“WHAT are the chief features of Rome?” was the second question asked me by a friend whom I met yesterday. “Art and Architecture,” was the unhesitating reply. Indeed hesitation was unnecessary; my mind was already made up on that point, and there can be no question as to the correctness of the answer.

Nature seems to have implanted a love for Art in the sons of Italy, and whispered its secrets to them as to no other people. She teaches them by object lessons. At night she embosoms the moon in her soft blue sky like a silver crescent in a velvet cushion, and the stars with their new polished lustre seem to bestud God’s diamond throne. In the morning the same azure sky is “flecked with blushes and gattled with fire.” As the Italian at the evening hour stands under the sunny vine, on the green hillside, looking at the glowing, lighted west through the molten bars of twilight; as he sees the purple clouds, lying along the horizon, fade from rich purple to pale blue—from blue to lavender—to pink—to scarlet—then to banks of molten gold; as he beholds the imperial splendors of the setting sun “vast mirrored on the sea,”—he gathers inspiration—his soul catches the fire—the whole scene is photographed on the landscape of his memory. He there learns how best to blend his colors, and next day as he stands before his canvas beauty hangs upon his brush like sparks of livid light.

Angelo, Raphael, and Di Vinci were pupils of Nature. Once upon a time Socrates, after listening to his pupils discourse on philosophy, arose and, pointing to them, said: “What greater honor could a teacher ask than to have such pupils as Plato and Xenophon?” And methinks after seeing the Final Judgment of the first, The Transfiguration of the second, and The Last Supper of the third, Nature herself would rise and, pointing to them with pride, say: “What greater honor could I, even I, ask than to have such pupils as Angelo, Raphael, and Di Vinci!”

After Dante had written “The Inferno,” the people of Florence as they saw him walking through the streets, would shrink from him and whisper, “That is the man who was in hell.” “It were impossible,” they said, “for one to write about the infernal world as Dante did, without having seen it.” The same thought impresses itself upon one as he beholds The Final Judgment. One says, “that picture was surely painted by an eye-witness.” Indeed you see no picture—you see the final judgment itself. You see Christ as judge, coming on the clouds, preceded by Gabriel and followed by a legion of angels. You see the assembled multitude, people from every nation, kindred, tribe and tongue, standing in the back ground breathless, awaiting the decision of the Judge. You see the remorse, the anguish, the misery, the woe of those who are led to the left and hurled headlong into the fiery pit below! Their expression convinces you that they realize in their hearts that no rainbow of hope will ever again brighten their skies, no note of mercy will ever more peal in their ears. You see the pleasure, the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy, that gladdens the hearts and illuminates the faces, of those who hear the welcome plaudit—“Well done, good and faithful servants—enter ye into the joy of your Lord.” After seeing this picture one can but say: “Michael Angelo saw the final judgment, and showed it me.”

Soon after this picture was begun, one of the Cardinals of Rome, objecting to the artist’s design, interfered with the work. Angelo refused to make any alterations in his plan. The Cardinal demanded a change, whereupon Angelo gave up the engagement. The Cardinal then sent for other celebrated artists and requested them to finish the picture. Each and all of them declared that the work was beyond their scope and power. They all agreed that Michael Angelo was the only living man who could finish so perfect a piece of work. The Cardinal now sent for Angelo but he refused to have any further communication with that prelate.

Finally the Pope himself interviewed the artist on the subject and agreed that he might finish the picture according to the first design, or according to any other design that he might choose. The Pope further agreed that the artist should not be interfered with in his work, and when once finished the picture should never be altered or changed. With this understanding Angelo resumed, and in due time finished, his work.

When the day of exhibition came, thousands of people gathered to see the picture. When the curtain was drawn aside the astonished multitude recognized the Cardinal in hell. “In hell he lifted up his eyes.” When the Cardinal saw himself among the damned his wrath was kindled more than a little. He went to the Pope in a rage and asked to be rescued. The Pope replied to the Cardinal, “If you were in purgatory I could get you out, but you know that according to the Catholic faith, when a man is once in hell he has to stay there. I can do nothing for you.” So the poor Cardinal is in hell—according to the picture.

This wonderful picture sixty-four feet in breadth covers almost the entire south end of the world-famed Sistine Chapel. This is a private chapel in the Vatican, the Pope’s palace. “Sistine,” because built by Sixtus, and famous because of the picture just mentioned, and the frescoes on the ceiling by the same gifted artist.

