of the best families of modern Rome, and almost equidistant, though in another direction, the dome of St. Peter's.

Then we drove by a winding road up to the over-elaborate statue of Garibaldi, so constructed, it is said, whether by accident or design I do not know, that all the guns of the group of soldiers are pointing at the Vatican, which, with its pleasure grounds and summer residence for the Pope, is in full view; then down the hill to St. Peter's, stopping long enough only to get the view of its appearance from the front with the semicircular cloisters leading up to it, and the fountains playing in the square before it; then across the Tiber by the famous Castle of St. Angelo, which has witnessed so many dark deeds of treachery and cruelty, to the Pincian Hill and the adjoining Borghese Gardens-the two together constituting the chief pleasure-ground and

popular promenade of Rome; and thence back to our home on the Viminal. We have thus, in an afternoon, driven through the heart of the city and made a circuit perhaps three-quarters of the way about it, and, thanks to our interpreter and to Cicero, have returned with a very good general idea of its topography and the location of its most notable sights.

This is preliminary to visiting it in detail --and studying it? Yes! the temptation is not to be resisted. I lay aside my resolution to do no serious work while I am abroad. I have had nearly two months of rest; for three weeks I will give myself the pleasure of a little study. I wish I could spend three months instead of three weeks here. I should like to get out of my library Mommsen's "History of Rome" to revive my knowledge of its general history, Froude's "Cæsar" to give me a picture of the city in the first century, Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" to carry the picture down to the time of Marcus Aurelius, Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire" to recall the part it played in the first few centuries of the Christian era, Creighton's "History of the Popes" to re-read his description of its social and religious condition under the Borgias, Lanciani's "New Tales of Old Rome" to connect all this history with its present topography and remains, and Countess Cesaresco's "Liberation of Italy" to bring before me in brief its most recent political history. Probably this would only whet my appetite for a much more thorough study than would be possible with only these books and only three months to study in.

But when one cannot do what he would, he must be content to do what he can. With the aid of Baedeker and B's knowledge of ancient history, which is much fresher than mine, I can at least connect what I see with what little I remember, and jot down here impressions to give life to future studies or definiteness to future reflections. Yes! this is what I will do. I will not attempt to record daily experiences; that I clearly see would be useless. I will record only conclusions. In Rome these pages shall be the posted entries of a ledger, not the daily entries of a journal. For the attempt to preserve here the details of daily observations would be like an attempt to give a photograph of the Forum with all its columns,

arches, walls, broken busts, or of a great gallery with its forest of statues and torsos; in such a picture no feature would be distinguishable, because the plate had ambitiously endeavored to reproduce them all.

May 7.

I supplemented yesterday's drive about the city by a walk to-day through the heart of it with Signor -. One gets a familiarity, a closeness of acquaintance, by a walk, which one cannot get in a carriage. Partly from this drive, partly from the walk, partly from the conversations with my friends who are familiar with Rome in all its phases, I find already my apprehension of Rome systematizing itself even before I have any real knowledge to be systematized. It is very well, I think, to construct the pigeonholes for one's facts before the facts are known, that one may be able to classify them as they come into his possession. B says rightly that Rome has no atmosphere. It is essentially a cosmopolitan city-in that respect wholly unlike Naples. Except for the variously uniformed ecclesiastics whom we meet at every turn, there are no curious costumes; except for the ruins which one may happen on everywhere in his walks, Rome might be any Continental city. And yet a little reflection impresses one with the conviction that this lack of distinction is itself a distinction.

There are three Romes, indistinguishable except by after-reflection, one built upon the other, yet all remaining to bewilder and perplex the observer-ancient or classical Rome, mediæval or ecclesiastical Rome, and modern Rome. The center and symbol of classical Rome are the Palatine and the Forum, though remains of the ancient capital are scattered in massive ruins about the city and in busts and statues in various states of preservation in the galleries, public and private. The center and symbol of mediæval or ecclesiastical Rome are St. Peter's and the Vatican-perhaps I should say St. Peter's in the Vatican, though one meets with monuments of ecclesiastical Rome in medieval churches on every corner, many of them containing some picture, statue, relic, or mosaic which gives them a value in the eye of the devout, the antiquarian, and perhaps the art-lover. Most of the pictures, too, in the art galleries are by the "old masters," and represent a medi

æval or quasi-mediæval type of art. The modern city is more political and educational than commercial. The commercial center is the Corso, a rather narrow street running from one side of the city to one of its centers; the political symbols are the old Parliament House, the new Palace of Justice as yet incomplete-and the Departmental buildings, scattered, like those of Washington, about the city; the social symbols are the palaces with their art treasures and their gardens-the palaces somber and almost prison-like without, but ornate and artistic within, generally built with colonnades about an open square or courtyard; the intellectual center and symbol are the two Roman Catholic theological seminaries (one educating for foreign, the other for home, service), the Vatican Library with its invaluable and still insufficiently explored manuscripts, the colleges, whose relation to the seminaries is something analogous to that of the Oxford Colleges to the Oxford University, and the art schools and art students, the latter to be seen in the various galleries, sketch-book or canvas and easel in hand. I mean to divide my time unequally between these three cities. My first thought I shall give to ancient Rome; my second to ecclesiastical or mediæval Rome; as to modern Rome, I will see in it what chance brings to me-I shall have little enough time to divide between the other two.

May 8.

