I came, I saw, and I—was conquered. For once I prefer the old to the new, and Rome has exorcised the evil spirit that has taken up its residence within me. I came into Rome from Florence on a day that would have passed without attracting attention in Camden Town, Nunhead, or even the Seven Dials. The rain was pouring in torrents, the streets were rivers, and in the filthy byways, much affected by coachmen as short-cuts, the stucco was peeling from tumble-down tenements, and all was dirt and darkness and desolation. I have come into a good many Continental cities, in the course of a long and virtuous life, depressed and dyspeptic and disappointed, but I have never been made so utterly miserable by anything as by my first introduction to Rome. I jumped at once to the conclusion that travellers and guide-books had grossly deceived me, and that the famous capital of the Roman Catholic faith and United Italy had been made, like Somebody’s pills and ointment, by persistent advertisement.

But with the morrow came the sun; the nightmare was over, and a pleasant dream had begun. Pagan Rome had made me—yea, even me, my brother—a little more respectful in my attitude towards antiquity. I came to scoff, and I remained to pray. I have been in the Forum, and when I sat on the great columns I tried to remember my Roman history, and muddled up the CÆsars, and wished that I had paid more attention to my books at school instead of making surreptitious catapults with the elastic I pulled out of my new spring-side boots. I have roamed—should I say Romed?—up the Appian Way, and lost myself in the mighty Baths of Caracalla; I have been down into the Catacombs and seen the bones of some Early Christians, and I have dreamed dreams, and wandered about in fancy in a toga, and given off Latin orations to the winds, and have only been aroused from my reverie by the voice of a fair creature inquiring, with the choicest American accent, if it was in the Forum that Julius CÆsar used to fight with wild beasts and play the fiddle while Rome was burning.

But all the ancient glories, so far as I am concerned, sink into insignificance beside the Colosseum. In this, the mighty ruin of the greatest arena the world has ever seen, the most ordinary mind—mine, for instance—loses itself. The present fades away; the guardian who follows you to see that you do not put stone and marble pillars in your pocket is lost sight of. You are back again in the year 72 A.D. You hear the cruel whips of their masters cracking merrily over the 12,000 Jewish captives who laid the first stones of the Colosseum, and in the year 80 it is complete, and Titus dedicates it, and the great arena is soaked with the blood of 5,000 wild beasts. The years go on, and human blood alone can satisfy the cruel thirst of the Romans. Over the seats and benches, now mouldering ruins, you see a mighty populace swarming. In the vast arena, where your modern foot, clad in a buttoned kid boot, now stands, thousands of gladiators, their huge muscles standing out like iron bars, fight, and dye the ground with their gore. The fiercest beasts stand at bay, with trembling captured slaves, and the nobles and the people—ay, even the women—shriek with delight as quivering flesh is torn, and the life-blood of man and brute spirts out in crimson jets. You can see it all, if you have a spark of imagination—the whole bloody, revolting scene becomes so real that at last you turn away and hide your eyes, and cry ‘Faugh!'—come to your senses, and thank Heaven that such cruel days are over for ever.

And outside, even as you are expressing your gratitude, you will see a long line of weary, wretched animals dragging their heavy loads, while behind them walks a Roman of to-day lashing their quivering, bleeding sides with brutal fury, even goading their poor starved carcases to further effort by thrusting a sharp stick into their open wounds. I can imagine what the Roman horses and mules and oxen would say if they heard anyone rejoicing that cruelty died out with the Pagans and the decay of the Colosseum. I have seen such cruelty to animals under the shadow of St. Peter’s that I doubt if the Colosseum ever saw worse. Beasts had at least a speedy death there. It is reserved for the modern citizen of Christian Rome to make a dumb brute’s torture last its whole life long.

A Roman is very proud of being a Roman, and he does nothing menial. The fly-drivers are Romans, but they do not groom or attend to their horses. They have Neapolitans to do that. There is a good deal of the old dignity still surviving among the people. At a Roman pastrycook’s a Roman waiter brings me an ice with the air of an emperor. An emperor would have done it more quickly, though, as his time would doubtless have been valuable. A Roman is always wrapping himself in an imaginary toga, and that dress is a much better one to pose in than to bustle about in and perform the vulgar task known as earning one’s daily bread.

Anyone who travels must be struck with the extraordinary way in which the same waiters turn up all over the world. The man who spreads my humble repast of polenta and dried figs in the HÔtel Londra, in Rome, last waited upon me at the hotel at Seaford, in Sussex, a pleasant hamlet, which generally consists of six inhabitants, two visitors, and a pedestrian passing through from Newhaven. In Milan my waiter reminded me that he had often had the honour of waiting upon me at the St. Enoch’s Hotel, at Glasgow, and in a restaurant in Florence I was recognised with a broad grin by the former oberkellner of a pleasant hostelry upon the Rhine, where I sojourned in ’78. Most travellers can multiply instances of this sort of thing, but it is just a little wonderful to meet in Rome your old garÇon of sleepy little Seaford, in Sussex.

More wonderful still! I have just been into a coiffeur’s in the Via Condotti to be shaved, and the young gentleman officiating, after lathering me, said in the most unconcerned way possible: ‘Let me see, I thinks that you like him a razor fine, if right I remembers?’ I stared at the man in astonishment, and stammered: ‘Do you know me, then?’ ‘Ah, sare,’ was the reply, ‘I shave you often last year, at the Toilet Club, Brighton. No you remember?’ The world is decidedly small. I am looking about Rome now with some hope of coming upon the cabman to whom I gave a sovereign instead of a shilling in the Old Kent Road in the summer of ’81. I really don’t see why he shouldn’t come round the corner accidentally.

