Rome In 1860 - free ebook by Edward Dicey

ROME IN 1860. By EDWARD DICEY.

Cambridge: MACMILLAN AND CO. AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, London. 1861. [The right of Translation is reserved.] * * * * * Cambridge: printed by c. j. clay, m.a. at the university press TO MR. AND MRS ROBERT BROWNING...

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CHAPTER I. THE ROME OF REAL LIFE.

My first recollections of Rome date from too long ago, and from too early an age, for me to be able to recall with ease the impression caused by its first aspect. It is hard indeed for any one at any time to judge of Rome fairly. Whatever may be the object of our pilgrimage, we Roman travellers are all under some guise or other pilgrims to the Eternal City, and gaze around us with something of a pilgrim’s reverence for the shrine of his worship. The ground we tread on is enchanted ground, we

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CHAPTER II. THE COST OF THE PAPACY.

In foreign discussions on the Papal question it is always assumed, as an undisputed fact, that the maintenance of the Papal court at Rome is, in a material point of view, an immense advantage to the city, whatever it may be in a moral one. Now my own observations have led me to doubt the correctness of this assumption, which, if true, forms an important item in the whole matter under consideration. It is no good saying, as my “Papalini” friends are wont to do, Rome gains everything and indeed

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CHAPTER III. THE MORALITY OF ROME.

We all know the story of “Boccaccio’s” Jew, who went to Rome an unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm; it is not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed the only reason for my alluding to it, is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted. The flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew’s judgment supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that survived

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CHAPTER IV. THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

“Senatus Populusque Romanus.” The phrase sounds strangely, in my ears, like the accents of an unknown language or the burden of a half-forgotten melody. In those four initial letters there seems to me always to lie embodied an epitome of the world’s history—the rise and decline and fall of Rome. On the escutcheons of the Roman nobles, the S.P.Q.R. are still blazoned forth conspicuously, but where shall we look for the realities expressed by that world-famed symbol? It is true, the Senate is

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CHAPTER V.—continued. THE “BONCI” MURDER.

Some three years ago, then, there lived in the hamlet of Cannara, near Perugia, a family called Bonci. They belonged to the peasant class, and were poor, even among the Papal peasantry. The family consisted of the father and mother, and of their son and daughter, both grown up. Between the father and son there had long been ill-blood. The cause of this want of family harmony is but indistinctly stated, but apparently it was due to the irregular habits of the son, and to the severity of the f

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CHAPTER V.—continued. THE “UGOLINI” MURDER.

Of late years, round and about Viterbo, there was a well-known character, Giovanni Ugolini by name, a sort of itinerant “Jack-of-all-trades,” who wandered about from place to place, picking up any odd job he could find, and begging when he could turn his hand to nothing else. He is described in the legal reports as a Tinker and Umbrella-mender, but his especial line of industry, novel to us at any rate, seems to have been that of a scraper and cleaner of old tombstones. By these various pursui

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CHAPTER V.—continued. THE “AVANZI” MURDER.

In July, 1859, there were in the Bagnio of Civita Vecchia two galley slaves, Antonio Simonetti and Domenico Avanzi. Simonetti was a man of thirty, whose life, short as it was, seemed to have been one long career of crime. He had enlisted at an early age in the Pontifical dragoons, and served for seven years; on leaving the army, he became a porter, and within a few months was guilty of a highway robbery, and sentenced to the galleys for life, then to five years’ hard labour for theft, and agai

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CHAPTER V.—continued. THE “SANTURRI” MURDER.

Some months after I had written the question which closes the last chapter, I was fortunate enough to obtain a partial answer to it. During the present year the Cavaliere Gennarelli, a Roman barrister, and a member of the Roman parliament in 1848, has published a series of official documents issued by the Papal authorities during the last ten years; the most damning indictment, by the way, that was ever recorded against a Government. Amongst those documents there appears the official sentence

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CHAPTER VI. THE PAPAL PRESS.

At Rome there is no public life. There are no public events to narrate, no party politics to comment on. Events indeed will occur, and politics will exist even in this best regulated of countries; but as all narration of the one, and all manifestation of the other, are equally interdicted for press purposes, neither events nor politics have any existence. To one, who knows the wear and tear of the London press, to whom the very name of a newspaper recalls late hours and interminable reports,

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CHAPTER VII. THE POPE’S TRACT.

If it has ever been the fortune of my readers to mix in tract-distributing circles, they will, doubtless, have become acquainted with a peculiar style of literature which, for lack of a more appropriate appellation, I should call the “candid inquirer” and “intelligent operative” style. The mysteries of religion, the problems of social existence, the intricate casuistries of contending duties, are all explained, in a short and simple dialogue between a maid-servant and her mistress; or a young,

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CHAPTER VIII. PAPAL LOTTERIES.

If ever anybody had cause to regret the suppression of lotteries, it is the whole tribe of play-writers and authors. Never will there be found again a “Deus ex Machina,” so serviceable or so unfailing as the lottery. If your plot wanted a solution, or your intrigue a dénoûment , or your novel a termination, you could always cut through all your difficulties by the medium of a lottery-ticket. The virtuous but impoverished hero became at once a very Crœsus, and the worldly-minded parent bestowe

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CHAPTER IX. THE STUDENTS OF THE SAPIENZA.

