LETTER XXIX.

Ruins and Epitaphs in Rome.

ROME, April, 1843.

DEAR. E.-To-day I have had a beautiful drive with an Eng. glish gentleman and his lady, without the walls of Modern Rome, amid the ruins of Ancient Rome, for you know that the city formerly covered an area of which the present occupies but a fraction. -With its declining splendor it contracted itself, till, from the millions it was supposed formerly to contain, it now, suburbs and all, counts scarcely 150,000. To-day has seemed a little more like being in Rome. I have been away from the rattling of carriages— the passing crowd-and what is still worse, long rows of gaily decorated shops. I have wandered over Old Rome, and the shadows of its Cæsars, Scipios, and haughty leaders, have risen around me. We first drove to the Temple of Vesta, which is now a Church -a small orbicular building, of Greek architecture, and surrounded by nineteen Corinthian columns of Parian marble. We then passed on to the tomb of Caius Cestus, which is built in the form of the Pyramid. Near by is the English Burial Ground. There I saw Shelley's tomb, a plain marble tablet only. On it is written:

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.- Cor Cordium.'
"Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange."

Cor Cordium, "heart of hearts," is an allusion to the singular fact that when Byron and Hunt burned his body by the gulf of Spezia, his heart alone remained unconsumed. With all his scepticism, he was a kind-hearted man. His Italian teacher was mine at Genoa, and he told me that Shelley was a nobler man than either Byron or Hunt. In an adjoining cemetery sleeps John Keats.

RUINS AND EPITAPHS IN ROME.

999

145

A small marble slab, half hid amid the long grass, stands over the young poet. On it is written, "This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who, on his death-bed, in the bitterness of his heart, at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb-stone: 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Feb. 28, 1821. I stood alone over this solitary grave of genius and sighed. I have read of broken hearts, but nothing ever indicated to me half so lonely and desolate a heart, as the dying language of Keats. So utterly broken was his spirit, and so reckless his despair, that he wanted to record his own ruin, and have his very tomb-stone tell how worthless were his life and name.

A strangely sensitive being he was, to feel so deeply an unjust criticism that a hired Reviewer could publish.

Oh, can one envious tongue

blight and blast earth's holiest things,
That e'en the glorious bard that sings,
Grows mute-and all unstrung,

His bleeding, quivering heart gives o'er,
And dies without one effort more?

"Tis "writ," as thou hast said,
Upon the cold gray marble there,
Each word of that wild, bitter prayer,
On which thy spirit fled!

But oh, that injured name is known,
"Far as the birds of fame have flown."

Yet thou hast said aright,

Thy name is in the water writ,

For tears are ever shed on it,

Till dims the aching sight,

By pilgrims from each distant land,

Who, weeping, round thy grave-stone stand.

I plucked a flower that was drooping with rain-drops beside the grave and turned away.

From this we drove to the Basilica of St. Paul, formerly one of the most magnificent churches of Rome. In 1829, on the morning of the 16th of July, the whole roof was seen to be in flames, and very soon fell with a crash into the centre aisles,

where the fire raged with such fury that it calcined the rich columns of Parian marble near it, and indeed destroyed the great part of the Church. They are now rebuilding it, and some of the fluted columns that escaped the fire, are the most beautiful I have ever seen. It will again be a noble edifice. From this we drove to the far-famed fountain of Egeria. It is a grotto in the midst of a meadow all overhung with foliage. Within the side walls are several niches; and at the extremity, a reclining statue, old and mutilated, often called the statue of the nymph. is a male statue, and is doubtless that of a river god. runs the fable) the mortal and immortal used to sit and discourse of an earthly passion, and watch the moon and stars sailing through the nightly heavens. Numa and the nymph meeting beside this fountain by moonlight, and breathing into each other's ears language never repeated to mortals, are about all I remember of Livy and his hard sentences. I care not whether the story be true or false. I agree with Byron

"Whatsoe'er thy birth,

Thou wert a beautiful thought and softly bodied forth."

But it Here (so

Above it stands the Temple of Bacchus, and beyond crowning a hill, a dense grove of olives. A company of English ladies stood on the green mound in front of the temple, while groups were strolling around in the bright meadow gathering flowers. It was a scene of beauty. The bright blue sky, and the exhilarating air, and the fragrance of fields and flowers soon brought my spirits up to the enjoying point.

The picturesque tomb of Cecilia Metella in ruins-the Circus of Romulus-the Catacombs of the old city, where martyrs sleep, followed in quick succession. Then the Tomb of the Scipios, hrough whose dark, damp and silent chambers we passed by candle light. Oh how strange over the empty sarcophagi to read in the mouldering stone, the name of Scipio, and the date of burial. I had stood on the solitary sea-shore, where Africanus sleeps, and sighed over the fallen hero.-But here was a more familiar— a family scene; and I almost started from the close proximity of the Past. I felt like one who had ventured too far, and was becoming too familiar with awful things.

RUINS AND EPITAPHS IN ROME.

147

We then passed Caracalla's Baths, the Palace of the Cæsars, along the Appian Way, through the Sebastian Gate-passed by the Coliseum, under the Capitoline Hill, by the Roman Forum and its solemn ruins-entered the city by the ancient Via Flaminia, now the gay Corso, and ended the day of great remembrances, as all days of toil must be ended, in a hearty dinner. Yet all night long I was wandering amid old Rome. Its mailed legions thundered along the Appian Way-Cicero, and Brutus, and Cæsar, and Nero, and gladiatorial shows, and fierce battle scenes, danced through my excited brain in most glorious confusion.

Truly yours.

LETTER XXX.

The Capitol and Vatican.

ROME, April 28, 1843.

DEAR E.-You may be surprised to find these two remarkable objects put in one letter, but I am going into no description of galleries. I wish to mention two or three things only in each. To-day I went to the Capitol, and after having traversed the length of the Corso I came to a noble flight of steps that brought me to the top of the Capitoline hill. The buildings on it were designed by Michael Angelo. They stand in the form of a parellelogram, with the main flight of steps at one end. At the bottom of the steps is the old Roman mile-stone that marked the first mile of the Appian way. At the top are two statues of Castor and Pollux standing beside their horses.—In the centre of the parallelogram stands the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only one that has been handed down from antiquity. It is considered the finest equestrian statue in existence. It was once covered with gold, and spots of the gilding still remain. The enthusiastic love of Michael Angelo for it is well known. When it stood in front of the Lateran, it was an important object amid the festivities that celebrated Rienzi's elevation to the rank of Tribune. Amid the rejoicings of that memorable day, wine was made to run out of one nostril and water out of the other.

The building at the farther end is the "PALACE OF THE SENATORS." In the two side palaces are busts, statues, paintings, &c. -many of the deepest interest. Among others, the bronze wolf"the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome"-about which so much has been written and so much controversy expended in vain. From all that can be gathered, it is doubtless the one to which Cicero more than once alluded. That wolf was once struck with lightning in the Capitol, and one leg of this has evidently been partly melted away in a similar manner.-Said Cicero, in one of