March 23rd. [1859]
I am wearing away listlessly these last precious days of my abode in Rome. U----'s illness is disheartening, and by confining , it takes away the energy and enterprise that were the spring of all our movements. I am weary of Rome, without having seen and known it as I ought, and I shall be glad to get away from it, though no doubt there will be many yearnings to return hereafter, and many regrets that I did not make better use of the opportunities within my grasp. Still, I have been in Rome loig enough to be imbued with its atmosphere, and this is the essential condition of knowing a place; for such knowledge does not consist in having seen every particular object it contains. In the state of mind in which I now stand towards Rome, there is very little advantage to be gained by staying here longer.
And yet I had a pleasant stroll enough yesterday afternoon, all by myself, from the Corso down past the church of St. Andrea della Valle -- the site where Caesar was murdered and thence to the Farnese Palace, the noble court of which I entered; thence to the Piazza, Cenci, where I looked at one or two ugly old palaces, and fixed on one of them as the residence of Beatrice's father; then past the Temple of Vesta, and skirting along the Tiber, and beneath tie Aventine, till I somewhat unexpectedly came in sight of the grey pyramid of Caius Cestius. I went out of the city-gate, and leaned on the parapet that encloses the pyramid, advancing its high, unbroken slope and peak, where the great blocks of marble still fit almost as closely to one another as when they were though, indeed, there are crevices just large enough for plants to root themselves, and flaunt and rail over the face of this great tomb; only a little verdure, however, over a vast space of marble, still white in spots, but pervadingly turned grey by two thousand years' action of the atmosphere. Thence I came home by the Coelian, and sat down on an ancient flight of steps under one of the arches of the Coliseum, into which the sunshine fell sidelong. It was a delightful afternoon, not precisely like any weather that I have known elsewhere; certainly never in America, where it is always too cold or too hot. It resembles summer more than anything which we New Englanders recognise in our idea of spring, but there was an indescribable something sweet, fresh, gentle that does not belong to summer, and that thrilled and tickled my heart with a feeling partly sensuous, partly spiritual.
I go to the Bank and read Galignani and the American newspapers; thence I stroll to the Pincian or to the Medici Gardens; I see a good deal of General Pierce, and we talk over his Presidential life, which, I now really think, he has no latent desire nor purpose to renew. Yet he seems to have enjoyed it while it lasted, and certainly he was in his element as an administrative man; not far-seeing, not possessed of vast stores of political wisdom in advance of his occasions, but endowed with a miraculous intuition of what ought to be done just at the time for action. His judgment of things about him is wonderful, and his cabinet recognised it as such ; for though they were men of great ability, he was evidently the master-mind among them. None of. them were particularly his personal friends when he selected them; they all loved him when they parted; and he showed me a letter, signed by all, in which they expressed their feelings of respect and attachment at the close of his administration. There was a noble frankness on his part, that kept the atmosphere always clear among them, and in reference to this characteristic Governor Marcy told him that the years during which he had been connected with his Cabinet, had been the happiest of his life. Speaking of Caleb Gushing, he told me that the unreliability, the fickleness, which is usually attributed to him is an actual characteristic, but that it is intellectual, not moral. He has such comprehensiveness, such mental variety and activity, that, if left to himself, he cannot keep fast hold of one view of things, and so cannot, without external help, be a consistent man. He needs the influence of a more single and stable judgment to keep him from divergency, and, on this condition, he is a most inestimable coadjutor. As regards learning and ability, he has no superior.
Pierce spoke the other day of the idea among some of his friends that his life had been planned from a very early period, with a view to the station which he ultimately reached. He smiled at the notion, said that it was inconsistent with his natural character, and that it implied foresight and dexterity beyond what any mortal is endowed with. I think so too;
but nevertheless, I was long and long ago aware that he cherished a very high ambition, and that, though he might not anticipate the highest things, he cared very little about inferior objects. Then as to plans, I do not think that he had any definite ones; but there was in him a subtle faculty, a real instinct, that taught him what was good for him that is to say, promotive if his political success and made him inevitably do it. He had a magic touch, that arranged matters with a delicate potency, which he himself hardly recognised; and he wrought through other minds so that neither he nor they always knew when and how far they were under his influence. Before his nomination for the Presidency I had a sense that it was coming, and it never seemed to me an accident. He is a most singular character; so frank, so true, so immediate, so subtle, so simple, so complicated.
