My Unknown Chum: "Aguecheek". Fairbanks Charles Bullard

by so many classical, historical, and sacred associations, – and it all seemed to me like a confused dream. Twice, before the diligence had gone a hundred yards inside the gate, I had pinched myself to ascertain whether I was really awake; and even after I passed through the lofty colonnade of St. Peter's, and had gazed at the front of the church and the vast square which art has made familiar to every one, and had seen the fountains with the moonbeams flashing in their silvery spray, I feared lest something should interrupt my dream, and I should wake to find myself in my snug bedroom at home, wondering at the weakness which allowed me to be seduced into the eating of a bit of cheese the evening before. It was not so, however; no disorganizing cheese had interfered with my digestion; it was no dream; and I was really in Rome. I slept soundly when I reached my hotel, for I felt sure that no hostile Brennus lay in wait to disturb the city's peace, and the grateful hardness of my bed convinced me that all the geese of the capital had not been killed, if the enemy should effect an entrance.

      There are few people who love Rome at first sight. The ruins, that bear witness to her grandeur in the days of her worldly supremacy, oppress you at first with an inexpressible sadness. The absence of any thing like the business enterprise and energy of this commercial age makes English and American people long at first for a little of the bustle and roar of Broadway and the Strand. The small paving stones, which make the feet of those who are unaccustomed to them ache severely, the brick and stone floors of the houses, and the lack of the little comforts of modern civilization, render Rome a wearisome place, until one has caught its spirit. Little does he think who for the first time gazes on those gray, mouldering walls, on which "dull time feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand," or walks those streets in which the past and present are so strangely commingled, – little does he realize how dear those scenes will one day be to him. He cannot foresee the regret with which he will leave those things that seem too common and familiar to deserve attention, nor the glowing enthusiasm which their mention will inspire in after years; and he would smile incredulously if any one were to predict to him that his heart, in after times, will swell with homesick longings as he recalls the memory of that ancient city, and that he will one day salute it from afar as his second home.

      I make no claims to antiquarian knowledge; for I do not love antiquity for itself alone. It is only by force of association that antiquity has any charms for me. The pyramids of Egypt would awaken my respect, not so much by their age or size, as by the remembrance of the momentous scenes which have been enacted in their useless and ungraceful presence. Show me a scroll so ancient that human science can obtain no key to the mysteries locked up in the strange figures inscribed upon it, and you would move me but little. But place before me one of those manuscripts (filled with scholastic lore, instinct with classic eloquence, or luminous with the word of eternal life) which have come down to us from those nurseries of learning and piety, the monasteries of the middle ages, and you fill me with the intensest enthusiasm. There is food for the imagination hidden under those worm-eaten covers and brazen clasps. I see in those fair pages something more than the results of the patient toil which perpetuated those precious truths. From those carefully penned lines, and brilliant initial letters, the pale, thoughtful face of the transcriber looks upon me – his contempt of worldly ambition and sacrifice of human consolations are reflected there – and from the quiet of his austere cell, he seems to dart from his serene eyes a glance of patient reproach at the worldlier and more modern age which reaps the fruit of his labour, and repays him by slandering his character. Show me a building whose stupendous masonry seems the work of Titan hands, but whose history is lost in the twilight of the ages, so that no record remains of a time when it was any thing but an antique enigma, and its massive columns and Cyclopean proportions will not touch me so nearly as the stone in Florence where Dante used to stand and gaze upon that dome which Michel Angelo said he would not imitate, and could not excel.

      Feeling thus about antiquities, I need not say that those of Rome, so crowned with the most thrilling historical and personal associations, are not wanting in charms for me. Yet I do not claim to be an antiquarian. It is all one to me whether the column of Phocas be forty feet high or sixty, – whether a ruin on the Palatine that fascinates me by its richness and grandeur, was once a Temple of Minerva or of Jupiter Stator; or whether its foundations are of travertine or tufa. I abhor details. My enjoyment of a landscape would be at an end if I were called upon to count the mild-eyed cattle that contribute so much to its picturesqueness; and I have no wish to disturb my appreciation of the spirit of a place consecrated by ages of heroic history, by entertaining any of the learned conjectures of professional antiquarians. It is enough for me to know that I am standing on the spot where Romulus built his straw-thatched palace, and his irreverent brother leaped over the walls of the future mistress of the nations. Standing in the midst of the relics of the grandeur of imperial Rome, the whole of her wonderful history is constantly acting over again in my mind. The stern simplicity of those who laid the foundations of her greatness, the patriotic daring of those who extended her power, the wisdom of those who terminated civil strife by compelling the divided citizens to unite against a foreign foe, are all present to me. In that august place where Cicero pleaded, gazing upon that mount where captive kings did homage to the masters of the world, your mere antiquarian, with his pestilent theories and measurements, seems to me little better than a profaner. When I see such a one scratching about the base of some majestic column in the Forum (although I cannot but be grateful to those whose researches have developed the greatness of the imperial city,) I do long to interrupt him, and remind him that his "tread is on an empire's dust." I wish to recall him from the petty details in which he delights, and have him enjoy with me the grandeur and dignity of the whole scene.

      The triumphal arches, – the monuments of the cultivation of those remote ages, no less than of the power of the state which erected them, – the memorials of the luxury that paved the way to the decline of that power – all these things impress me with the thought of the long years that intervened between that splendour and the times when the seat of universal empire was inhabited only by shepherds and their flocks. It wearies me to think of the long centuries of human effort that were required to bring Rome to its culminating point of glory; and it affords me a melancholy kind of amusement to contrast the spirit of those who laid the deep and strong foundations of that prosperity and power, with that of some modern sages, to whom a hundred years are a respectable antiquity, and who seem to think that commercial enterprise and the will of a fickle populace form as secure a basis for a state as private virtue, and the principle of obedience to law. I know a country, yet in the first century of its national existence, full of hope and ambition, and possessing advantages such as never before fell to the lot of a young empire, but lacking in those powers which made Rome what she was. If that country, "the newest born of nations, the latest hope of mankind," which has so rapidly risen to a power surpassing in extent that of ancient Rome, and bears within itself the elements of the decay that ruined the old empire, – wealth, vice, corruption, – if she could overcome the vain notion that hers is an exceptional case, and that she is not subject to that great law of nature which makes personal virtue the corner-stone of national stability and the lack of that its bane, and could look calmly upon the remains of old Rome's grandeur, she might learn a great lesson. Contemplating the patient formation of that far-reaching dominion until it found its perfect consummation in the age of Augustus, (Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem,) she would see that true national greatness is not "the hasty product of a day"; that demagogues and adventurers, who have made politics their trade, are not the architects of that greatness; and that the parchment on which the constitution and laws of a country are written, might as well be used for drum-heads when reverence and obedience have departed from the hearts of its people.

      A gifted representative of a name which is classical in the history of the drama, some years ago gave to the world a journal of her residence in Rome. She called her volume "A Year of Consolation" – a title as true as it is poetical. Indeed I know of nothing more soothing to the spirit than a walk through these ancient streets, or an hour of meditation amid these remains of fallen majesty. To stand in the arena of the Coliseum in the noonday glare, or when those ponderous arches cast their lengthened shadows on the spot where the first Roman Christians were sacrificed to make a holiday for a brutalized populace, – to muse in the Pantheon, that changeless temple of a living, and monument of a dead, worship, and reflect on the many generations that have passed beneath its majestic portico from the days of Agrippa to our own, – to listen to the