These frescoes represent Bible scenes, large as life, impressive as death, yet beautiful beyond description. The artist begins at a time when everything is “without form and void.” The first picture represents God, with motion of his arms, bringing law and order out of chaos and confusion. In the second, God with outstretched hands creates the sun and moon. We see the creation of Adam and the formation of Eve, then the temptation in and expulsion from Eden. Finally we see the ark floating on the waters with several small boats clinging to and following after it. Some of the mountain-tops, not yet submerged, are crowded with terror-stricken multitudes, who, in their excitement, wildly but vainly stretch out their hands and silently implore Noah to take them in. Each of these pictures is realistic and life-like. And yet the entire series is so arranged as sweetly to blend into one harmonious whole. And whether contemplating one of its parts, or the scene as a whole, you involuntary exclaim—“It is a thing of beauty,” and must therefore be “a joy forever.”

Raphael was to the painters of Italy what John was to the Disciples of Christ, “The Beloved.” I think, too, that as John was the disciple, so Raphael was the painter “whom Jesus loved.” Though strong and determined as a man, he was mild and gentle as a woman. He had the “Sunshine of life” in his heart, and the “look of eternal youth” in his face. Methinks he was like David, “a man after God’s own heart.” Such a man could not paint hell. He had not seen it and knew nothing about it. His mission was to paint angels and innocence, Heaven and holiness, God and glory; and his fitness for this high calling amounted almost to divine inspiration. Never did the fires of genius burn more brightly upon the altar of devotion, than in the breast of Raphael. Never before, nor since, has divine glory been so perfectly pictured on canvas as in The Transfiguration. You see Christ at that supreme moment when “His face did shine as the sun, and His garments were white as the light.” Moses and Elias, from the other world are there with their happy hearts, bright faces and glorified bodies. Below them are Peter, James, and John, reverently bowing to the earth, and shielding their faces from the light. Above all, but half enveloped in clouds, you see God the Father whose very expression says: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him.” Hawthorne makes one of his characters in the Marble Faun say: “It is the spectator’s mood that transfigures The Transfiguration itself.” This may be—I suppose it is—true, to some extent, but somehow I was in the mood. I admired this picture, I sat down before it “until it sank into my heart.” I said: “Lord, it is good to be here, it seems only one step from Heaven and Home.”

The beloved painter came to do what the beloved Disciple left undone. John in his gospel failed to mention the Transfiguration, so Raphael was sent to fill up the omission with a picture.

While it is true, as stated in the outset, that Art and Architecture are the chief features of modern Rome, yet Art is of primary, and Architecture of secondary consideration. Italians build fine houses, not for the sake of the houses themselves, but that they may display their “tasteful talents” in ornamenting and decorating them. I speak especially of churches, from the very fact that the Italians have not, nor do they want, fine Court-houses and costly Capitol buildings, as we have. They exercise their taste, and lavish all their wealth and art upon the churches or cathedrals. There are eighty odd cathedrals in Rome dedicated to the Virgin Mary alone. Besides these there are scores of others dedicated to men, and monks, seraphs, saints and sinners—one, I believe, a small one, to Christ. Some of these, St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s especially are reckoned among the finest cathedrals in existence; and yet the external appearance of these buildings is not so imposing as one might imagine. It is their interior that has rendered them famous.

Without entering these palaces of worship, one can have no just conception of their resplendent glory. They shine with burnished gold. They glow with pictures. The mirror-like pavements are a mosaic of rare workmanship. The walls, columns, and arches seem a vast quarry of precious stones, so rich and costly are the many-colored marbles with which they are inlaid. Their lofty cornices have flights of sculptured angels, and white doves bearing green olive branches gemmed with pearls and emeralds. And within the vaults of the ceiling, and the swelling interior of the dome, there are frescoes of such brilliancy, and wrought with such artful perspective, that the sky, peopled with sainted forms, appears to be opened only a little way above the spectator.

Any one of the four churches mentioned has at least a dozen altars—St. Peter’s has twenty-nine—and upon each altar princely fortunes have been lavished. Each is a marvel of artistic beauty; each glows with burnished gold, and sparkles with precious stones. The evening sun, softened and mellowed by the many-colored glass through which it is reflected, falls like golden fire upon these shrines. The statues standing around and the angels hovering above the altars seem warmed into life by this radiant glow; the marble men struggle to speak, and the sculptured angels spread their wings and try to rise in the glorified atmosphere. One would naturally think that, in these shrines, the unspeakable splendor of the whole edifice would be intensified and gathered to a focus, but not so. It would be true elsewhere, but here they are of no separate account. They all “melt away into the vast, sunny breath,” each contributing its little toward “the grandeur of the whole.”

Imagine “a casket, all inlaid in the inside with precious stones of various hues, so that there would not be a hair’s breadth of the small interior unadorned with resplendent gems. Then conceive this minute wonder of a mosaic box increased to the magnitude of a miniature sky,” and you have the interior of the greatest structure ever built by the hands of man, the Cathedral of St. Peter.