I passed by the tower in the Via Portoghese to day, and observed that the nearest shop appears to be for the sale of cotton or linen cloth... The upper window of the tower was half open; of course, like all or almost all other Roman windows, it is divided vertically, and each half swings back on hinges...
Last week a fritter establishment was opened in our piazza.. It was a wooden booth erected in the open square, and covered with canvas painted red, which looked as if it had withstood much rain and sunshine. In front were three great boughs of laurel, not so much for shade, I think, as ornament. There were two men, and their apparatus for business was a sort of stove, or charcoal furnace, and a frying-pan to place over it ; they had an armful or two of dry sticks, some flour, and I suppose oil, and this seemed to be all. It was Friday, and Lent besides, and possibly there was some other peculiar propriety in the consumption of fritters just then. At all events, their fire burned merrily from morning till night, and pretty late into the evening, and they had a fine run of custom; the commodity being simply dough, cut into squares or rhomboids, and thrown into the boiling oil, which quickly turned them to a light brown colour. I sent J---- to buy some, and tasting one, it resembled an unspeakably bad dough nut, without any sweetening. In fact, it was sour, for the Romans like their bread, and all their preparations of flour, in a state of acetous fermentation, which serves them instead of salt or other condiment. This fritter-shop had grown up in a night, like Aladdin's palace, and vanished as suddenly; for after standing through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, it was gone on Monday morning, and a charcoal-strewn place on the pavement where the furnace had been, was the only memorial of it. It was curious to observe how immediately it became a lounging place for idle people, who stood and talked all day with the fritter-friers, just as they might at any old shop in the basement of a palace, or between the half-buried pillars of the Temple of Minerva, which had been familiar to them and their remote grandfathers.
I am wearing away listlessly these last precious days of my abode in Rome. U----'s illness is disheartening, and by confining , it takes away the energy and enterprise that were the spring of all our movements. I am weary of Rome, without having seen and known it as I ought, and I shall be glad to get away from it, though no doubt there will be many yearnings to return hereafter, and many regrets that I did not make better use of the opportunities within my grasp. Still, I have been in Rome loig enough to be imbued with its atmosphere, and this is the essential condition of knowing a place; for such knowledge does not consist in having seen every particular object it contains. In the state of mind in which I now stand towards Rome, there is very little advantage to be gained by staying here longer.
And yet I had a pleasant stroll enough yesterday afternoon, all by myself, from the Corso down past the church of St. Andrea della Valle -- the site where Caesar was murdered and thence to the Farnese Palace, the noble court of which I entered; thence to the Piazza, Cenci, where I looked at one or two ugly old palaces, and fixed on one of them as the residence of Beatrice's father; then past the Temple of Vesta, and skirting along the Tiber, and beneath tie Aventine, till I somewhat unexpectedly came in sight of the grey pyramid of Caius Cestius. I went out of the city-gate, and leaned on the parapet that encloses the pyramid, advancing its high, unbroken slope and peak, where the great blocks of marble still fit almost as closely to one another as when they were though, indeed, there are crevices just large enough for plants to root themselves, and flaunt and rail over the face of this great tomb; only a little verdure, however, over a vast space of marble, still white in spots, but pervadingly turned grey by two thousand years' action of the atmosphere. Thence I came home by the Coelian, and sat down on an ancient flight of steps under one of the arches of the Coliseum, into which the sunshine fell sidelong. It was a delightful afternoon, not precisely like any weather that I have known elsewhere; certainly never in America, where it is always too cold or too hot. It resembles summer more than anything which we New Englanders recognise in our idea of spring, but there was an indescribable something sweet, fresh, gentle that does not belong to summer, and that thrilled and tickled my heart with a feeling partly sensuous, partly spiritual.