There is no University properly speaking in Rome. The constant and minute interference of the priests in the course of study; the rigid censorship extended over all books of learning, and the arbitrary restrictions with which free thought and inquiry are hampered, would of themselves be sufficient to stop the growth of any great school of learning at Rome, even if there existed a demand for such an institution, which there does not. Still in these days, even at Rome, young men must receive som

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CHAPTER X. A PAPAL PAGEANT.

The Papacy is too old and too feeble even to die with dignity. Of itself the sight of a falling power, of a dynasy in extremis , commands something of respect if not of regret; but the conduct of the Papacy deprives it of the sympathy that is due to its misfortunes. There is a kind of silliness, I know of no better word to use, about the whole Papal policy at the present day, which is really aggravating. It is silly to rave about the martyr’s crown and the cruel stake, when nobody has the sli

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CHAPTER XI. THE CARNIVAL SENZA MOCCOLO.

There are things in the world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you. The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it. To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word-wi

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January 28.

At last there is a break in the dull uniformity of Roman life.—There is a ripple on the waters, whether the precursor of a tempest, or to be followed by a dead calm, it is hard to tell. Meanwhile it is some gain at any rate, that the old corpse-like city should show signs of life, however transient. Feeble as those symptoms are, let us make the most of them. Since the Imperial occupation of Rome, the building in the Piazza Colonna, which old Roman travellers remember as the abode of the Post O

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18 February.

The present has been a week of demonstrations, both Papal and anti-Papal. Last Thursday was the Giovedi Grasso, the great people’s day of the carnival. In other years, from an early hour in the afternoon, there is a constant stream of carriages and foot-passengers setting from all parts of Rome towards the Corso. The back-streets and the ordinary promenades are almost deserted. The delight of the Romans in the carnival is so notorious, that persons long resident in Rome possessed the stronge

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march 7.

The system of silent legal opposition which was carried on formerly at Milan, and now at Venice, is being organised here against the Papal rule. By one of those mystical compacts to which I have before alluded, it has been resolved to suppress smoking and lottery-gambling. Our anti-tobacconists, or our moral reformers, must not suppose that the Romans have suddenly become alive to the iniquity of either of these pursuits. I wish, indeed, with regard to the latter, I could conscientiously asse

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March 10.

The Society for the Suppression of Smoking, who by the way send their tracts to the reading-rooms here, of all places in the world, will regret to learn that the Roman Anti-Tobacco Crusade is to expire on and after Sunday next. The leaders of the liberal party have, I think, acted wisely in contenting themselves with an exhibition of their union and power and then withdrawing from the contest. The loss to the Government by the discontinuance of smoking was only an indirect and eventual one; on

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CHAPTER XIII. THE ÉMEUTE OF ST JOSEPH’S DAY.

The feast of San Giuseppe is the only festa day in Lent, when the Romans eat fried fish in honour of the occasion,—St Joseph alone knows why. Henceforth the day will have other and less pleasing associations. The garland-wreathed stalls, with the open ovens and the frizzling fritters, were reared as usual at every corner; the shops were closed; the osterias were full; the streets were crowded with holiday-people in holiday-attire, and the day was warm and bright like an early summer-day in Eng

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CHAPTER XIV. A COUNTRY FAIR.

Far away among the Sabine hills, right up the valley of the Teverone, as the Romans now-a-days call the stream which once bore the name of Anio, hard by the mountain frontier-land of Naples, lies the little town of Subiaco. I am not aware that of itself this out-of-the-world nook possesses much claim to notice. Antiquarians, indeed, visit it to search after the traces of a palace, where Nero may or may not have dwelt. Students of ecclesiastical lore make pilgrimages thereto, to behold the fam

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CHAPTER XV. THE HOLY WEEK.

The nil admirari school are out of favour. In our earnest working age, it is the fashion to treat everything seriously, to find in every thing a deep hidden meaning, in fact, to admire everything. Since the days of Wordsworth and Peter Bell, every petty poet and romantic writer has had his sneer at the shallow sceptic to whom a cowslip was a cowslip only, and who called a spade a spade. I feel, therefore, painfully that I am not of my own day when I express my deliberate conviction, that the

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CHAPTER XVI. ISOLATION OF ROME.

There is, I think, no city in the world where Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” would be so hard to answer as in Rome. In addition to the ordinary difficulties which everywhere beset the path of the foreigner in search of knowledge, there are a number of obstacles peculiar and special to Rome alone. The whole policy of the government is directed towards maintaining the country in a state of isolation, towards drawing, in fact, a moral cordon sanitaire round the Papal dominions. Indeed, if on

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CHAPTER XVII. THE PAPAL QUESTION SOLVED BY NAPOLEON I.

About half a century ago the Papal question was the order of the day. Another Napoleon was seated on the throne of France, in the full tide of success and triumph of victory; another Pius was Pontiff at the Vatican, under the patronage of French legions, and, strange to say, another Antonelli was the leading adviser of the Pope. The city of Rome, too, and the Papal States were in a condition of general discontent and disaffection; but, unfortunately, this latter circumstance is one of too cons

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The “Promised Land.”

Out of chill clouds and dull gloom, I passed into summer sunshine. Across barren moor-land and more barren mountains, by the side of marshy lakes, deserted and malaria-haunted, through squalid villages and decayed cities, my journey brought me into a rich garden-country, studded with thriving towns swarming with life, and watered with endless streams. I came into a land such as children of Israel never looked upon from over Jordan, after their weary wanderings in the wilderness; a land rich in

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