Rome has just recovered from the incursion of the pilgrims to the tomb of Victor Emmanuel, and Society is returning to the capital. The ‘pilgrimage’ business scared many people from the city, for there was a good deal of wild talk about riots and I know not what. You see, this pilgrimage has been an organized Government affair, got up entirely for political purposes. The vast horde of folks who flocked from all parts of Italy came, not to show their attachment and devotion to monarchical institutions, but to see Rome and enjoy themselves. The railway companies brought ‘pilgrims’ at a reduction of 75 per cent. on the regular fares.

Although nothing has appeared in the papers, it is common talk in Rome that one train-load was stoned by the mob, and in several places this ‘loyal’ demonstration was hissed and hooted. Italy teems with dissension and discontent, and how fully the Government is aware of the fact is best proved by the enormous pains that have been taken to organize and carry out this solemn farce of a national pilgrimage to the tomb of the late King.

It is fair to say that this view of the pilgrimage is taken only in clerical and Republican circles. I am assured by many Italians that it has really been a great success, from a political point of view. There is no doubt that the ‘merry jests of King Victor Emmanuel’ endeared him to a large number of his subjects, and the stories that are being told of him now would fill a book.

The stories of his hobnobbing with peasants and boors, and finding his pleasure in bourgeois life, have caused the old canard to be revived about his identity. My waiter in Rome imparted it to me confidentially one morning while I was struggling to eat some gnocchis À la Romaine without injuring all that is left of my liver for life. I will give it as I received it:

‘Wunst was a fire—big fire, while Vittor Emanuele he was baby in de palace. Real royal baby he was burn to death. To prevent being found out what happen, de nurse she put her baby in de place of other, and nobody not find out, so Victor Emanuele he really was one of de people, and dat was what make him so fond of sit in beerhouse and eat sausage and bread with a big knife.’

There is a big movement afoot in Rome to revive the Barberi races in the Corso. The Corso, as all my readers are aware, is a long, narrow street in the fashionable quarter of Rome, and the Barberi are poor horses who are let loose at the top with spiked balls fastened to their sides, which goad them almost to madness, and make them fly like the wind. Last year the cruel sport was abandoned, owing to its having caused a terrible accident just under the Queen’s balcony the previous year. This time, however, there is a great outcry for a revival, and the chief sinners are not the cruel Romans, but the humane English and American visitors and residents.

As in these days of extended travel everyone goes to Rome, I should like to say a word about the nonsense that is talked about the unhealthiness of the climate and the danger of malaria. ‘Roman fever’ is a bogey which frightens hundreds of good folk from enjoying one of the greatest treats the world can give. There is very little danger to people who live carefully and don’t rush. If people will go to Rome in the blazing heat of summer, and gallop about from place to place like madmen, now sweltering in the sun, and now burrowing into the icy depths of a ruined temple, or wandering in the cold galleries of a church, chills will follow, and fever may ensue; but in nine cases out of ten fear is the great cause of the illness of English travellers.

The Roman water, again, which some folks warn you not to drink, is the purest water in the whole wide world, and there is a supply, brought through the restoration of some of the classical aqueducts a distance of thirty-six miles, which is equal to 300 gallons per day for each inhabitant, and this is flowing day and night uninterruptedly. London Water Companies please note.

There is one thing which makes Rome unendurable to nervous, excitable people, and which, combined with the sirocco, has driven me away. To be harassed and tortured at every turn is death to a rheumatic, dyspeptic, quiet-seeking man whose nerves are champion jumpers. To show what I mean, I will exactly reproduce my last walk in Rome. I have read Mr. Hare’s ‘Walks in Rome,’ but mine is the walk of a Hunted Hare.

A Walk in Rome.

Englishman (leaping wildly in the air). No, no; I’m going for a walk!

Men (surrounding Englishman). Volete! Volete!

Englishman. No, no; I don’t want anything. Let me pass. I’m going for a quiet walk to calm my nerves.

Englishman. At last! Now for a quiet stroll and a little calm meditation.

Drivers (shouting). He! Ho!

Englishman. Oh dear! I shall be crushed. Where can I go? Oh dear!

Englishman (coming down). Dear me! the stone is very cold to one’s feet without one’s boots. Never mind; now for a nice saunter.

Englishman. No. Oh, do go away, please! I have left my purse at home.

Englishman. Phew! The sirocco is blowing, and I’m all in a perspiration. Let me enter this cool church a moment and rest in a pew.

Englishman. Die of hunger, and be hanged to you!

Custodian (in church). You vould like for to see pitchers an’ statchers, eh, sare? Come vid me.

Englishman. No; I’m going to rest a minute. Go away.

(Enter Two Ciceroni.)

First Cicerone (in French). Take you over the church, sir? Show you some funny things.

Second Cicerone (in Italian). Come with me, sir; I understand the antiquities.

Englishman. No, no, no!

Englishman. What! cannot I even have a minute to myself in my own room? (Shoots himself.) Now I’m dead perhaps I shall have five minutes!

Englishman. Here! leave me alone; I’m dead.

Masked Men. All right, but you must be removed at once. You’ve got to be underground by to-morrow in Rome, you know.

Englishman. Oh, hang this! I’m off, then!

Doctor in England (feeling Englishman’s pulse). Why, you’re in a raging fever, and your nerves are overwrought, and you’re quite delirious!

Englishman. Yes, doctor. I unfortunately went out for a Quiet Walk in Rome!