I go to the Bank and read Galignani and the American newspapers; thence I stroll to the Pincian or to the Medici Gardens; I see a good deal of General Pierce, and we talk over his Presidential life, which, I now really think, he has no latent desire nor purpose to renew. Yet he seems to have enjoyed it while it lasted, and certainly he was in his element as an administrative man; not far-seeing, not possessed of vast stores of political wisdom in advance of his occasions, but endowed with a miraculous intuition of what ought to be done just at the time for action. His judgment of things about him is wonderful, and his cabinet recognised it as such ; for though they were men of great ability, he was evidently the master-mind among them. None of. them were particularly his personal friends when he selected them; they all loved him when they parted; and he showed me a letter, signed by all, in which they expressed their feelings of respect and attachment at the close of his administration. There was a noble frankness on his part, that kept the atmosphere always clear among them, and in reference to this characteristic Governor Marcy told him that the years during which he had been connected with his Cabinet, had been the happiest of his life. Speaking of Caleb Gushing, he told me that the unreliability, the fickleness, which is usually attributed to him is an actual characteristic, but that it is intellectual, not moral. He has such comprehensiveness, such mental variety and activity, that, if left to himself, he cannot keep fast hold of one view of things, and so cannot, without external help, be a consistent man. He needs the influence of a more single and stable judgment to keep him from divergency, and, on this condition, he is a most inestimable coadjutor. As regards learning and ability, he has no superior.
Pierce spoke the other day of the idea among some of his friends that his life had been planned from a very early period, with a view to the station which he ultimately reached. He smiled at the notion, said that it was inconsistent with his natural character, and that it implied foresight and dexterity beyond what any mortal is endowed with. I think so too;
but nevertheless, I was long and long ago aware that he cherished a very high ambition, and that, though he might not anticipate the highest things, he cared very little about inferior objects. Then as to plans, I do not think that he had any definite ones; but there was in him a subtle faculty, a real instinct, that taught him what was good for him that is to say, promotive if his political success and made him inevitably do it. He had a magic touch, that arranged matters with a delicate potency, which he himself hardly recognised; and he wrought through other minds so that neither he nor they always knew when and how far they were under his influence. Before his nomination for the Presidency I had a sense that it was coming, and it never seemed to me an accident. He is a most singular character; so frank, so true, so immediate, so subtle, so simple, so complicated.
I passed by the tower in the Via Portoghese to day, and observed that the nearest shop appears to be for the sale of cotton or linen cloth... The upper window of the tower was half open; of course, like all or almost all other Roman windows, it is divided vertically, and each half swings back on hinges...
Last week a fritter establishment was opened in our piazza.. It was a wooden booth erected in the open square, and covered with canvas painted red, which looked as if it had withstood much rain and sunshine. In front were three great boughs of laurel, not so much for shade, I think, as ornament. There were two men, and their apparatus for business was a sort of stove, or charcoal furnace, and a frying-pan to place over it ; they had an armful or two of dry sticks, some flour, and I suppose oil, and this seemed to be all. It was Friday, and Lent besides, and possibly there was some other peculiar propriety in the consumption of fritters just then. At all events, their fire burned merrily from morning till night, and pretty late into the evening, and they had a fine run of custom; the commodity being simply dough, cut into squares or rhomboids, and thrown into the boiling oil, which quickly turned them to a light brown colour. I sent J---- to buy some, and tasting one, it resembled an unspeakably bad dough nut, without any sweetening. In fact, it was sour, for the Romans like their bread, and all their preparations of flour, in a state of acetous fermentation, which serves them instead of salt or other condiment. This fritter-shop had grown up in a night, like Aladdin's palace, and vanished as suddenly; for after standing through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, it was gone on Monday morning, and a charcoal-strewn place on the pavement where the furnace had been, was the only memorial of it. It was curious to observe how immediately it became a lounging place for idle people, who stood and talked all day with the fritter-friers, just as they might at any old shop in the basement of a palace, or between the half-buried pillars of the Temple of Minerva, which had been familiar to them and their remote grandfathers.
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