the and the outer walls are solid and decorated on the inside with those light colored of the pupils of the inner wall is full of arched pierced windows with many delicate columns through which you look to the green grass and the trees and the perfectly smooth ornamented dome at one end i have paid my tribute to the trees so i will only say that here as always wherever i saw them � one or many � i thrilled with delight they are as fine as any of the monuments or bronze doors or carved or perfect they belong where the great artistic impulse of italy has always put side by side with perfect things for me they added the one final necessary touch to this realm of romantic memory i see them now and i hear them sigh i walked back to my train through highly colored winding quaint streets crowded with houses the of which we in america to day attempt to imitate on our fifth avenues and a at forty avenues and squares the knew so well what to do with the door and the window and the and the wall space the size of their window is what they choose to make it and the door is instinctively put where it will give the last touch of elegance how often have i mentally applauded that artistic and reserve which will use one of colored stone or one or one lamp or one window and no more there is space � lots of it � unbroken until you have had just enough and then it will be relieved just enough by a marble framed in the walls a coat of arms a window s i would like to run on in my enthusiasm and describe that of a palace that is now the at but i will refrain only these streets in were rich with angles and and wonderful and solid plain fronts which were at once substantial and elegant trust the italian of an older day to do well whatever he did at all and i for one do not think that this instinct is lost it will burst into flame again in the future or save greatly what it already possesses chapter first impressions of rome as we approached rome in the darkness i was on the qui for my first glimpse of it and impatient with wonder as to what the morning would reveal i was bound for the hotel continental � the abode for the winter at least of s mother the widow of an oxford don i expected to encounter a severe and lady of great who would eye the of paris and with severity my mother said is a very person she is greatly concerned about me when you see her try to cheer her up and give her a good report of me i don t doubt you will find her very interesting and it is just possible that she will take a fancy to you she is subject to violent likes and i fancied mrs as a rather large woman with a smooth placid countenance a severe intellectual eye that would see through all my and make believes on the instant it was midnight before the train arrived it was and as i pressed my nose to the window pane the beginning lamps i saw streets and houses come into view � apartment houses if you please and street cars and electric arc lights and paved streets and a general atmosphere of we might have been entering for any particular it presented but just when i was to myself on the strangeness of entering ancient rome in a modem car and of seeing box cars and engines i a at forty coal cars and flat cars loaded with heavy material gathered on a score of parallel tracks a touch of the ancient rome came into view for an instant and was gone again in the dark and rain it was an immense desolate tomb its arches flung in great curves its rounded dome rent and jagged by time nothing but ancient rome could have produced so imposing a ruin arid it came over me in an instant fresh and clear like an electric shock like a dash of cold water that this was truly all that was left of the might and glory of an older day i recall now with delight the richness of that sensation rome that could build the walls and the in far and london rome that could occupy the st louis in paris as an that could erect the immense column to on the heights above rome that could reach to the uppermost waters of the and the banks of the and and rule was around me here it vas � the city to which st paul had been brought where st peter had sat as the first father of the church where the first had set up their shrine to and and the she wolf that had nourished them yes this was rome truly enough in spite of the apartment houses and the street cars and the electric lights i came into the great station at five minutes after twelve amid a of italian and a crowd of passengers i made my way to the baggage room looking for a cook s guide to inquire my way to the continental when i was seized upon by one are you mr he said i replied that i was mrs told me to say that she was waiting for you and that you should come right over and inquire for her i hurried away followed by a laboring porter and first impressions of rome found her waiting for me in the hotel � not the large severe person i had imagined but a small enthusiastic gracious little lady she told me that my room was all ready and that the bath that i 