To-day being Ascension Day, we went in the afternoon to a vesper service at San Giovanni, which we are told has the best music in Rome. It was extraordinarily beautiful. One soloist in particular thrilled me by his singing; for a long time I could not determine whether the voice was masculine or feminine; it possessed in a remarkable degree the qualities of both a tenor and a soprano. I at length concluded that it was a man's voice, and I have since been told that its possessor is known in Rome as the Pope's angel. I am surprised to learn that St. Peter's is not a cathedral at all; San Giovanni is the cathedral church of Rome, and mass is said here only by the Pope or by his spiritual representative; since the occupation of Rome by the Italian Government as the capital of Italy, only

the latter, because, since that occupa

tion, the Pope never leaves the Vatican. There are practically no seats in San Giovanni; the congregation, which relatively to the church was not large, stood clustered about the chancel; and the music was very seriously disturbed by the moving about of companies of sightseers, some with Baedekers and some with breviaries in their hands, and, so far as I could see, the latter no more reverent than the former, save for a brief bowing or kneeling to the altar when they entered. The general effect was that of a promenade sacred vocal concert. But this was a special day and a special service, and it would not be fair to judge of the general effect of services in the churches of Rome from this one instance.

May 10.

I have been three times to see the Forum, and twice to see the Palatine; let me try to set down here some general impressions which have, been produced by these visits. They will be like a composite photograph; they will reproduce nothing specific that I have seen, only general impressions; but I can recall specific remains and ruins better by the aid of Lanciani than I can by the aid of my own note-book.

Several days ago B- took her Baedeker and with a friend explored the Forum without a guide, and by the process fixed in her own mind quite clearly the more impressive features of this confused and heterogeneous mass of ruins. Then I went with her, and with her aid got what I may call the lay of the land. Then we resolved to try an experience with Mr. Reynaud. There are two men who give peripatetic lectures in Rome, Mr. Forbes and Mr. Reynaud. They are more than guides, they are less than lecturers. Mr. Reynaud had been recommended to us as both interesting and satisfactory, and so we found him. He meets his audience

from ten to twenty-at the entrance, and walks over the ground selected for the lecture, explaining the ruins as the party come to them, and interpreting their significance by legend and history-not always discriminating between the two. How much of a scholar he is I do not know, but he is thoroughly familiar with the ground; he has facility of expression, some imagination, a good deal of quiet humor, and, if he sometimes mingles his

me: Romulus and Remus laying out the boundary-lines of the future city; Virginius seizing a knife from the nearest butcher's shop and plunging it into the heart of his daughter to save her from shame; Castor and Pollux bringing the news of the victory of the Romans which saved their city from destruction and them from servitude; Cicero impaling Catiline with sharpened invectives, which pierce him like the spear-heads of a Roman cohort; Cæsar stabbed by the conspirators, and Marc Antony firing the populace to furious wrath against the assassins; Paul pleading the cause of religious liberty before Nero, winning his cause at the first trial only to lose it ten years later, so effectually that religious liberty was never again known in the city till re-established by Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel in 1870; Titus marching along the Sacred Way, leading in triumph the priests of Jerusalem with the silver trumpets, the golden candlesticks, and the table of shew-bread, afterward engraved upon the Arch where they may still be seen; Christians thrown to the wild beasts in the Coliseum, and their bones gathered up with sacred care to be buried in the still existing catacombs outside the city walls; Constantine celebrating his victory over his rival Maxentius-a victory which ended in the overthrow of the pagan religion, the substitution of a paganized Christianity in its place, and the abandonment of Rome and the substitution of Constantinople as the world's capital; and then the curtain falls on the classical period of Rome, on its barbaric strength and moral weakness, its pagan splendor and its theatrical taste, its patrician wealth and its plebeian poverty.

These ruins seem to me to be symbols of its transient greatness. There are a few solid and substantial marble pillars; but most of the structures were made of concrete, brick, or cheap soft stone, veneered with marble. Their beauty was borrowed from Greece and was superficial; their structures were their own, and were cheap and perishable. I am impressed by this difference between the glory of Greek architecture as one sees it in the Acropolis and that of Rome as one sees it in the Forum. The temples of Greece were creations of beauty, constructed to express the Greeks' love of the beautiful;

the Roman temples were artifices of display constructed to celebrate the maker; the first were the natural expression of artgenius, the others were constructed to win admiration for their builders. In Athens are the Temples to Theseus, to winged Victory, to Jupiter, to Athena; in the Forum, Temples of Faustina, of Julius Cæsar, of Castor and Pollux.. The ruins of Greece retain their beauty in their ruin; the ruins of Rome are big rather than beautiful, and are impressive rather for their pathetic decrepitude than for their immortal charm. This suggestion of the difference between Greece and Rome, which I derive neither from Mr. Reynaud nor from Lanciani, but from B -, has been more and more impressed on me at every new visit to the Forum and the Palatine, and it has been still further reinforced by our visits to the galleries of Rome, where are gathered almost innumerable relics of a past age. Many of them are exceedingly beautiful, but they are for the most part Greek in their conception if not in their execution; this is pre-eminently true of the collections in the Museum on the Capitoline Hill and in the Museum in the Baths of Diocletian.

I am aware that this generalization, like most generalizations, is too broad to be wholly true. The Coliseum impressed us even more by the beauty of its great curves and the harmony of its arches, rising tier above tier, than by its size; the pillars which remain of Castor and Pollux rival in their beauty any we saw in Greece; and there are two little pillars in the Forum, I forget to what they belong, that are solid marble and exquisite in their form and their proportions. Despite these and perhaps some other exceptions, as the two elaborately carved columns, one to Trajan, one to Marcus Aurelius, with the incongruous statues of St. Peter on the one and St. Paul on the other, which some Pope with more church pride than classical taste has put upon the top of them, the moral decay of Rome is pathetically symbolized in its ruins. They leave on me an impression that the golden age of Rome might more appropriately be called the gold-plate age of Rome; that its glory was the glory of nouveau riche; that its splendor was as shallow and meretricious in its quality as it was egotistical in the spirit which inspired it. L. A.