Connecticut western news., 1877-07-06
Rome.

In Rome itself you breath the dust ot buried cities, and live on the graves of the dead. It is the past, not the present, which runs like shadow by your side, and renders everything mute and mel ancholy. Even the life which our own generation has seen has become the past, and left the places empty which it once filled. Artists and lovers of the pictur- esque complain loudly that Rome is no longer what it was; nor indeed is it. The walls of the Coliseum and of the Baths of Caracalla where Shelley hid himself among the ivy when he wrote his "Prometheus Unbound," have been scraped bare of all the luxuriant foli- age which gave them their own pecu- liar charm if it concealed from the eyes of archaologists many things which it was valuable for them to know; the towering floors, thick with the vegeta- tion of centuries, have been cut away, that the naked bones of the skeleton might be exposed; the palaces of the Caesars have been disinterred, and where were once Hex groves and daphnes, eye lamen and asphodels, are now tracts of well swept concrete or barren floors of sand, where English nurserymaids draw odd-looking hieroglyphics with their parasols, expressive of the feelings for the love left at home or the one found abroad. The splendor of the Papal court is under an eclipse which nothing emanating from the Quirinal can re- place. No gorgeous carriages of cardi- nals or dignitaries flash through the sombre streets. No pomp of profess sional luxury, no glory of ecclesiastical display give life and color to half dark ened churches, or rouse men to the worship of the Almighty God through admiration of well assorted millinery and artistic upholstery. This Easter the customary pifferari were forbidden to come into the city with their bag pipes to play before the bambino as of old; and the bambino itself, leaving goes abroad without state ceremony in shabby old brown coach. In return for all this, the King sometimes, and the Princess Margherita constantly, live in the Quirinal and drive about the streets. But Roman society is divided into two inimical factions, with very small section of neutrals; and the Papa lini find nothing more agreeable to their wounded political pride than to ''pass it on" an unofending Princess and in- suit her whenever they have the oppor- tunity. It is the favorite boast among the young ladies of the "Black" party that they "have cut the Princess ;'' the great world is full of reports of petty sights and indignities offered by the proud and implacable Roman ladies to thsair future queen. Gay, indeed, is the last word one would think of applying to anything in or connected with Rome, Save the theatre, there are no evening entertainments for the stranger; and tC f those to W whom the hours between din. ner and bed time are heavy on hand
 the loss. is incalculable. The very models themselves, who might do some thing towards professional well-being
 have as gloomy an air as the rest; and the dances that were got up on the steps of the Piazza di Spagna during the car nival were as transparent for their pre- tenses as the bones and banjo of our own metropolis. There is no shutting one's eyes to the fact, Rome has been swept but not garnished-made healthier and duller, free and less picturesque. It is safe, orderly, clean, quiet; it is para, 1 disc for those who care to think, and who can re-people the deserted Palatine
 reconstruct the ruined Forum-to those
 who can say no to pleasant friends ignorant of the value of time, and reso
 lutely set to work when they know tha
 they ought. But to the passing stranger
 who cares nothing for ruins and a grea
 deal for gayety, to whom Ca lot o
 battered old marble statues," some with
 out heads and others without legs, ant
 all more or less mutilated, give neither
 pleasure at the moment nor cause fol
 future reflection and delight, it is by nc
 means a paradise; and the grumbline
 disappointment of the irreverent enfant'
 du siecle is both loud and deep. Rome
 being emphatically the place where th'
 mind sees what it brings, they, bring
 ing nothing, see nothing but the out
 ward melancholy that covers the whole
 aspect of life; and melancholy is jus
 that one circumstance which they can
 not endure London Queen.