to hear high mass. This afternoon, Mr. Gray expects to take the party sightseeing, to see the Doges Palace and a picture gallery. I shall not go, of course. Neither, I guess, will Jim and the girls. Venice is a lovely place. Our hotel fronts on the Grand Canal, and we do our travelling by water. Morantic or romantic, is it not? Last night we had a beautiful sail around the city, under the Bridge of Sighs and out in the harbor. We went out two or three miles to the Island of Ledo, from which there was a fine view of the blue waves of the Adriatic. The sail both out and back was fine. The after glow lingered a long while, and the reflection of the city lights in the water was very fine, reminding me of a walk Jim and I took on a bridge over the Rhine at Cologne, about 10 o’clock at night. Just think, mother, we came from the depot to our hotel propelled by a gondolier. Didn’t go to church to-day, stayed and read some in my Testament. Lovely lady rooms next me, and I am going to desert you and this letter and go and look, with her, over some Bible texts or cards, or something she has with her. I know you will be pleased that that is the worst reason I have for ending this letter here. We are all in usual health, I believe. Be sure to write often.
Lovingly,
HENRY.
ROME, Sunday, August 3, ’79.
MY DEAR MOTHER,
It is Sunday morning, as possibly you perceive from the heading of this letter, and some of the people have gone sightseeing as usual, and some have gone to church, some, I presume, to St Peter’s and other Catholic establishments, and a few to Protestant dittoes, and some are asleep. It is very quiet and seeming more like Sunday than it has for a long time. There is that peculiar subduedness and stillness about everything that marks so plainly the day. Quite unlike the Sundays one is accustomed to enjoy in the second section. But then this, perhaps, is to be accounted for by the absence of most of the aforementioned section. None of our party went to church. Helen and Carrie are asleep upstairs, Jim and Miss White writing at a table down here, and I at another table. The room is the “reception room” of our hotel, the Costanzi, said to be one of the finest hotels in Europe. I presume it is, as it is one of the best we have been in. Everything shows we are in Rome. The ceilings are painted in classic style. Even the butter tells us that this is the “Eternal City.” It is stamped with the Capitoline wolf and Romulus and Remus. The water is perfectly good. In fact, the water has been good all along, and the talk about the water in Europe is all “poppycock” any way, to use an inelegant phrase. Italy is a fraud. It is hot, flat, dry, dusty. The Italian sky is another fraud. It is a cloudless, red hot, burning one, and the air is hot and dry. The vegetation is seared and brown. There is no pleasant coloring to rest the eyes. However, in the shape of tropical vegetation we have met with some old friends. Figs abound. The cactus and prickly pear and century plant lift up their heads and bid us welcome. That terribly sharp thing in sister Ellie’s yard, we have met somewhere in our travels.
Rome is a very interesting city. I like it better than any we have yet visited. We arrived here Thursday night, about five o’clock, from Florence, after a hot and dusty ride of eight hours. We went nowhere that night, except to bed. The party in Rome is resigned by Mr. Gray to Mr. Forbes, a gentleman many years resident in Rome, and an antiquarian and student. I believe he knows Rome well, and I suppose we could have been placed in no better hands. The plan of sightseeing has been changed here, much for the better, all think. Heretofore we have left the hotel at half-past eight or nine for a long siege through the hottest part of the day, returning utterly fagged out, dirty and starved, at about three o’clock, when we were served up to a dinner, calculated to refresh our weary souls. But now we go out at nine, returning at twelve to a simple lunch and rest till three. Then go again till six, coming back to a consoling dinner. This is not half as tiring as the other method. The first morning we drove in the carriages on to the Pincian hill, from which there is a fine view of a considerable part of the city, including St. Peter’s and the castle of St. Angelo. Off in the distance was seen the Janiculum, while spread out nearer us was the farm of Cincinnatus. This was intensely interesting to me. Not at all so to Jim and the girls. The hill was formerly occupied by the gardens of Marcellus. We next crossed over the Tiber, by the bridge of Hadrian, some 1700 years old, I believe.
