In Petrarch's time, the beauties of ancient art began to be properly appreciated by a few great and cultivated minds, but when he first beheld those monuments, he was astonished at the indifference of the Romans themselves to the wonders of art that they still possessed, and to use the language of Gibbon, "he was rather humbled than elated, by the discovery that except his friend Rienzi, and one of the Colonna, a stranger of the Rhone was more conversant with these antiquities than the nobles and natives of the metropolis."

*

Had our own Shakspeare visited Rome, what veins of unexplored ore would he not have laid open with his powerful mind and original genius! Italy indeed did furnish him with the subjects of some of his sublimest creations, as it had done to Chaucer before him; but influenced by the scenes themselves, and by the associations of the spots where those dramas were acted in their warm reality, how still more vivid would have been his powerful pictures! Voltaire declared that" Julius Cæsar," with all that appeared to him unpardonable faults, in neglect of "the unities" and anachronisms of costume, was the most living picture of that eventful period of Roman history that modern pen has produced. If such is the case, even on the admission of the snarling and satirical Voltaire, when the author wrote entirely from imagination, what might the picture have been, executed among the ruins of the Forum, or while contemplating the colossal statue of Pompey, unchanged since the falling body of the murdered Cæsar stained its feet with "the best blood of Rome?" Milton ever retained the impression of his commune with the great, both living and dead, during his visit to Italy; and her beautiful scenes formed the beau ideal from which he composed his glowing descriptions of Paradise ;-his most luxuriant shades are "Valombrosian shades," and his most glowing landscapes vaulted with "Italian skies." Even in his great poem, too, he finds adroitly an opportunity to pay a tribute to his Italian friend Galileo. What communings must have passed between two such minds!--remembered, no doubt, with deep emotion by the blind bard, when he penned the lines, comparing the vast shield of Satan to the moon

"whose orb

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views

At evening, from the top of Fesolè,

Or in Val-d'Arno, to descry new lands,

Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe."

The impressions received in the country of Dante, in conjunction with the

*Shakspeare makes a conspirator say, "Gentlemen, put on your hats."

drama of Grotius, no doubt, suggested the plan of the immortal poem itself. Italy, so long the vortex that swallowed up the learning, the science, and the arts of the civilized world, could not be exhausted by the devastations of barbarians, and has remained, as it were, a store-house of intellect, from which modern nations have been furnished with their poetry, their philosophy, and all the arts of civilization; a mine, to which modern littérateurs rushed, like thirsty travellers to a fountain, taking from it the richest ore for centuries, whilst it is not yet half exhausted, or even explored.

Addison saw Rome, and wrote his Cato. Evelyn was excited even to eloquence by its aspect. It would, however, form too long a catalogue to enumerate all that even our own school of literature and art owes to Italian inspiration, without adverting to the great names of other countries. But even among our contemporaries, how much do we owe to the scenery and eventful story of Italy, for some of the most beautiful inspirations of which our literature can boast! Bulwer visited the house of Cola di Rienzi, and wrote one of the most vivid and original of his romances. The magnificent ruins of the baths of Caracalla produced, from the pen of Shelley, the wonderful Prometheus; and the monuments of the Seven Hills drew from the pen of the wandering Harold those sublime reflections which may have occurred to many gifted minds, but at last found in his the power of stamping them into language, which will outlive the monuments themselves, giving them a longer-a second immortality.

CHAPTER II.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS-SKETCHES OF HISTORY, &c. &c.

THE next morning I was early in the streets of Rome, and the morning air, though late in October, was balmy and soft as that of an English evening in August; at Rome, we are already approaching the southern portion of the Italian Peninsula, and the climate is perceptibly milder than at Florence, for although figures give but a degree or two in its favour, a greater difference is apparent to all who have resided in both cities. I was struck with the appearance of orange trees, growing luxuriantly in the back courts of the houses, and bearing fine and apparently ripe fruit, in situations where they could receive but little sun; where, in short, in our climate, it would be an exercise of charity to put a dwindling geranium out of its miserable existence. It is true, the orange ripens freely as far north as Genoa, but that part of the coast is singularly sheltered from the north and east winds by the Alps; which leave it open to the south and south-west only, so that it cannot be taken as a fair criterion of the climate of the north of Italy; nor, indeed, can any of the country lying immediately at the southern feet of the Alps, for as one advances from that sheltered situation farther south, towards Florence, he finds the general temperature lower, and the winters much colder. Rome stands unsheltered in the midst of the wide campagna, and yet the mildness of its climate is at once attested by many visible evidences, among others by the open shops-few of which have any glazed windows, that is to say, such as grocers, bakers, cheese-dealers, wine shops, and a variety of others to which we have no corresponding establishments. In the Corso, however, where shops occupy the lower story of most of the Palaces, many of them have been recently fitted up much after the fashion of Paris or London; for the tourist is unconsciously obliterating at every move the sources of his own enjoyment: the great influx of travellers who yearly overrun the classic soil of Italy is fast wiping away every trace of nationality, in customs,

