“What come ye for to see?” It is a wider question than was intended on its first ironical utterance, and many answers are always ready. A medical ignoramus of ability was asked if there was any danger. His answer was, “That depends on the event.” So it is in museum life; the majority know nothing of what they go to see, and what they do see depends on the event. But the specialists know exactly what go they for to see; and I am one of these. Relying on presumptive evidence, if a “Sir Leighton,” as the French would say, goes to Rome, it may be for to make a study of painted eyes, in some ten or a dozen galleries, to determine whether black, brown, or blue predominates. If a “Sir Boehm” goes to Rome, it may be for to inspect the lost head and legs of a Farnesian Hercules. If a “Sir Barry” goes to Rome, it is for to examine which of the stones in the Palazzo di Venezia were stolen by a pope from the Coliseum, and which were honestly got. However, we have no “Sir Barry” nowadays; premiers do not build houses, so that they do not baronetize architecture in lieu of fees. They take physic; they stand in need of bulletins when, on the eve of an unpleasant debate, a strong voice is weak. Being ourselves of physic and a little deaf, a clergyman once bawled into our best ear, in a voice so thunderous yet so piercing that had it been a prayer it might almost have been heard in heaven, “Doctor! can you give me something to strengthen my voice?”

Premiers are perfect artists in the baronetizing line; nay, they can even chisel a peer in invisible gold. A president of a royal academy, of a royal society, of a royal college of surgeons or physicians, fills a genteel trade; rank fits him well.

An oculist, if a premier has bad eyes and is going blind, may, like other professionals, be ennobled; but an aurist and a dentist, there is something in these—it is hard to say what—that does not ennoble well, which shows how greater are eyes than ears or teeth.

If a premier is not a teetotaler, he makes lords out of brewers, and yet not out of distillers, whose images are quite as golden. He does not mind it being thought that he takes a glass of pale ale, but whisky—that would not do.

All these industries, like myself, go to Rome chiefly on their own business. But what a wonderful crowd there is flocking there to see all that is left—the fragments of CÆsar’s lost compositions.

We business men, when we have found all we want, go the round; it is like walking through the street, looking at everybody, sometimes stopping to speak.

We meet a picture, a statue, a vase, an arch, a column, a palace, as we might do a friend; but those who undertake to see all might as well undertake to read the two or three billion letters that pass through the post-office in a year.

I set myself to visit the grave of poor Keats. He was sick of many griefs, but the greatest of these was that he could not make the vulgar howl their applause. He had all the enjoyment of a Divine gift; it could only be the bodily sickness affecting the mind when his heart was bitter, and he exclaimed his name was writ in water. Yet they have graved those feeble words on his tombstone!

Were I dying for praise, I should show my insight into man, and say, “My name is writ in brandy and water.” How that would be swallowed down!

I visited Keats’s grave from very mixed motives; life is sad enough without being sentimental. To stand before the grave is a little dangerous; if one walked backwards for a short distance in an absent fit, he would precipitate himself over a sunk wall into the adjoining cemetery, and lie there for good, like Shelley.

As in duty bound, I visited the tomb of Shelley also.

I was on my way to the church of St. Paolo fuori, a sight not to be neglected by any species of pilgrim whatever.

On one’s way one can leave a card on the Scipios; their tomb is handy, but they are always out, those wonderful people called the “authorities” having removed the sarcophagi and busts. But you will be asked in; and you can go down the windings by torchlight, and say you did it. Then, en route, one can pay one’s respects to the early Christians who owned some uncomfortable catacombs hereabout, in which they resided.

For an account of these and of how they shelved their dead, vide some more gushing writer.

St. Paolo is too magnificent for a church. It has a fine architectural pedigree up to Constantine, having endured all the horrors for generations of decay and fire, to be only rebuilt at greater cost than before.

I did not go on purpose to behold the church, but to almost adore the ancient cloisters at the back. The delicately twisted columns of the arches are so winning, they actually awake one’s affections; and if thinking of a thing ever after is love, they fill you with this fondest of recollections.

A good many of us rise in life. Wolsey, he rose; the Bonapartes rose; Coke rose (upon Littleton); the Gladstones rose; Lazarus rose; but no man, priest, soldier, lawyer, M.P., or resurrect, ever rose in death, as did St. Peter. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; writers as eminently inspired as Isaiah; Paul, the most gifted of apostles, whose ideas on charity lifted Christianity miles over the heads of all other religious or moral founders, had no such rise in death as Peter; but it was the keys that did it.

Peter has a palace, and a church, and a museum, such as monarchs envy in vain. Let us hope, pray, and entreat that it may never be demolished, like the palace of the CÆsars; that no republican Guiscard may arise; but that the President of the Future may take up his residence there, should the popes vacate it.

My friend, Theodore Watts, was at Rome with me a part of the time. I forget what he thought of it all; it is so long ago. I know we visited the poets’ tombs together, and St. Paolo fuori.

Pio Nino must have had a temper, because he studied the inconvenience of strangers by making them take tickets of admission in front of the Vatican, while he vaticinated that the back entrance not being handy, but involving a long walk, would excite irritation, so he admitted visitors only at his back door. The elliptical columns forming the portico in the Piazza S. Pietro, look like out-bent arms for receiving and hugging the flock.

I was with Watts, one day in December, on this little round. We stood with our backs against a wall, for shelter against a bitter wind, the sun shining through snow, and the warmth, so long as we remained there, delicious.

We went the usual round of the loggie, Raphaelizing, and of the indoor statuary squares and streets; and got into the Sixtine, on the roof of which Michael Angelo re-created the world.