Passing by the castle of St. Angelo, formerly Hadrian’s tomb, we came to St. Peter’s. Lofty as the dome is, it is entirely hidden from view before the steps are reached, and no one would dream that there was any there. St. Peter’s is the largest church in the world, having an area, I believe, of some 76,000 square yards. It is built in the form of a Latin cross, and experienced some strange vicissitudes. Passing from architect to architect, it was more than a hundred years in building, and in the hands of most the plan was changed. Michael Angelo built most of the dome. The interior is very richly adorned, and Baedeker says meretriciously. The effect, nevertheless, is very imposing. Service was being performed and, as usual, was very interesting to me. I am commencing to like the smell of incense. I like to watch the priests, too, go through their parts, and look for the devotion, but sad to say, all only strengthens my previously beforehand conclusions on the subject of Catholicism and the Catholic Church, I am convinced that they are “frauds,” and the lesson has been read to me in twenty churches. It may have been wrongly read, I cannot tell about that, but certainly I have so read it.
From St. Peter’s we proceeded to the Vatican, the palace of the popes. Very respectable size, only 11,000 rooms. Saw pictures upon pictures, many famous ones, all bores. Raphael’s “Transfiguration” among them. We visited the Sixtine Chapel, also a bore. Ugly old place. Bore like the rest of them. The fact is, I should prefer not to see any more pictures. When I come to Rome to stay, why, on top of a good dinner, I should like to go to the Vatican with opera glasses and a good catalogue, and study some of the pictures for a few hours every day, studying upon art and its history meanwhile. That is the only way to see pictures in these big galleries. Not that heretofore it has been all of it useless. Not at all. But it is becoming so.
Leaving the Vatican, we went to a gallery of statues, and then made for the hotel. In the afternoon, Jim and the girls were too used up to go out, and so I went alone. We saw the column of Marcus Aurelius, the theatre of Marcellus, the lower part of which is occupied by bad-smelling shops; the temple of Hercules in the cattle dealers forum, dating from the time of Vespasian; the pyramid of Caius Cestius, 116 feet high, 90 feet base, 1900 years old, built, on the outside at least, with white marble, now black; the hill where Remus stood to watch the flight of birds, the church of St. Paul, one of the finest modern churches in existence, etc., etc. We got upon a bridge over the “yellow Tiber,” and looked down upon the remains of the bridge, which Horatius defended against Lars Porsena. It did not seem that his swimming the river could be any very great feat, but it was probably higher then than now, as the poem says:
Swollen high with months of rain,
And far his blood was flowing,
And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armor,
And spent with changing blows.
which explains the performance satisfactorily. We saw also the drain built by Tarquin the Great 500 years before Christ, still used by the city. Quite wonderful, I thought. And the Pons Æmilius, 2000 years old. And the Fabrician bridge and Pons Cestius, dating back, I believe, to 100 B. C. There too, near the river, was the house of Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes.
A drive through the Jews quarter was very interesting. Some of the party tossed pennies to the crowd, and then what a scramble there was! And many a fall! It is a wonder they were not all run over. They followed us for some distance, old women and young children, boys and girls, begging, shouting, running. One little girl, not very little either, carried along a baby in her arms and held out its little paw to receive money. Nor was she unsuccessful either, but twice got something given her, and each time her own hand was quickly substituted for the youngster’s. Some of the old women, if I read them aright, looked a trifle ashamed of themselves, for a more disgraceful scramble for a few coppers by people who did not appear to be in want, I never saw. In this quarter we had pointed out to us the house of St. Paul, his “own hired house,” in which he lived two years while in Rome. Of course, it cannot be proved that this was his house, yet it seems quite probable, from various circumstances. It is a house of the first century, and the only one thereabouts, I believe. Then I think that it is that