architecture, costume, and shop fronts; but in this latter case, perhaps, a change of climate may also have assisted in accelerating the change. I cannot help thinking that the temperature must formerly have been much milder in winter than even now; for though we have few frosty days in a modern winter in Rome, there are many when an enclosed shop must be a great comfort to the inhabitant, and when even a fire would appear to me almost necessary; and yet few even of the Palaces are provided with fire-places in the living-rooms. The evidences, however, of any change of climate, are rather contradictory; for Virgil and Horace both mention, incidentally, cheerful fires blazing on the hearths of the peasantry as one of their greatest luxuries. Horace, for instance, represents a wife heaping up a good fire to welcome home her husband,

"Sacrum et vetustis extruat lignis focum,
Lassi sub adventum viri;"

and many such passages might be quoted; but if from such evidence it be decided, that the winters of middle Italy were always as cold as now, then all who have passed a winter here must feel that the architects of the Roman houses have made a great omission in not constructing fire-places. It is said that when the Czar Paul visited Italy, in the winter, he went shivering about, exclaiming, "In Russia one sees the cold, but in Italy one feels it."

In this first day's wandering in Rome, I sought out situations that appeared likely to afford me such extensive and general views as would enable me to form a correct idea of the plan and relative distribution of the ancient and modern cities; and from the great inequalities of ground in every direction, (except the plain of the Campus Martius, occupied by the greater part of the modern city,) it may be supposed that many fine and almost general views may be obtained. From the different bridges of the Tiber, several fine pictures are presented. From the lodges of the Vatican, there are some charming peeps. A fine expanse of the city and the campagna, and hills beyond, is stretched before you, from the gardens of the convent of San Pietro, in Mont'orio, once the gardens of Nero, and the spot handed down by tradition as the scene of the crucifixion of St. Peter. But the best general view of the modern city is, I think, from the Monte Vaticano, on the high ground behind St. Peter's. At your feet rises St. Peter's, the mighty Basilica Vaticana, on a scale too gigantic for the eye to embrace. Below, lie the palace and gardens of the Corsini, once the abode of Christina of Sweden, amid whose marble terraces and groves of

Ilices, her sunny walks must have been oft clouded by the imagined shade of the unfortunate Monaldeschi, and his dying moan in the galleries of Fontainbleau have mingled in her ears with the music of the birds and the fountains of these delicious gardens. Beyond, stretches the Borgo di Trastevere, celebrated for the beauty of its women, who are still said to possess the outline of feature of the ancient Romans. The people of Trastevere have doubtless mixed less with foreign blood, and are a race distinct from the rest of the modern Romans, and of a bolder character, as well as more muscular form. They wear, too, a different and somewhat picturesque costume; and I have often been reminded of the noble head of the Agripina, in the Capitoline Museum, by the peculiar expression common to most of the women of Trastevere, whose dark eyes flash beneath the shade of the graceful Fazzoletto, with a glance little less commanding than that of the imperial statue.

Then comes the yellow Tiber, still the "flavum Tiber," though some will have it green, traversed here by a modern, there by an ancient bridge. Beyond, crowds the mass of building of modern Rome, with its churches and palaces, whose sunny walls and domes cut out their individual forms sharply and accurately against the clear blue sky, as I have said before, losing none of their distinctness, even of the detail, by distance. It seems a picture reduced by a concave lens; or one of the wonderful productions of the Daguerreotype-an accurate and vivid lucigraph. The south-east course of the river opens a vista towards the campagna and the Appennines, upon whose flanks may be distinctly seen the villas and town of Frascati, the villages of Monte-Compatri, Rocca del Papa, and others, and even the more distant Tivoli; with the terraces of the Villa d'Este beneath, which, at the distance of eighteen miles, may be distinctly traced. The outline engraving, which accompanies this work, is copied from a very large and accurate print, drawn and engraved by Vasi, and published in Rome, referring to which the tourist upon his return may pass delightful moments of contemplation over again; and even in foggy London fancy himself breathing the limpid atmosphere of the Janiculan hill-the highest ground of Rome, of which the Monte Vaticano forms a part.

But the most celebrated view in Rome is from the tower of the Campidoglio. This is the most classical of panoramas, at all events the most interesting; for the only one which can pretend to rivalry with it in classic association, is that from the Acropolis of Athens, where, however, the associations are too misty and fabulous to enter into competition with the more recent and real events of Roman story, from her greatness, to her singular fall which links her history to