The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1873-07-06
Modern Italy and Ancient Art.

Mr.. Ruskin is said to have declared
some time ago that the greatest service
England could render to art would be
that of buying up Venice and devoting
itself simply to the preservation OF the
City of the Lagoons. The proposal was q
expresses the feeling which deepens on
one, gear afeer year, as one passes through
Italy. Great as is the ruin wrought In
the past, it is as nothing to the perils
which seem to be awaiting the scanty
relics of art and antiquity which the past
France is the commonplace of every piazza.
Yet the possibility of p war in Italy is,
esthetically speaking, of much the same
order as the possibility Of row in the
British Museum, with the Eigin marbles
for barricades against the police, and the
of San Rocco has been justly pronounced
one of the three most precious buildings
in the world to an artist, but an artirt can
still see the mark where an Austrian shell,
during the siege Of Venice by Radetsky,
tore it's ways through the roo:. BY Especial
floor beneath without exploding, but the
existence Of eighty OF the grandest of Ven
tian pictures hung on the caprice of o fu-
see. At this moment the Italian Govern
ment is planning new Notifications for
Rome, and next year we may be trembling
lation that, although the front of st. Pc
ter's has suffered, the bombardment has
not yet injured the Vatican, as we were
trembling year OF two ago over the tele-
egrams from Strasbourg. But peace has
it's victories of destruction no less than
war. The industrial revival of Italy is the
most hopeful feature in its present condi-
ton, but docks and boulevards are terrible
foes of the picturesque. Florence, with its
new quarter, it's widened and Strengthened
streets, its restored churches and palaces, has
almost ceased to be the Florence of Giotto
or Machiavelli. The energetic syndic, who
proposed to drive broad road through
the heart of Venice, and to turn the
Piazsa of St. Mark into an omnibus stand,
is still jealous to carry out his plans,
and the choice of the city by the Peninsu-
lar and the Oriental steamships must soon
bring fresh warehouses of red brick to
vary the line of palaces along the Grand
Canal. Everyone is crying for fresh house
room at Rome, and house-room can only
be found by Haussmanizng the Esquiline
and the Calian. Already the whole dis
trict from the Baths of Diocletian to Santa
Maria Maggiore is wilderness of brick
and mortar the gardens of the Palazze
Massimi are changing into streets and
squares; and a grand boulevard is charg
ing straight on the Agger of Servius Tul-
Illus, and carrying mound and wall trump
antly before it. The Esquiline, however
has been doomed ever since the railway
chose it for it's terminus; but Roman pro-
gress is far from being content with the
Esquiline. Perhaps the loveliest and
most picturesque quarter of the Older
city is the space between the Laterar
and Santa Croce, the square of desc
late ground hemmedin by the grand line o
the Aurelian wall scored across with broker
: lines of aqueducts, and cut off from tn.
modern city by the Wolkouski gardens ant
the grass grown road which leads to the
Porta Maggiore. There is no spot, per
haps, in Rome which is dearer to those VIII
! love the wild, solitary beauty that give
go strange charm to the Eternal City
, but to the n,unicipio aud the architect it i
, simply an available space, and the dreame
who returns from his musings beneath it
ruins may see hanging in the Corso th
plan for covering it with " a fashionabl
3 quarter" and turning it into the Belgravi
? of the coming Rome.-Saturday Reriew.